“It's strange to look for something to say about a piece of music I wrote almost four years ago. So much has changed in the world and in my life from 2019-2023. Still, I listen back and feel like this music is about as close as I've gotten to writing something that feels fully like me. I think those of us that make music (and probably even artists in general) sometimes struggle to create in a way that feels authentic to ourselves without being overly beholden to the artists we love and admire.

It's funny that I've found something that I'm so pleased with compositionally when this piece was recorded in less than two hours, without rehearsal, and features extensive improvisation. Some of the musicians didn't know each other before this session. I had never played music with more than half of them. I have always been artistically charged by spontaneity. The part of composing I'm least interested in is the score (though the musicians all read from the full score in this recording) and when I write trumpet parts for myself I usually ignore them when it comes time to play.

So I sit here with my dog Charlotte (who was a puppy when I wrote this), in my apartment in Brooklyn (where I'd been maybe twice before in 2019), listening back to music I made with some of my closest musical friends (though I barely knew some of them then), drinking a Trockenbeerenauslese from 1976 (I didn't know anything about wine then, I'm a sommelier in Manhattan now), and think about how much my life has changed and where I want my life to be four years from now. This and my last project, 'Drowning and what comes Afterwards (or My Time Underwater),' have been such serious pieces. I didn't set out to write sad or angry music, but I suppose I've felt that way a lot in the past four years. I hope I find myself writing something whimsical, silly, or joyous in 2027. And I hope I don't do it on purpose, that'll just be how I'm feeling.

This piece is dedicated to my grandfather Joseph Francis O'Callaghan Sr. In graduate school (when I wrote this music) I would sometimes pull up his CV on the internet and think how I wanted to accomplish half as many things as him. He is a Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellow, the former Chairman of the Department of History at Fordham University, an author of over 20 books and so many articles. I still admire him for these achievements, but now I think I admire more his devotion to his work and his devotion to his family. If I live to ninety-three years old I hope you can find me at my desk working on my music, the same way he is still at his desk every morning. Can you believe he wrote a novel last year?! He's never written fiction in his life!

To create is to be human! That's the life I want to live.”

–Michael Denis Ó Callaghan