Priscila Chu’s “Falling into Place” is not just the final piece of music in this sprawling web of an exhibit/game/project, it’s the final piece, period. The last link in the chain. The end of the road. [Insert your favorite such cliched metaphor here.] As such, there is no following work for me to reference here. No other artist (to my knowledge) has taken this beautiful piece and spun it into another work in another discipline. So, this will be the only piece in this 80-track collection that I will actually attempt to write something about.
Of course, the task of summing up such an enormous undertaking as TELEPHONE in one work – of any discipline, including book-length essay or novel – is impossible. But that wasn’t Priscila’s task, of course. She merely happened to be the artist tasked with completing the final act of interpretation, taking a story and a drawing that had been circuitously distilled from 900-plus other artworks and turning them into a peaceful, contemplative work for solo piano. You can feel things falling into place as she explores the keyboard – locks turning, memories awakening, roots growing. You want it to go on forever. And then, too soon, it all ends in a juuust slightly-left-of-resolved chord, leaving you with no option but to start back at the beginning. Whether that’s listening to this piece again, or starting all over with the Original Message, is up to you.
Thank you Priscila. Thank you to every musician in this collection, and every artist in TELEPHONE. Enormous, billboard-sized THANK YOU to Nathan, Katelyn, and the entire TELEPHONE crew for making this thing happen. I am humbled and inspired to have been a small part of this big, beautiful, banyan.