The Fredösphere

In my previous post I asked you to go read Terry Bisson's marvelous story They're Made Out of Meat.  Today I'll tell you about my new relationship to the world of Meat.  Having noticed the story's unusual structure, that of pure dialog without a single word of narration, I realized the story worked as the script to a play, and needed absolutely no modification for dramatic adaptation.  From there, the next step should have been easy to see, but as is often the case, it took me a long time to understand:  namely that I could turn Meat into an opera.

A few things made me hesitate.  The size of the project was intimidating, as I estimated the resulting piece would be 10 minutes long.  (As it turned out, 15 minutes would have been closer to the truth:  more than twice the length of any piece previously written by me.)  The story was under copyright, and the thought of contacting/negotiating/wheedling/wrangling the author for permission was dismaying.  (Few things are better at sucking my will to live than asking a stranger for cooperation.)  Finally, I had recently decided upon another artistic project that seemed to me to be the thing I should be devoting the next several years of my life to and I didn't want a large distraction to delay it.

In the end, I couldn't say no to Meat although it did make chopped liver of an entire year of my life.  I contacted Terry Bisson by way of my good friend Tony C. Smith, he of the StarShipSofa podcast.  Terry turned out to be wonderfully, even miraculously, cooperative.  My first email to him was long and lawyerly, and was ignored.  My follow-up email was a couple of sentences, and Terry responded with a reasonableness and trust which still awes me whenever I think of it.  It's a model for how I should treat others when I become rich-slash-famous.

Tomorrow:  an opera is born.  Meanwhile, let me tease you with one minute of Meat:

Labels: Composition, They're Made Out Of Meat