“Find Your Way” was inspired by John Cage’s use of silence and chance in his composition. It is made of 8 mesostic poems, 2 each for North, South, East, West, and Center, and one common acrostic taught to kids to help them remember the cardinal directions. The text for the mesostics came from a Wikipedia article on the position of the sun and on navigation using stars. The silence before each poem was determined by a random number generator, ranging from 1-20.
Biggest thing I learned-it’s hard to let go of control when creating something. I admittedly fudged the rules of writing mesostics once or twice to make something I liked better…And it was difficult to perform the silences with precision based on the numbers the generator gave me. But it was also interesting and fun to see how it turned out!