Behind the scenes of our 21st-century America, full of modern convenience, mass production, wasteful single-use consumerism, and 1-day shipping, there exists a caste of workers who work intensely to keep the United States turning.
For years I worked for a large corporation known for its wide selection of items and quick shipping times. However, behind the scenes, they treat workers like industrial robots.
Harsh hours, intense physical labor, and constant pushing and prodding from management subject workers just trying to scrape together a living to dangerous working conditions.
Machines Who Weep paints the scene of a worker who is pushed into a tailspin by the pressure present from their job and eventually reaches a breaking point. The musical material is a composite of various rhythms, textures, and melodic cells derived from my own memories of being a part of this system.
This work is dedicated to my undergraduate composition teacher, Douglas Knehans, who saw the stresses of working these types of jobs affect me in real time. He pushed me into transforming those experiences into music, processing something painful into something that has the power to bring a moment of excitement and wonder for somebody else.
