MENI Theme- Loneliness and Isolation
Recording Transcript
Kevin: When I was back in China, I was a very social person, making friends wherever I went. But in Canada I was forced to supress my desire to talk because my limited spoken English would not allow me to talk. Sometimes, I really just wanted to talk to someone to make a friend or two, but after the general greeting of “Hello,” I would just get stuck there, unable to say anything more. So I could not make friends with Canadian students and I always felt alone.
I had taken thousands of pictures of the fabulous landscape of Canada. But I had no one, but I had on one to share them with around me.
During the orientation week, when we had the group dinner together, the Canadian students were all chatting and laughing with each other at the table. But I just sat there, struggling to understand what they were saying. Occasionally, I could grasp a sentence or two, but by the time I had finished thinking about how to respond, they had already moved on to something new. Then I was not able to say anything. So I just sat there, feeling like an outsider, an invisible person, among a big table of Canadian students. Although they seemed to be right beside me, within my reach, they were still a world apart from me. I thought to myself, sitting there, “What am I going to do with a life like this? How I am going to live a life like this?”
Although Canada seemed so beautiful, it did not feel like a world where I should be. It did not feel like a world where I should be.
Composing Process
In this piece, I used a slow, hypnotic progression of middle-range minor chords to represent the sorrowful undertone of the participant’s feeling of being isolated from the Canadian community (in Canada) due to his inability to effectively communicate in oral English. I used meandering low range chords, and single high range, wider-separated notes to further accent the words directly associated with the theme like “having no one to share with.” I ended with very slow low range piano chords to represent and communicate the saddening emotions resulting from the isolation faced by the participant due to his inability to communicate.
