Facing the Forests, for soprano, accordion and percussion, takes its name from A. B. Yehoshua’s eponymous 1963 novella. Yehoshua’s Facing the Forests (Mul Ha-ye’arot) tells the tale of a young history student who takes a job as a fire watcher in a forest south of Jerusalem. Sensing that the stillness of the trees conceals an ominous secret, he becomes increasingly obsessed with his assistant, a mute, aging Palestinian man. As the story unfolds, the watchman discovers that the ruins of a Palestinian village lie buried beneath the forest he is charged with protecting. On the final night of his assignment, he looks away as his assistant sets the forest ablaze, letting the contours of the buried village reemerge. Facing the Forests stirred much controversy upon its publication. It was among the first works of Hebrew literature to present a critical perspective on Zionist discourse and to confront Israel’s denial of the Palestinian national-historical narrative. Yehoshua provided a powerful, and, in retrospect, prophetic allegory for the devastation that the conflict over the land will bring about if ignored.
In this piece, commissioned by KIMI Ensemble, rather than creating a 'program music' retelling of Yehoshua’s narrative, I chose to focus on the psychological turn in the protagonist’s perception. What interested me was exploring the process of transformation: what brings us to the fire, rather than the fire itself. Inspired by Yehosua’s thematic concern with silence and voice, while not using any of his original words, I created my own text comprised of Hebrew synonyms for the word “silence.” The Hebrew language contains a wealth of terms within this semantic field, each carrying its own nuance, expressing shades of quiet, restraint, or stillness. In the composition, these words recur in a collage-like manner. I treat them as sonic objects, emphasizing their intrinsic meaning and sonority, rather than as semantic chains. The piece enacts a gradual linguistic and expressive shift: from the evocation of a serene, seemingly peaceful landscape to a forceful imperative. An act of silencing as violence.