Homer Collyer Blind

In E. L. Doctorow's novel Homer and Langley, based on Manhattan's notorious Fifth Avenue compulsively hoarding Collyer brothers, Doctorow first introduces his character Homer as he is losing his sight. Homer is keen to notice the gradual fade out. Individual details are lost, then whole images are distorted, and finally he is completely blind. In the darkness he can hear a sound made by an ice skater that was always present but never noticed: "a soft sound though full of intention, a deeper tone than you'd expect made by the skate blades, perhaps for having sounded the resonant basso under the ice, scoot scut, scoot scut."

My deepest thanks to Lara Mitofsky Neuss and Justin Cummings for commissioning this three movement work.