• Date - 2005
• Dur - 7.5'
• Inst - electric guitar, soundfile
• Premier - April 5, 2005: UAB Hulsey Recital Hall, Birmingham, AL; Marc LeMay, guitar

This piece (pronounced “Discontinuous Mind”), my first electroacoustic composition, brings together a variety of elements that were on the tip of my mind at the time of its composition. One was my newfound love for jazz, both as a listener and performer. Another was my recent excursions into odd meters, hence the 13/8 feel of the “big band” portion of this piece. The electronic sounds, musique concrete, and guitar pedal effects were further experiments in ways of combining vastly different textures into a single piece. The live guitar is a way of adding a visual element to what is mostly an aural piece, thus giving a sense of theatricality.

The slow-drawl voice you hear toward the end of the piece is that of my late grandmother, Eugenia Reynolds. Eugenia, or “Jeannie,” as they called her, is reading a love letter to her sweetheart Wayne, my future grandfather, who was away with the Air Force at the time. Most of my life, Eugenia suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease, and thus I never knew her at her mental sharpest. These records are not only a snapshot of genteel Selma life in the 1940s, but a testament to young love and a forebear I never really knew. She was a woman of considerable, if never professionally realized, musical talent. This piece premiered in at the Spring 2005 UAB Computer Music Ensemble concert.