Samuel writes: “The title of this piece is borrowed from body of work by the American artist Jasper Johns. In these works of the 1970s, the artist used a crosshatching technique based on his recollection of a pattern spotted on a passing car: “It had all the qualities that interest me – literalness, repetitiveness, an obsessive quality, order with dumbness, and the possibility of a complete lack of meaning” (Johns). Though my piece is neither ‘about’ Johns’ work, nor an attempt to depict it, there are shared formal and conceptual concerns, among them: automatism, repetition, the repurposing of familiar/unremarkable materials and the slippage between surface/material and meaning. This new work continues my recent explorations of boredom, anxiety and other ‘ugly feelings’ in music.  Rather than emotional clarity, it aims for affective ambiguity (a state much closer to my typical way of being).”