WRITING THE NEXT WORLD

EXPERIENCE WRITING THE NEXT WORLD VIA THIS EXPERIENTIAL SOUNDSCAPE CREATED BY MUSICIAN/MAGICIAN STERLING DUNS

Writing the Next World 2025
Album by Sterling Duns

Track 1: Claire’s Fire

Track 2: Countdown

Track 3: Lunch at POTA

Track 4: Why Do I Think

Track 5: Earth Humming

Track 6: Land + Sea

Track 7: A Feeling Is On Me

Track 8: So Be It, See To It

West Philly-based facilitator, hip hop artist, educator, and activist Dwight Dunston, aka Sterling Duns, joined us for the duration of WNW and created a sonic map of our experience together. Using recordings of workshops, presentations, singing, ambient noise, and layering beats, Duns wove together this incredible piece of art as a reflection of our time together.

Track 1: Claire’s Fire
Recordings- Claire’s voice
Thoughts- How do you capture a meditation? A spell? Without cheapening it? I don’t quite know, but I tried to simply create a piano line that I could repeat that could hold all the power Claire brought in. Staying out the way, filling the spaces in between.

Track 2: Countdown
Recordings- Lunch at POTA
Thoughts - Meeting people for the first time. Excitement, hesitation, anxiety. The countdown to our journey had many beginnings. You applying. You saying yes. You flying over. And certainly, you all meeting and buddying up. Certainly that was a beginning!

Track 3: POTA PAL
Recordings - Organizers waving to the van as it departs
Thoughts - I have a teacher who says “that in the beginning is the middle and the end.” I wanted to capture something about the preciousness of meeting each other for the first time at POTA, you all becoming pals, while also interspersing the vocals from us waving goodbye to you at the end of it all. It was really so terrible to say goodbye.

Track 4: Why Do I Think
Recordings: adrienne singing
Thoughts- Those silly voices that say we can’t do the things we know we can do, we are called to do. What if we flip them on their head and use them to lift ourselves up?

Track 5: Earth Humming
Recordings: adrienne singing
Thoughts - adrienne sent me a song that came to her. Felt like something in conversation with Claire’s Fire. Felt like new earth was being formed. Half-way through our time together and half-way through this album

Track 6: Land + Sea
Recordings: John O’Halloran on Omey island, laughs from group during Claire’s meditations, Kate during our walk with Sam rubbing seeds in her hand. Autumn vocal whips
Thoughts: nature as a percussion mixed with a song you could groove to, sweat to.

Track 7: A Feeling Is On Me
Recordings: Kate reading Laurence’s Poem, Autumn Vocals, recording of us walking with Sam through the grass
Thoughts: Feelings get on us. Stay with us. How do we stay with them? Let them move through us? Or find comfort knowing they will always be with us? Repeating line as cry for help. Repeating line as acknowledgment of truth. Do truths change if we say them/read them over and over? Poetry might change us every time we read it. I hope this song changes you every time you hear it.

Track 8: So Be It, See To It
Recordings: Shadia singing Homes of Donegal, Our first day in the classroom
Thoughts: The last track. We are going home.. Our intentions staying with us. More like promises than wishes. “The time has come for I must go and bid you all adieu” And so we must. But we have each other’s voices with us so that “when [we are] traveling far away, [we’ll] hear [our] voices call”