a vapor (no body, no image) [2025]

solo voice & orchestra [25’]

written for the Tectonics Festival, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Ilan Volkov, and Ty Bouque

performance history

5/10/2025 - Broadcast: Ty Bouque & the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (Ilan Volkov). BBC Radio 3: New Music Show.

5/3/2025 - Ty Bouque & the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (Ilan Volkov). Tectonics Festival. Glasgow, Scotland.

program note

a vapor (no body, no image) is a seance meant to conjure a terrain in which to house an awkward, absent, and collective mourning. The work articulates and reckons with how queer individuals learn of, reconcile, grieve, and hold space for the lost generation of queer and gay individuals who died during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and '90s. What is the source of grief when lived experience was not shared with the dead? What form does a distinctly queer mode of grieving take? How do we grieve a ghost?

text

song i

Wake, ghost.

Imagine me:

A nude host.

Enter where he came

Touch me

in my veins.

Breathe, ghost.

Hold my breath,

still warm.

Come for me;

I’ll make room:

I’m your vapor, too.

song ii

Now, having found me,

grasp my throat

(swollen lung).

Drag my tongue

across your shroud.

Now, having found you,

make my heart a hollow:

swelled, heavy, and loud.

A stowaway I’ll follow;

A haunting I’ll succumb to.

song iii

no form, no trace

but for this flesh:

body of the host

kiss me here and taste

the ghost in my blood:

Blood of the Ghost