Nobody Is Ever Missing

Based on the novel by Catherine Lacey

duration: 30’

Instrumentation: soprano, flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, piano, violin 1, violin 2, cello

First Performance

Presented by Mind On Fire
17 January 2025, The Voxel Theater
Baltimore, MD

Reviews

Washington Classical Review: Mind on Fire presents a compelling and immersive interior journey

Program Note

Around 10 years ago, living in Houston, I remember singing what would become the opening lines of this opera to myself one day while out walking. I was around Spec’s liquor store on Westheimer past Hillcroft. 

For as long as I can remember, I have walked to cope, to clarify, and to disappear. When I first encountered Catherine’s book, I was in a situation that made her character’s decision to disappear from her life seem deeply relatable. I felt the rhythms and rationalizations intuitively and found them beautiful and personal. That is what made such an impression on me when I first read Nobody Is Ever Missing: the buzzy pace of Elyria’s mind against the arrested momentum of her life. At that time, I would also frequently disappear by venturing aimlessly at night across sleeping cities. In this, Elyria was a friend— a fellow nobody. I composed the music from this mindset; one that feels distant now. But I still feel it.

Like the novel, the music is evidence of a brain trying to understand itself. Throughout the book, Elyria stares down her Wildebeest. The animal’s image– sometimes staring back from a stoic promontory, sometimes running at full gallop toward her— connects us to the feral aspect of ourselves. Our human nature is always locked in a Socratic battle with our animal nature. At times we trick ourselves into thinking our human nature is winning, but Elyria dissolves these pretensions for us.

In beautifully hewn sentences, Catherine traces the shape of our thoughts and feelings. She reveals how cold and logical and completely corruptible they are by this strange force within that is older and more powerful than either. I don’t see the opera as a sad piece, just as I didn’t read the novel as a sad book. It felt helpful for the moment I was in and sits with me still as a reminder to stay connected to the Wildebeest. 

The opera tries to capture how thinking feels and how it feels to when your animal nature takes control. Catherine’s story, and the music born from it, is about staying close to that part of ourselves.