Night Through Eight Eyes

Night Through Eight Eyes takes its inspiration from the mythological tale of the famed weaver, Arachne, who, so sure of her skills, challenged the goddess Athena to a weaving contest. As punishment—as the gods’ party line goes—for her arrogance, but also because her textiles depicted the gods at their most duplicitous, Athena transformed Arachne into a spider, and my piece takes place on the first night after that horrible transformation. Night Through Eight Eyes is a fantasy that invites the listener to step into Arachne’s shoes. The piece scuttles through moments of melancholy, anxiety and anger, certain passages representing Arachne’s emotional state, others functioning as pure musical flights of fancy, some quite fevered. Underpinning these frenetic moments, I wanted to explore the notions of powers in the story. Arachne used her art to speak truth to power; Athena used her power to destroy Arachne and her art by turning her into a spider. Ironically, however, Athena’s punishment committed Arachne to a lifetime of weaving—a lifetime of practicing her art and flexing her power, and, in the piece, I have attempted to show Arachne finding moments of power amongst moments of anxiety At its heart then, Night Through Eight Eyes is both an ode to a timeless (and utterly relevant) heroine, and a meditation on the process of regaining one’s sense of self after undergoing a dramatic transformation.