Castles In The Air

“I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air” – Bram Stoker, Dracula

(With apologies to Abraham, who most certainly would not approve.)

Composed for the Melt festival in Brisbane, Castles in the air is a setting of selected lines from a letter written by Bram Stoker to Walt Whitman about, among other things, his emotional struggles with his latent homosexual tendencies and his admiration for Whitman’s bravery in addressing his own so publicly in Leaves of Grass. Below is a reproduction of the introduction Jamie gave at the piece’s premiere.

Walt Whitman published a collection of poems called Calamus in his book Leaves of Grass. In Calamus Walt details the romantic and sexual relationship he had with another man. Because of this, Bram Stoker wrote Walt a letter, praising him for the bravery that it must have taken to publish that as a time where such things could get you arrested. And thanking him for the gift that it was, the gift of “love and sympathy in common with his own kind,” the knowledge and the feeling of having been so desperately alone with these scary illegal feelings, and then suddenly realizing that you weren’t alone at all.

In this work I have tried to musically capture Bram’s passion at suddenly no longer feeling alone, but also the shyness and the tenderness and the bravery in reaching out to someone you think might be like you, and hoping to find acceptance when you do.

When I was suffering composer’s writer’s block on the middle 8 bars of this piece, my good friend here John [Rotar] helped to, in his words, “zhuzh” it up. In doing so he unknowingly used a word from Polari, a secret cant or coded language used by 19th century gay men like Whitman and Stoker to talk to each other without being understood by the wrong people and thereby risking violence. These are the lengths we queer people have sometimes had to take to avoid persecution.

Usually blood is what builds a family. But for these two 19th century gentlemen, and for many of us queers before and since, family has built by faith in one another, trust to keep each other’s secrets and the surefire knowledge that hiding together is infinitely preferable to having to hide alone.

And so, with apologies to Abraham, who certainly would be mortified at me airing his dirty laundry in public this way, please enjoy The Australian Voices’ world premiere of my new work: Castles in the Air.

To request copies of this work, or any others by Jamie. Please Contact them at the linked page