River Song (Zong)
Technical Information
Tenor and piano — Text by Avalon Hogans
Aug 12th, 2026, Aspen, Colorado
Harris Concert Hall
We were playing by the river.
On a hot summer day.
We were children under the orange heat.
Ignoring our mama’s calls
to come back home.
We were playing by the river.
On a hot summer day.
The water was green and blue
and it melted to our skin
like hot sticky candy in the sun.
We were playing by the river.
On a hot summer day.
We were beautiful, blue-finned mermaids,
swimming like a school,
singing our song.
We were playing by the river.
On a hot summer day.
We pretended we were royalty
with mama’s pearls and shells,
but our reign did not last in water.
So we pretended we were playing by the river.
Like any hot day.
We were children
until we couldn’t ignore mama’s calls
to come back home.
The river was an ocean.
When we saw the colors.
The indigos, the fuschias, the wind,
the drums, the tangerines, and the tambourines.
They were all a chaos of one.
In 1781, the crew of the British slave ship Zong threw over 130 kidnapped Africans into the ocean. They were massacred so their owners could collect insurance on lost “cargo.”
River Song (Zong) opens somewhere else. A child at play, using their imagination to survive, distance themself from a pain they don't quite have the language to describe.
The game goes on for as long as they need to, but even imagination reaches its limitations. Eventually, the world they build meets the friction of the reality that scrapes against it.
How long can that world stay afloat before sinking waters burst through the seams?