When The Sun Is Out
The collaboration between writer Sophia Speranza and musician Nicole Rodriguez can be found at the SoundCloud link below. The two met on a trip to Tibet in the summer of 2017 and have been close ever since.
This collaboration started with a piece of writing.
Speranza wrote two pieces of prose, for Rodriguez to set to music. Rodriguez decided to work solely with February:
Their original plan was for Rodriguez to set Speranza’s exact words to music, but the musician decided to add structure to the prose through an erasure.
This is a writing technique where one takes an existing piece of writing, traditionally prose or verse, and erases selected text. The remaining words can we restructured into lines or stanzas and are usually framed as a minimalistic and abstract poem.
In this case, Rodriguez was left with the words and images she found most compelling from February, and restructured them into a three verse song, with the repeating refrain “when the sun is out.”
“Just outside the window dances, a tall tree / messy wires upright standing
birds filtering / when the sun is out
weaving in and out / a lacking February
Sexy electric fashion model beauty / when the sun is out
World, admire, stop, look and notice the winter drying / Without worth
Alone”
“When I did the erasure, I was looking first for the words that felt right, and struck me.” Rodriguez said, “I didn’t realize the theme I had in this song until I was recording it.
Looking back at [February], I thought, ‘okay, this is the heart of it.’ I was just trusting what stuck with me first”
“They both ended up saying the same thing.” said Speranza. Both artists wonder if their final pieces would have been so similar if they had not have a personal friendship and artistic history.
Sophia Speranza
Born in Columbus, Ohio, the writer in currently attending the Art Institute of Chicago.
Nicole Rodriguez
Originally from Freehold, New Jersey, the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School graduate currently lives in Brooklyn.
