Lessons 

(voice (range F2-A4); electric guitar; video)

​

​

incorporating texts by Tea Topuria and Lena Samniashvili

​

​

Acts of violence and cruelty do not constitute ‘life lessons’. It is not compulsory to ‘live and learn’.

Rather than learning not to go out alone, or to present differently, or to otherwise change my behaviour, what I ended up learning was something else entirely: poetry, opera, folk music, recipes, novels, language, history. 

In these acts of learning, I was initially hoping to understand, to explain away, to blame myself. I discovered instead something resembling compassion.