Lyrebirds

I’m proud to say that my son Michael presented his defense on October 23 to achieve his Masters degree in Commmunications from Ryerson University. He used the album he wrote recently, Lyrebirds, for his presentation. Below is a summary that describes, in his own words, what the presentation entailed. I’ve included an image of his album cover image, although that may change as it is an “in progress” project at the moment. "The album was written using insights from rhetoric, philosophy, and cognitive linguistics. The central theme is catachresis, which is a linguistic trope like metaphor and analogy. Catachresis is traditionally thought of as a misuse of metaphor or language, which can then create new meanings and associations. This is the way Shakespeare seems to have invented many English words. My idea was that catachresis doesn’t just exist in language, but in all meaning systems and therefore in music as well. I would argue that artists like The Beatles, Frank Zappa, and John Coltrane made extensive use of it in their work, even if they were unconscious of it. For my project I tried to see what would happen if I used catachresis as a tool in writing my music, the same way a poet might deliberately use metaphor."