Reflections On The First Night On Mars
Composed by Sentimental Witches
Performed by Eugene Debs Sol Orchestra
Dedicated to Kim Stanley Robinson

As it was impossible for us to bring the entire Eugene Debs Sol Orchestra to Mars on this first trip, our founding composers, the occultriad who foreswore their individual identities to exist only as Sentimental Witches, were chosen to represent us on Mars. The EDSO, and by extension Sentimental Witches, won the first Martian performing arts residency by committing to capture the experience for future generations in sound. Also, we cheated and used magick.

The first human evening on Mars, Sentimental Witches each adopted a different site. Their field recording equipment ever on, they captured the sounds of that first long night, feverishly composing on their tablets, trying to arrange this new red real world for symphony. Together they strived to extract from the aether the symphonic poetry of colonization, of human metastastization.

Sentimental Witches, sleep deprived, as they liked it, gathered at breakfast and began to combine their transcriptions. From this, Reflections On The First Night On Mars was born. They completed the score by lunch time, allowing for an infrared transmission of the work from Mars back to Earth, where the EDSO waited in a studio to receive and record it.

After several hours of rehearsals, the EDSO committed the work to 2" tape, the feeling being that analog recording would capture a deliciously Earthian quality. A digital recording of the EDSO's performance was then beamed back to Mars.

And that second night, after dinner, the newest Martians gathered together all, to listen to the first work of art created by humans on Mars. Upon completion of the performance, as tears flowed down their cheeks, they hugged one another and agreed that they had made the right choice, prioritizing as their first accomplishment on the new planet, the creation of culture, of society, of shared humanity. They had not been productive that first night, they had been creative, and this all recognized was so, so, so much more important.