Once he hears to his heart’s content, sails on, a wiser man.
We know all the pains that the Greeks and Trojans once endured
on the spreading plain of Troy when the gods willed it so –
all that comes to pass on the fertile earth, we know it all!

— Homer, Odyssey. 12.188–91, Fagles’ translation.

Knowing all is knowing nothing. Knowing some is akin to knowing much, but often not enough.

“Songs for a siren” is a work that deals, compositionally and choregraphically, with states of being most closely tied to loss: anger, grief, numbness, destruction, creation.

In ancient Greek tragedy, the choir recites verses of an ode, one after another, traversing the stage. The first stage of their recitation, the strophe, has them processing from east to west: the first statement, of praise. Second follows the antistrophe: the procession from west to east, where the chorus replies with a somber return. The last bit, the epode, is sung as an attempt to reconcile the former arguments while walking toward you, the listener.

The folk singer Tim Buckley wrote a “Song to the siren,” where he pleads,

Here I am, waiting to hold you