One of the recurring elements in my scores is the use of neologisms, invented words that do not arrive with a pre-approved performance recipe already attached to them.
A term like allegro or presto is useful because it is efficient. It carries centuries of shared instruction. But that efficiency can also become automatic. The performer sees the word and reaches immediately for a known behavior. I am often interested in interrupting that reflex.
A neologism does something different. It borrows from the atmosphere of language without collapsing into fixed meaning. It feels adjacent to something legible, but not fully owned by convention. In that gap, interpretation becomes active again. The performer has to ask: is this a speed, a pressure, a color, a texture, a behavioral state, a spatial condition, a dosage, a distortion?
That uncertainty is not there to be obscure. It is there to produce thought.
In works like the attached image, a word such as PLIMPELOMIE does not function as decorative nonsense. It acts as a notational device. It pulls from our broader lexicon of association, sound, rhythm, branding, medicine, and invented speech, then asks the performer to construct meaning from inside the work rather than retrieve it from a standard glossary.
For me, this is one way notation can remain alive. Not by rejecting language, but by forcing language to become unstable enough to think again. A neologism reopens the score. It makes the performer do more than decode. It makes them interpret.
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