The Border is a Line that Birds Cannot See (2019) by John Lane

Performed by Paul Bartenfeld, Darrion Chandler, Rohan Chowla, Kevin Cooper, Helen Dunn, Cason Duszak, Hayden French, Ann Hall, Lauren Hong, Coby Lovelace, and Roman Ramirez, Rose Roché, and Will Simpson
A Night of Percussion by the UVA Percussion Ensemble
April 15th, 2023
This piece is inspired by two sources: 1) The Alberto Ríos poem, The Border: A Double Sonnet, and 2) New York Times story, “Dispatches from the Border: Part 2”, as featured in the podcast The Daily on January 29, 2019. Two reporters from the New York Times traversed the entire length of the US-Mexico border. As part of their reporting, they interviewed and traveled with Eddie Canales, founder of the South Texas Human Rights Center, in Brooks County, Texas. Brooks County is one of the deadliest places for undocumented immigrants on the Texas-Mexico border, with over 8,000 reported deaths. Tightened border enforcement has funneled undocumented migrants into this inhospitable desert landscape, creating a humanitarian crisis since 2012. Canales’s organization raises awareness about this issue and actively maintains water stations, marked by white flags, for migrants passing through Brooks County.
The sounds of this work attempt to generate a soundscape of the desert in Brooks County, including field recordings of the cicadas from South Texas. Tonight’s performance features original poetry by the performers reflecting on borders, both physical and metaphorical. These original mesostic poems can be found on page 9. The piece is written for and dedicated to the Sam Houston Percussion Group and students of the Honors College Fine Arts Seminar (2019) at Sam Houston State University.
- John Lane