What did last year feel like?

Zak's newest animation condenses the emotional experience of 2020 into one beautiful animated short

A brief hiatus from my Inheritance Stories series…

That second weekend in March 2020 was supposed to be a big one for my brother Zak Margolis. For almost a year he had worked around the clock on an animation with his longtime boss and collaborator Rose Bond. Their assignment had been to create a piece that visualized Berio’s Sinfonia. The animation was built to be screened live on the walls around and above the stage where Oregon Symphony and the unbelievable vocal group Roomful of Teeth would perform live. The Symphony had rented the projection equipment—tens of thousands of dollars—flown Roomful of Teeth to Portland, where they were doing final rehearsals, and were ready to welcome audiences. Zak told me how incredible the rehearsals looked and sounded. Opening night was March 14. On March 13, Oregon’s Governor said no to it all.

We each had our own personal tragedies in that moment and the days and months that followed, some much bigger than others, but this was my first. Zak seemed to take it in stride, knowing he wasn’t alone in losing something he had put so much love and work into. But I felt bereft. Berio’s Sinfonia is a very challenging and magnanimous piece with bizarre but alluring vocals, often in whispers. The Italian composer wrote it in the late 60s, dedicating one movement to MLK’s assassination and nodding to protest movements worldwide. Without visuals, it can be a deranging experience to listen, but Rose and Zak had created a visual compass for navigating the music. I had the chance to see mock-ups, and I was deeply affected. In the months that followed, their work seemed to do what some of the best art does—mine real life and the past to portend the future.

I hope this site- and performance-specific piece has a chance to be performed for a live audience someday, but the Oregon Symphony had already spent its budget and so, Zak and Rose learned, it was unlikely they would reschedule the lost performances. I am still aching and angry that this powerful work may not see the light of day.

But in late 2020, Zak was invited to collaborate with a Portland-based quartet on a smaller project: an animation for Florence Price’s Andante Moderato. Price was the first Black female symphonic composer to have a piece played by a major orchestra. She wrote this short piece for string quartet. The first time Zak played me the music, I was confused by the saccharine moments and alarmed by the juxtapositions in mood. But once again, Zak created a map I hadn’t realized I needed. I am amazed by Zak’s ability to make the animation and music each enhance and unlock the other. He also presented a condensed experience of 2020, which I similarly hadn’t realized I needed.

There is something very affirming in seeing and experiencing what we lived. It reminded me that beyond the casual cliches tossed out about what a shit show 2020 was, trying to bottle it up and throw it away, we shared a series of small eras. (Small eras—an oxymoron that nonetheless feels true). These small eras have haunting qualities that linger in us, like a flash of light that stings your retinas even when your eyes are closed. For some reason I can calm the tyranny of flashes when I see it laid out before me. I encourage you to watch it. It rules!