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lamentation three

lamentation three was written with lamentation five in mind. I had already begun creating five, which turned out to be a long process, and the idea of broken pottery was close to mind. The use of ceramics and earthenware as a metaphor for the body is one used within Lamentations and other ancient city laments (e.g. The Lament for Sumer and Urim).

I received feedback from Bath Spa’s Open Score Lab on an early version of this piece which was invaluable. One change that resulted from this was the breaking of the piece into two sections. The first draft felt like it wasn’t sure if it wanted to be poetry or text score. The final piece has a more poetic first section. Then, alongside the line about a break in the jar, the poetical rhythm also ‘breaks’ and is replaced with a blunter list of instructions.

This piece ends with a reflection that the jar is made unique by its flaws. And this is a theme I later explored further in lamentation four.

I’ve been asked if I had a specific jar I was describing in this piece. And while I was working on lamentation five at the time, I chose to describe a hypothetical/general broken jar instead. Hopefully the piece works well standing alone, without the need of physical object attached to it.

This is the third of six reflections on the lamentation pieces, the rest will continue to be posted over the next couple of months. If you’d like to read them now, they’ve already been made available to my patreons here.