Writing in the New York Times on Jan. 18, 2026, columnist M. Gessen described some of the political transformations in the United States over the previous year:

“We have become a country where people are disappeared by a paramilitary force that hunts them down in their apartments, on city streets and country roads, and even in the courts. Less than a year ago, videos of ICE arrests would go viral and social media posts about ICE sightings would send chills down our spines. Now even the most high-profile detentions have faded from view: Who has been released? Who has been deported? Who is still missing?”

This quote captures so accurately for me how these individual acts of federal violence coalesce into a slow but unmistakable erosion of political norms, and how impossible it can feel to be adequately attuned to and vigilant against these gradual shifts while attending to the inevitabilities of everyday life.

This piece expresses my experience grappling with the idea of resistance as a United States citizen in 2025. The slowly evolving drone in the electronics part feels to me like an oncoming tidal wave, to which the musicians respond (or don’t respond) by playing different styles of music. They begin with classical music of childlike innocence before proceeding to a more combative form of progressive jazz/fusion, eventually landing in an open soundscape that allows them to engage most directly with the inexorable electronics.

The piece was commissioned by the SPLICE Festival and the Portland Ballet. The première performance at Colby College included choreography by Annie Kloppenberg, in collaboration with Isabella Buckman, Elliott Evans, Eva Walden, Anna Winslette, Lydia Wirth of the Portland Ballet.