TITRATION: a term used in chemistry to describe the process where two reagents are mixed drop by drop to avoid the explosive reaction that would occur from pouring them together quickly. Titration is also used to describe a therapeutic process in which one approaches trauma very slowly, “drop by drop,” so as to avoid unnecessary distress, flooding and potential re-traumatization. No title could be better fitting for Shara Nova’s new cycle of healing songs, recorded by The Crossing with conductor Donald Nally. TITRATION examines the experience of our own bodies, the capacity of our nervous systems, and the quest to identify and embrace our most difficult feelings. Styles converge, warm sounds emerge and voices soar next to laughter, humming, and the energy of Shara’s Indie band roots, with songs deeply inspired by Resmaa Menakem’s Somatic Abolitionist body of work and his call for communal practice. TITRATION offers a glimpse into various healing modalities while extending a hand of self-awareness to listeners alike.
Listen to Donald and Shara talk about the album on WRUU 107.5 Savannah – https://www.wruu.org/broadcasts/41945/
Titration is a choral song cycle composed during the spring and early summer of 2022. As a person of southern heritage, growing up in a politically conservative family, but having traveled a “moon trip’s distance” philosophically from home, the political debates of the country always land at the dinner table, deeply dividing my family, and also dividing me. We disagree on a great many topics, and yet I love my family dearly. I carry the contradictions and tensions of my family within me, no matter how far away I may fly.
Home is complicated. Is home a feeling of safety? How is safety created? How do I make home in myself? How can we disagree so strongly, and still come to the table together? How do we make a society where all bodies can experience the same promise of safety? How can I become a safer person for other people? How do I work through difficult emotions like fear, grief, disgust or rage? How can I grow in my capacity to feel more?
As a child I often understood the best way to deal with big feelings was to go silently into my bedroom and remain there until I could come out with a “better attitude.” The story of my learning how to identify feelings and stay connected to my body is ongoing. The details of what has happened to me personally to make emotion and body awareness difficult were not necessary to tell. Instead I wanted to share some explorations in asking the question, “How do I keep on feeling in this mean, mean world?”
The song cycle is not a therapeutic model, but points to healing modalities, teachers, and ancient practices about which I hope you, the listener, will become curious to research. There is a “how” which I did not invent, but that can be cultivated deliberately. I would like to acknowledge and offer gratitude to the Somatic Abolitionist body of work of Resmaa Menakem specifically from whom I am learning to value humming, to orient to a space, to rock myself, to notice the silence, to notice the rage, and the importance of gathering with others in practice to heal racialized trauma. To the work of 4000 years of Qi-Gong practitioners and to Master Chunyi Lin and Master Daniel Li. To polyvagal theory author Deb Dana. To my compassionate Somatic Experiencing therapist. To artist Helga Davis who held my hand and told me about the co-regulation of heart rates. To everyone who has come together to practice with me, and to Laughter Yoga.
– Shara Nova
1. FREEZE STATE
Freeze State
Motionless
So afraid
Of danger
Freeze
f-f-f-f-f-f-fr
So afraid
I could not sleep
I could not eat
So afraid
I didn’t know what to do
Unblinking
What are you talking about?
Say you are sorry.
A blank-ness
I told you not to go over there
If you touch him again I’m going to break your hand
Stare at the wall
I didn’t know what to do
Stare at the wall
Come to the bathroom
I didn’t know what to do
… but ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-freeze
Wiggle it out
2. SAFETY IN PERIL OR CALM
Safety in peril or calm
I hum to myself
I am returning home
whenever and wherever I hum
Turning in
Tune to myself
Where is the pulse?
How do I feel?
and if I still don’t know
pause
If I still can't find calm
pause
3. WHAT’S THE VIBE, VAGUS?
Because Toshi Reagon asked…
Vibe
What's the vibe?
How do you know before you know?
How do you know
what’s the vibe?
Vagus!
4. TITRATION 1
Titration
5. HOW DO I KEEP FEELIN’ IN THIS MEAN, MEAN WORLD
How do I keep on feelin’ in this mean, mean world?
How do I keep this softness alive with all this dying?
How do I build myself strong for the task at hand?
How? How?
How do I keep on feelin’ when I want to hide away?
Stay
Stay in the feeling
Stay
Stay in the feeling body
How?
Stay in the feeling in body
6. EMOTION WHEEL
A. Surprise
B. Happiness
C. Sadness
D. Disgust
E. Anger
F. Fear /
G. Panic / Overwhelm
H. Surprise
I. Happiness
J. Disgust / Disappointment / Desperation / Repulsion / Anger / Delight / Stress / Annoyance / Exasperation / Fury
7. PATTERNS OF PROTECTION - in honor of the 21 people murdered in the Uvalde, TX school shooting
Pa
Pat
Patterns
Patterns of Protection
Notice the Silences
Notice the Subject Change
Notice the Shaking
Notice the Rage
Mother taught me the pattern
Father taught me the pattern
Neighbors kept a consensus
Patterns of Protection
Change the Pattern
8. THE GRIEF OF WHICH I RARELY SPEAK - dedicated to those who have lost loved ones by suicide
The grief of which I rarely speak
finds its sound in private spaces
The hole of my mouth
is a pathway to the bottomless inkwell
I look for you in the blowing grass
I search for your cloud in my teacup
I check under my boot soles
are you there?
in the hole in the sky
a hole in the ground
the lights have changed in my constellation
how do I know where I am without you?
In the wake of your passing I ache.
To those with easy sayings
To those with short answers,
leave me and let me weep a while.
The grief of which I rarely speak
And to know…
I ache.
In the wake of your passing, I ache.
I know you in the blowing grass
I know the cloud in my teacup
I check under my boot soles
Are you there?
In the sky
The ground
Lights have changed in my constellation
How do I know where I am
Lights
How do I know
The lights
9. TITRATION #2
Titration
10. TURN YA HEAD
Look Look Around
Turn ya head around
Notice the exits
Notice the window
Notice the entrances
Notice the path leading away
Notice the body
Notice the change
Notice sensation
Tingling
Numbness
Pressure
11. IMAGINE A FAVORITE PLACE
Imagine a favorite place
An open green field
Or a blowing wind through the forest
Imagine a favorite resting place
A candle flame on your nightstand
The coffee smell on the morning air
The afternoon light on your hugging chair
Imagine an ocean side or a cloud ride…
12. I SEEK TO CHANGE THESE HABITS
I seek to change these habits of avoidance
I disrupt my comfort
I interrupt my numbness
I brave disintegration
Exchange shame through honorable deeds
I seek to trade these habits of avoidance
For a new pattern
I disrupt my comfort
I interrupt my numbness
I brave disintegration
Exchange shame through honorable deeds
Do not abandon high ideals
Habits of harm
Do not run to distraction
Unresolved disappointments
Be curious curious
Projected fear
Curious
In cellular pattern
Increase Joy
your discomfort to find more Joy
Embrace this Terror
Joy
with persistent kindness
and insistence
Curious
Persistent Kindness
Curious
Kindness
Kindness
13. YES / NO
Yes / No
14. I’M SO MAD I COULD SPIT NAILS
I’m so mad I could spit nails
I might shoot fire from my ears
M y r a g e
M y r a g e
My rage is as old as an age
Titrate Try Titration
Voo Voo
My rage
My eyes are daggers for days
I make my point in different ways
My throat’s aflame a fire
My belly burnin’ up with ire
Comin’ easy to my lips
I’m so mad I could spit
I’m so mad I could spit nails
Somatic I could spit nails
I’m so mad
The feeling got me sick
I’m so mad I could spit
Enough! Enough! Enough! You are a pain in the neck
Enough! Enough! Enough! You might be my death
My rage
My head is burnin’ up
My head is burnin’
My rage
From where do you shake?
Shake it out
Shake it out
Shake it out
Shake it out
Pause
15. NOTICE SENSATION
Check in with the Body
Pause
Notice constriction
Notice the places of movement
Notice
The gripping
The buzz
Notice the rate of your breath
The width of your shoulders
The feeling in your hips
Notice
What is the body telling you?
Pause
Practice the pausing
Notice sensation
16. PULSES - dedicated to Helga Davis
Do you know when we hold hands our pulses find one another?
Did you know when we hold hands our pulses find each other?
Find each other…
When we find each other, our pulses meet
17. TITRATION #3
[laughing / crying]
THE CROSSING
Katy Avery • Karen Blanchard • Micah Dingler • Joanna Gates • Dimitri German • Steven Hyder • A.J. Keller • Lauren Kelly • Anika Kildegaard • Maren Montalbano • Daniel O’Dea • Kyle Sackett • Rebecca Siler • Tiana Sorenson • Daniel Spratlan • Daniel Taylor • Shari Wilson
Kyle Sackett triangle
Daniel Schwartz glockenspiel
Donald Nally conductor
Kevin Vondrak assistant conductor
John Grecia keyboards
John Conahan, John Walthausen guest keyboards
Paul Vazquez sound designer
Titration was recorded August 10-12, 2022 at St. Peter’s Church in the Great Valley, Malvern PA
Titration was premiered August 5, 2022 at The Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky MT
Executive Director/Artistic Director John Zirkle
Recording Producers Paul Vazquez, Shara Nova, Donald Nally, Kevin Vondrak
Recording Engineer Paul Vazquez
Assistant Recording Engineer Dante Portella
Editing, Mixing & Mastering Paul Vazquez
Titration was commissioned by The Crossing – Donald Nally, conductor, the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky MT, & Conspirare – Craig Hella Johnson, conductor; with support from Anne and Dennis Wentz and the Joel Brauer Fund for New Music.
Shara Nova’s music is published by Blue Sword (ASCAP) administered by Domino Publishing Company USA (ASCAP)
Album artwork by DM Stith
instagram.com/vermeerier
This album is made possible through the generous support of Carol Westfall, longtime friend and benefactor of The Crossing.
We are grateful for:
our artists, composers, audience, friends, and supporters;
The Warren Miller Performing Arts Center, Big Sky MT, John Zirkle, executive director/artistic director;
the staff and congregation at our home, The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill;
those who opened their homes to our artists during the recording of Titration:
Jeff and Liz Podraza, Corbin Abernathy and Andrew Beck, Daniel Schwartz and Michael Rowley, Lauren Kelly and Henry Koch, Anika Kildegaard and David Lemke, Steven Hyder and Donald Nally.
Shara would like to also thank her manager Andrea Troolin at Ekonomisk Management, Alyson Miller at Sound Accountants, Domino Publishing, as well as Anya Lynn Scarborough, Merrill Garbus, Toni Hartley, Casey Foubert, Aubri Adkins, Melanie Cooper-Pennington, Nathan Thatcher, Clay Gonzales, Douglas Hertz & Molly Joyce, and forever, Constantine Worden.
With love to my father and mother who first taught me to love singing together.