John Doan: Music

What made this piece so challenging to write is that I've never been to Spain, so it was hard to remember anything about the place. But after a while, the thought of that intrigued me because whatever I wrote would come completely from my imagination. This may have been a more common pastime a century ago when people told each other stories, read books, and could only imagine exotic places in far-off lands. Looking into a stereoviewer might evoke the mystery of a gypsy camp, the excitement of a bull fight, or the passion of a Flamenco dancer. Just the thought of it was enjoyable. It is a romantic gesture, this world of imagining, and perhaps it was an advantage of living back then that people could easily dream their own dreams and live out their own stories. Things Spanish were quite the rage one hundred years ago, so there must have been a lot of dreams.