Sonic Sanctuary: The Last Word

On Tuesday, November 3rd, four of us will sit down at noon in The Old Church and play Morton Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2 until it is finished, somewhere around six o’clock. Admission is free. We are suggesting a donation of $25, and all of it goes to the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition.

This is the last post in the series. I have written about Feldman, about the history of the piece, and about what it takes to prepare to play something this long. I want to use this one to address the thing I have been circling: why this music, and why this cause.

An Odd Pairing

The connection is not obvious, and I won’t pretend it is. Feldman’s quartet is not about anything. It has no program, no text, no message. It is quiet and slow and patient to a degree some people find maddening. PIRC, meanwhile, answers the phone when someone’s father has been detained on the way to work. That is about as concrete as anything gets. On paper, the two do not belong in the same room.

I have tried to build a clever bridge between them and I don’t have one. What I have is simpler. We are musicians. This is what we know how to do. When we decided we wanted to put something useful into Election Day, we looked honestly at what we had to offer, and it came to six hours of our attention and a room to hold it in. The Old Church gave us the room. PIRC is where the money goes because their work is specific, local, and urgent, and because it is happening to people who live here.

If there is a deeper link, it may be this. Feldman’s music asks you to stay with something well past the point where you would normally look away. The changes are small and they accumulate. You notice them only because you didn’t leave. I don't want to push that idea too far. But it is not a bad description of what being a neighbor asks of us.

What PIRC Does

I would rather tell you what PIRC does than tell you how I feel about it.

They run a statewide hotline, staffed around the clock, for reporting immigration enforcement activity. They verify those reports, because unconfirmed rumors spread fear on their own. They help families find relatives who have been detained. They accompany people to check-ins at the ICE office. They keep a drop-in resource center open on weekday mornings, and they train volunteers to serve as legal observers.

None of that is abstract, and none of it is free. Someone has to be awake to answer the phone at 3 AM. A $25 donation won’t fix anything on its own. It will keep a small, real piece of that work going, which is reason enough.

What This is Not

We are not going to tell you how to vote. We are a nonprofit, and you don’t need it from me anyway. This is not a protest, and I am not going to suggest that sitting through a string quartet is an act of courage. It isn’t. Spending an afternoon in a pew is easy. The people who matter on November 3 are the ones spending that same afternoon on the other end of a hotline.

What You Would Actually Be Doing

Vote first. Then, if you have an hour, or six, come in. Sit anywhere. Leave when you need to and come back if you want. The music does not stop and nobody will notice you coming or going, which is part of the point.

If you can’t be there in person, the performance streams live on our YouTube and Facebook channels. If you can't watch at all, give to PIRC directly. They will put it to better use than I can describe.

Election Day is going to be loud. It doesn’t have to be loud everywhere.

Details

What: Sonic Sanctuary. Morton Feldman, String Quartet No. 2, complete.

When: Tuesday, November 3, noon to roughly 6 PM. Come and go as you like.

Where: The Old Church Concert Hall, 1422 SW 11th Ave, Portland.

Admission: Free. $25 suggested donation, all of it benefiting the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition.

Performers: Ron Blessinger and Shintaro Taneda, violins; Maia Hoffman, viola; Marilyn de Oliveira, cello.

Our thanks to The Old Church for donating the hall, to RBC Wealth Management for its sponsorship, and to Milagro Theatre, Chamber Music Northwest, ChatterPDX, 45th Parallel, Portland Piano International, and Fear No Music for standing behind the effort.