The vocals for this song are on the playback that runs during the show, because the song is impractical to sing through the mask. Many of the costumes and dances on stage prevent the use of live vocals. The dramatic aspects of the show are always more important than the instrumental performance art. The use of live instruments is seen as secondary to the dance and theatrical production. This allows a lot of freedom of movement and costume design. In developing the alien bird costume I wanted it to look unearthly, specifically not like something from a bird watchers guide to extinct species. In the song the bird represents the surveillance state, the glass and steel object that watches your every move, the camera. I stand above the crowd slowly surveying the scene. I move uneasily on the ground. One of the voices on the track is a vocoder that repeats, “Looking ‘round.” in between the verses. It is this voice that inspired the costume. Like all predators it is finding your weakness and using it against you. The black eyes never blink.

     The first vocal is, “We are lost in a world of glass and steel, and the things that we love... none of them are real.” The sax comes back into the song playing a lilting melody along with the vocal after this verse. The playing becomes more desperate and churning as the vocal continues. At the first chorus it is frantic as a second sax begins playing a harmony part. The chorus is,”Still the past is in front of me. The old ways survived, everyone was free. The air was clean once more and the gardens teamed with buffalo. Everything was in balance again. I felt in my heart a sudden pain, because I knew what the future would hold. In the winter the troops would get bold. Time cascades like a waterfall.” Two very full drum beats sound and the song changes focus. In an instant I turn around and spread the wings of my cloak. Like the Roman god Janus, who looks both ahead and behind, my character has a face on both sides of its head. The lighting changes in the moment the Alien bird turns away from the crowd and lighting streams up from the footlights at the front of the stage. The backward looking character has dark hollow eyes and high cheekbones and the look of a spectral angel in flight, because of the wings that are now fully open and are part of skeletal look of the new costume.

     Mr. D is the focus of the second part of the song. He plays the roll of Chief Looking Glass of the Nez Perce tribe from the Pacific Northwest. Looking Glass is a tragic figure in history. He was a chief, one of many, but not a war chief. He often pleaded for the remnants of his tribe to rest in their flight from the United States Calvary. There were women and children among them, and his counsel was that they needed rest. They had pitched a running battle for months in a desperate attempt to join chief Sitting Bull in Canada. They had been on the run form three separate United States armies. evading capture by former civil war veterans, local militias, and bounty hunters. They had covered 1700 miles of mountainous terrain, which as winter closed in was covered in snow. The war chiefs acquiesced and a massacre was the result. The 9th Calvary, newly under the command of Capt. Howard, attacked the camp before nightfall. This was the end of the road for the Nez Perce, who resisted being removed from the Wallowa valley, their beautiful lush home, to make way for gold prospectors and white settlers. I wrote the song for the It CD. The looking glass could be interpreted in so many ways; as a mirror, as a camera, as a telescope, as a gateway (see Lewis Caroll) and as the noble chief, who tried to protect something beautiful, only to see it rubbed out.

     The lines that Chief Looking Glass delivers are what I imagine might have been the argument he had given in the winter of 1877, when the sky was grey, and leaden, and the wolves were on their heels. The small band of rebels were to stop and rest only 30 miles from the Canadian border. Chief Looking Glass died in the ensuing battle. Chief Joseph was captured, never to see freedom again.

     Chief Looking Glass turned and said, “If we keep running we’’ll end up dead, so it would be best to slow down for some rest. The children are frozen. The women are cold. The horses are tired and its going to snow. The little children have run too long. We need to rest until dawn. The women killers are resting in bed. God in heaven will put sleep in their heads. In the dawn God will make a new light, and we’ll all be calm and we’ll continue our flight. Yes, we’ll continue to run. Yes, we’ll continue to fight. We’ll continue to hide. We’ll continue to fight. We’ll continue to hide well out of sight. Yes, we’ll continue our flight... home.”

     This is another point of transition in the song. Chief Looking Glass has made his case and the Janus like figure revolves again and I am born again as the Phoenix like watcher of the skies. The vocoder vocal resumes, “The electric eye surveyed the land, and recorded the tragedies visiting man. The cold glass lens looking ‘round. etc.” The music is a lone gothic organ playing thick dissonant chords accompanied by a wailing sax solo. The look of the Alien raptor has changed too, because of new lighting. Black lights play down the harsh reds in the mask, turning it almost black, and the wings of the cloak are more skeletal also. The sax solo gets more violent as bursts of notes pour out above the organ chords. The vocal continues, “Searching for danger, listening for sound. Making your private life public domain. Silencing others who feel the same way. Taking the peoples voice away. Watching the things that you do, and using its power over you. Finding your weakness and using it against you.” At this point the watcher of the skies is literally towering over the stage. The stage has a small platform built into the floor that can be raised or lowered. At this point it has been lifted to its limit of 7 feet. It takes about a minute to descend back to floor level, and then it collapses into the floor. While the platform slowly sinks, a third part of the song plays out. I perform the death dance of the Alien Raptor. Because the platform is so small, the dance is very much performed in the upper body. Intense red lights have been turned up at the platform, accentuating the mask and wings. As the platform slowly lowers the wings fly over the audience, at first gracefully, but as the moments pass they are increasingly desperate and erratic. The extent of their reach is diminished and finally the neck of the costume is all that moves. I am pulled under the stage by the end of the song, symbolically crashing into the cold earth.

     This leaves me under the stage for the beginning of the next song. Mr. D is not with me now, because he stepped off stage soon after the Chief Looking Glass section of the song ended, and before the platform began to rise. I headed for the dressing room, while my troupe ran through the next song without me. the next song was called Home/I Couldn’t Stay. Michelle had the spotlight for this song, which gave me a chance to get out of the bird costume and get back behind the drums. The first part of the song was a very soothing description of home. Michelle did a wonderful interpretation of the sanctuary and comfort of the title subject. She used long trailing movements that flowed into one another. Her costume was a child like simple white tunic. The second part of the song was recorded without live drums. It had an odd time signature that felt very natural to me. I loved pounding out tom fills to emphasize the vocals of the song. I Couldn’t Stay was a musical representation of death, not the Christian belief in reincarnation as a pure forgiven spirit, but death of both body and spirit, i.e. moral death. The turning point in the song are the lines, “I long to return every day, but I could not stay”.