Katherine Balch

In her essay A room of one’s own, Virgina Woolf considers the circumstances under which a woman’s capacity to self-express have been historically suppressed. I am attracted to this essay for a lot of reasons, but mainly for its elegance oflanguage and storytelling. She somehow makes a no-nonsense, straightforward argument burst with poetry and attentionto detail. Commissioned by Lorelei and Manchester Collective to write a piece in response to, or to exist beside, Feldman’s Rothko Chapel, I set about reflecting on Woolf’s words, filtering them out bit by bit until distilled collection of textual building blocks emerged, resulting in a page with only a word or two visible on each page. It bears a resemblance in my mind to the black triptychs that hang in Rothko’s Chapel — mostly monochromatic, with textural ripples.

“I’d like to think that there is an essence of the meaning of Woolf’s words contained in my filtering process, but now there is space for music to breathe between and give new life to the words. My piece for Lorelei sets six of these black-out texts, one for each chapter in Woolf’s essay. I wonder how Woolf, who died of suicide just shy of 30 years prior to Rothko’s own self-inflicted death, would have felt sitting in Rothko’s Chapel, or hearing Feldman’s response. Would she have wondered about the resources and support that helped to ferry these canonic works into the world? Would Rothko’s Chapel be the room of one’s own, the sanctuary of creative reflection she advocated for, or a reminder of the exclusiveness of time and space to think to certain societal echelons? Would their shared struggle with depression be a source of connection or estrangement? I perceive both as artists who endeavored to carve out vast spaces (with language, with color) where impossible things could become possible. Would they feel a resonance between their works as I do? I don’t endeavor to answer these questions in my piece for Lorelei, but to let them gently shape my musical response.”

– Katherine Balch