Down the Rabbit Hole: Adventures in a Digital Wonderland

“Some of the layers of Alice in Wonderland are sinister, deceptive, dangerous. The name of the place is deliciously misleading, implying a utopia of wholesome fascination. The reality—such as it is—is quite far from that: sense morphs into nonsense, characters turn hostile, the dream becomes a nightmare in the blink of an eye. Almost nothing in Wonderland is as it seems.”

— Jason Noble, Composer

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Alice 

If you know Alice in Wonderland, you may recognize that the title of my piece, "Furiouser and Spuriouser," is a play on one of its famous lines, “curiouser and curiouser.” I grew up on Alice in Wonderland: I loved the Walt Disney movie as a child. Then, when I became older, I read Lewis Carroll’s books, saw Unsuk Chin’s opera and Jan Svankmajer’s film adaptation, heard musical interpretations from Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit to György Ligeti’s Nonsense Madrigals, read philosophical interpretations by Gilles Deleuze and Douglas Hofstadter, and of course found cultural references to it everywhere. I even wrote a story set to music called The Sphinx and the Garden Gnome that is inspired by Alice, not so much in the narrative details as in its attempt to be a kid’s story on the surface with many layers of meaning underneath.

Some of the layers of Alice in Wonderland are sinister, deceptive, dangerous. The name of the place is deliciously misleading, implying a utopia of wholesome fascination. The reality—such as it is—is quite far from that: sense morphs into nonsense, characters turn hostile, the dream becomes a nightmare in the blink of an eye. Almost nothing in Wonderland is as it seems.

I decided to compose Furiouser and Spuriouser after realizing just how much like this darker side of Wonderland the Internet can be. The subtitle of my piece, “Unforeseen Consequences of the Democratization of Knowledge,” hints at this. The Internet promised to be a digital utopia, a virtual playground and a bottomless well of knowledge, and, in a sense, it is. But by granting us unprecedented capacities to produce, consume, and share information, it has also brought distortions of facts and truth, reversions to tribalism and bullying, a mass unleashing of the worst tendencies of the human character. We as a society are still coming to terms with it. We still haven’t figured out quite how to adapt to this new reality (as I write this, the president of the United States is issuing an executive order against Twitter for fact-checking one of his tweets). But for the younger generation, the so-called “digital natives,” the situation is not “new” as such. The Internet is simply part of their world, and has been all along. It is everywhere, all of the time: they discover it as they are still forming their early impressions of the real world. I was struck by the parallel with the young child Alice waking up one day in a dreamworld that is equal parts magical and terrifying. The more I thought through the comparison, the more connections I found.

[Sculpture of Alice in Wonderland by José de Creeft (1959), Central Park, New York City ]

“Doubt, in those times, was a temporary condition. Herein lies a key difference with the New Age: for Doubt is now everywhere, all of the time.”

— Movement 1: Antimeditations (No. 1)

Banff

In 2018, I was very fortunate to participate in the first edition of Pro Coro Canada’s Choral Art: Conductors and Composers program at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, with Uģis Prauliņš.

as the mentor composer. I had sung several of Prauliņš’ compositions with voces boreales, the Montreal choir Michael Zaugg founded before becoming artistic director of Pro Coro in Edmonton. One of these pieces, The Nightingale , is a large-scale, multimovement choral work based on a fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen, and is, in my opinion, a contemporary masterpiece. I decided that my time with this great composer and choir in Banff was the perfect opportunity to dive into reimagining Alice in Wonderland for the Internet age. 

[The five composers from first edition of Choral Art (2018). From left to right: Laura Hawley, Stuart Beatch, Jonathan Russ, Netta Shahar, Uģis Prauliņš, and Jason Noble.]

Prauliņš’ music achieves incredible degrees of expression and storytelling while remaining relatively conservative in harmonies and vocal techniques, ingeniously crafting complex musical textures out of relatively simple chord structures. He occasionally uses theatrical effects such as having some of the singers gargle water in The Nightingale, but his music relies primarily on standard choral singing. I was very surprised, then, that the first musical example he showed me and the other composers in Banff used no standard choral singing at all: it was a piece by a different composer that used all manner of vocal noises and percussive sounds to imitate real-world sound experiences. Prauliņš then engaged us in conversations about what new music is, what musical sources we can learn from both within and outside the classical canon, and what we wanted to achieve with the pieces we were about to compose. He made absolutely no attempt to sway us to his own compositional ethos. Instead, he encouraged us to find our own voices to say what needed to be said. I found this all very inspiring.

The sense of community between the composers, singers, conductors, and mentors in Banff was remarkable: warm mutual support and camaraderie, with everyone striving for the highest level of music-making and willing to experiment. The beautiful mountains, the top-notch facilities, and the gift of time to focus for days on end created the perfect environment for composing. I am still so thankful for the opportunity!

“There were screens in almost every room of her house, screens at school, in stores, in cars, on planes, in almost every place you can imagine, and Allysse loved them all.”

— Movement 2: A World of Looking-Glasses

The Story 

The concept of doubt seemed to me an important thematic link between Alice in Wonderland and the Internet. The fanciful nonsense of Wonderland constantly surprises Alice: this strange new world does not behave the same way as the world she knew, causing her to doubt many things she had previously taken for granted, just as the now-infamous “echo chambers” and ubiquitous suspicions of “fake news” have made doubt the law of the land on the Internet. This prompted me to bring one more element into the story: the “method of doubt” employed by René Descartes. As a former student of philosophy, I had learned that modern thinking has its roots in doubt: Descartes arrived at his famous “I think, therefore I am” by doubting everything that he could, to see if anything was certain beyond doubt. Descartes’ Meditations are not so different from Alice in Wonderland in a way: both Descartes and Alice depart from the world they know and descend into states in which they can no longer trust their senses or reason, and eventually find their way back to reality, setting doubt to rest. This is a critical difference with the Internet, where doubt continues to prevail, and people may construct their own realities without any basis in fact or truth at all. I decided to begin my story with an episode called an Antimeditation, noting a key difference between Descartes’ Meditations and our present digital world: “doubt is now everywhere, all of the time.”

For the rest of the story, I selected a series of references from Alice in Wonderland with parallels to the Internet, and wrote episodes based on each: A World of Looking Glasses, Endless Scrolls and Rabbit Holes, Who Are You?, and so on. The main character is named Alysse (i.e., Alice in millennial spelling). The text is written in a storybook-like style, with eight chapters. I decided to assign each chapter to a different member of the choir, so that the story would be told by many different voices and personalities. The narrators come to the front and recite the text while the other singers create a soundworld around them.

“She wanted to know what everybody was saying and doing and liking and posting, and she wanted to know now, now, now! It was like she was late for a very important date, and she was afraid of missing out”

— Movement 3: Endless Scrolls and Rabbit Holes

Soundworld

Once I had written the text, the question was how to express this volatile dream-world in musical sound. I thought it had to be somewhat unfamiliar, sometimes funny, sometimes scary. Conventional choral singing just didn’t present itself to my mind as the right sonic representation, so I leaned more heavily on various other vocal noises and effects. Standard musical notation would not capture these sounds very easily, so I often resorted to graphics, symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet, and different kinds of instructions written into the score.  

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Excerpts from Furiouser and Spuriousor (click to enlarge)

“It was powered down now: its shiny surface looked like a deep, black hole. Allysse climbed into bed, and as she drifted off to sleep, she could see memes and tweets and gifs and blogs, scrolling and scrolling, down, down, down.”

— Movement 8: Antimeditations (No. 2)

Epilogue

While composing this piece, I had no idea how choirs would respond: at c. 23 minutes, it is much longer than most pieces in the choral repertoire, and in its reliance on narration, extended vocal techniques, and theatrics, it asks choirs to step outside of what for many is their comfort zone. I have been surprised and pleased that the reception has been very positive, with performances all across Canada by several different choirs. It is now probably my most performed choral work, and has been enthusiastically received by singers, conductors, and audiences alike. No doubt part of this response is due to the popularity of Alice in Wonderland, but I hope that the work also speaks to something of the times we are living in. And strange times they are, indeed.

At the end of Alice in Wonderland, Alice escapes the terror of the dream world with the Queen of Hearts and the army of cards screaming “off with her head” by waking up and coming back to reality. At the end of Furiouser and Spuriouser, Alysse escapes the terror of the virtual world by going to sleep. She is only in the real world—conscious but unplugged from the Internet—for a brief moment, en route from one para-reality to another. The last thing the audience hears is the recurring chord from movement 2, returning with the modulation transformed (or almost transformed) into the words “who are you?” The Screen continues to haunt her even when she has temporarily escaped it, even into her dreams, as I would bet it does for many of us. Where does all of this lead? I don’t think anybody knows. We are the canaries in the coalmine; we are the guinea pigs. Our lives and our children’s lives will be the living test of what all of this does to the human mind in the long run. 

- JN, 2020

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Watch the World Premiere of Furiouser and Spuriouser at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity

“1. Antimeditations (No. 1)

In the dawn of the New Age, in the days before Allysse was born, a new scourge spread across the land—but the land was no longer a land, and the scourge did not look like a scourge. It was sadness disguised as happiness, jealousy disguised as friendship, ignorance disguised as knowledge, darkness disguised as light. And the name of the scourge was Doubt. Now some years earlier, people had learned a few things about Doubt from a man who thought and was. Doubt could make you think you weren’t really seeing what you were seeing, or hearing what you were hearing, or feeling what you were feeling. Doubt made it seem like words weren’t really words, and numbers weren’t really numbers, and things weren’t really things. Doubt could make it seem like you were stuck in a whirlpool, able neither to touch your feet on bottom nor to swim up to the top. But in the end it was all OK because everything was what it was and nobody was being deceived and everybody could go back to normal. Doubt, in those times, was a temporary condition. Herein lies a key difference with the New Age: for Doubt is now everywhere, all of the time.

2. A World of Looking-Glasses

Allysse loved screens, and it wasn’t long before she had a screen of her own. But it wasn’t long before that screen had grown old, so she got another. And soon that one was old too, so the screens kept coming. Soon, she had a big screen on her desk, a medium screen in her backpack, and a little screen in her pocket. There were screens in almost every room of her house, screens at school, in stores, in cars, on planes, in almost every place you can imagine, and Allysse loved them all. When she went on her little screen, she stared down, down, down, and all the words and pictures were very, very small, and it was like the whole world became small with them. Allysse felt like a giant with her huge thumbs over the tiny, glowing buttons. Sometimes her parents took her places in the city where there were huge screens, as big as the whole side of a building. Allysse stared up, up, up, and all the words and pictures were very, very big, and it was like the whole world became big with them. Allysse felt like a tiny mouse, staring up at the giant screen.

3. Endless Scrolls and Rabbit Holes

And then all the kids were talking about memes and tweets and gifs and blogs, and Allysse wanted in. She was so mad when her parents said no! She wanted to know what everybody was saying and doing and liking and posting, and she wanted to know now, now, now! It was like she was late for a very important date, and she was afraid of missing out. So, she kept on, and eventually her parents gave in, and let her go online. It was like a well that you fell down very slowly and never reached the bottom. As soon as Allysse fixed her attention on one thing, another would distract her and she would scroll down to it, and then to another, and another, down, down, down. There were puppies and kitties and bunnies and baby goats, comics and cartoons, pictures and little videos that repeated again and again, and it was like everyone was there, friends, family, and famous people, one on top of the other, on and on, down, down, down. They said nice things and nasty things, silly things and serious things, things that made sense and things that seemed like nonsense. It all just kept going forever, and even when she knew it was time to put it away, Allysse found it hard to stop scrolling. She kept telling herself this would be the last thing she looked at before logging off, but then something else would distract her and she would scroll down to it, and then to another, and another, down, down, down. Allysse gave herself very good advice, but she very seldom followed it.

4. Cheshire Nights

Just for fun, Allysse looked up her name and it came back with over 6 million hits. There were Allysses in New York and Vancouver and Tokyo and Cairo and a bunch of places she had never heard of. There were even a bunch of Allysses in her home town. So, she googled her whole name, first and last, and found that there were many thousands of people with both of her names, too. “What if somebody tries to look me up?” Allysses thought. “How will they know who I am, out of all these other Allysses?” She looked at her profile, and photos, and posts, and felt a little lump in her throat as she realized how dreadfully ordinary they all were. Then she looked at her friends’ profiles, and photos, and posts, and felt a bigger lump as she realized how interesting and exciting and pretty they all were. Allysse spent half an hour putting on makeup, then grinned her biggest, prettiest grin, her teeth gleaming white like a crescent moon, and took a selfie. She posted it online. Almost right away there were likes and comments, and they kept coming for some time after. Allysse grinned again and kept on scrolling, late into the night, making little changes to her profile whenever she thought of something good.

5. Who Are You?

It came out of nowhere, a comment on one of her videos from someone called Hookah72: “WHO ARE YOU?” Allysse, taken aback, replied, “Don’t you think you ought to tell me who you are first?” No sooner had she said this but other comments started appearing. MomeRath311 told her to check her privilege. TweedleDummm said that she should educate herself before making ignorant comments. Jabberwocky5 went on for three whole paragraphs, seeming to say in a roundabout way that it mattered more who was talking than what was said. Allysse knew that these comments could be seen by everybody and that she needed to stand up for herself. She wrote something that she thought was terribly clever, and checked back compulsively to see if anyone had liked it. Each moment that it went unacknowledged felt like a little rejection. The next comment that came was not only very nasty, but it seemed like the commenter hadn’t even read her last post, which upset Allysse even more. Her mind was racing to decide what to say next to these people she didn’t know (or didn’t know if she knew: you couldn’t tell with their made-up names). She typed a comment, then deleted it, then typed another and almost hit post before deleting that one too. She imagined many possible responses, but for each one she could picture a thousand nasty replies that these anonymous detractors might hurl back at her. She felt an overwhelming need to write something, but didn’t know what she was trying to say; and not knowing where she was trying to get to, she couldn’t figure out which way to go. She hoped they wouldn’t interpret her silence as a lack of anything to say. She stayed there, whirring and buzzing, glued to the screen, for a very long time.

6. The Tea Party

Allysse was in the mood for something light. One of her very first toys, from way back even before she had her first screen, was a little tea set that she had used to throw parties for her stuffed animals. She wondered if those were still around, so she googled ‘tea party.’ One of the first hits said NO ROOM in all capital letters. Curious, Allysse clicked on the link and learned that it was made by people in her country who didn’t want people from other countries to be allowed in. “Why, there’s plenty of room!” thought Allysse: it was a very big country, after all. So, she did another search and found a bunch of other stories saying completely opposite things about exactly the same people. Allysse tried to read them all, but there were just too many, and she couldn’t tell which ones were spurious and which ones were true. The stories that said there was no room linked to a bunch more stories about the bad things people did when they came from other places. The stories that said there was plenty of room linked to a bunch more stories about the good things people did when they came from other places. One blog called The Mad Hater talked about a wall, and said a lot of mean things about people who didn’t want to build it. Another called March Here said the wall was bad and the people who wanted to build it were bad and everything was just bad, bad, bad. And as nasty as the blogs were, the comments underneath were even worse. People called each other all sorts of terrible names, the kinds of words Allysse would be punished for saying to the kids at school. She didn’t know what to believe, and the more she read, the lonelier she felt.

7. Trial by Troll

“OFF WITH HER HEAD!” Allysse had seen this happen many times. People online gathered together into great hordes of people they agreed with, blocked and unfollowed people they disagreed with, and exploded with outrage when somebody said or did something they thought was wrong. People harassed each other mercilessly. There were death threats and public shamings, and Allysse found it truly terrifying. If ever she did not agree with people online about something, she would not post about it for fear of the certain retribution that would follow. But this time, Allysse had asked a question about a meme without realizing that it had been retweeted by a powerful famous person with legions of devoted followers. The first and second and third commenters had just made the same points over and over, which seemed to Allysse like nonsense and in any case didn’t answer her question. “Who cares for you,” she thought, “you’re nothing but a pack of cards.” But suddenly it turned personal, and it was like the whole mob rose up and came flying down upon her. They called her idiot and stupid and much, much worse. They said she was ugly and insulted her body. They told her she should kill herself. None of Allysse’s replies made any difference to the furious wave of anger. Again and again she tried to explain herself, to defend herself, but hysterical attacks kept coming from all sides, with everybody shouting and nobody listening. Her throat tight and her temples throbbing, Allysse desperately tried to think how she could set things right, but everything she said just seemed to make the situation worse.

8. Antimeditations (No. 2)

And then, in a moment of surprise, Allysse realized she was still in her room. She was alone, and had been all along. She started to calm down. It had all been on the screen: she had not been anywhere, or seen anybody, or done anything—not really. But she felt like she had just gotten back from a long, exhausting journey. Everyone—and everything—was everywhere, all of the time, on the screen. It was powered down now: its shiny surface looked like a deep, black hole. Allysse climbed into bed, and as she drifted off to sleep, she could see memes and tweets and gifs and blogs, scrolling and scrolling, down, down, down.”

— Jason Noble, 2018