The Memory Thief: Aging, the Feminine, and Relationship in Surreal Poetry and Programmatic Piano Composition (PDF)
Video
The Memory Thief is a poetic musical composition that explores the feminine in relationship to aging, dementia, and mother-daughter relationships. It is a series of 5 ekphrastic surreal prose poems that I crafted and set to surreal piano compositions I wrote for each poem. I argue that representing a story of aging, memory, and close relationships using surrealist devices manifests the tensions between youth and older age, feminine strength and beauty, mother and daughter, and memory and forgetting. The juxtaposition and intermingling of sound and text and image create programmatic music, and the relationship between the text and music unravels and twists memory into a new aesthetic moment.
This project was given as the keynote presentation March 29, 2025 at the Women who Create Conference held at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, UK.
» Sandra L. Faulkner is Professor of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University and writes, teaches, and researches about close relationships. Faulkner founded the Dialogue and Relationship Research Lab at BGSU and is the current Editor-in-Chief of Communication Studies. Faulkner lives in NW Ohio with their partner, a fierce teen, a 1968 Kawai baby grand, and two rescue mutts.
