Eugene weekly., June 15, 2017, Page 12, Image 12

LAURA WAYTE AND ANICE THIGPEN REHEARSING THE WOMAN OF SALT IN THIGPEN’S HOME
photo books of vacations with her two grandchildren, a
boy and a girl.
“My girls and I are super close. We’ve never not been
super close,” Thigpen says.
“When they were younger, my daughters referred to me
as their fairy godmother. Erin Lee called me her Yoda,”
Thigpen says. “Since I couldn’t be with them day in and
day out, when I was with them, I showed up.”
Thigpen leans in.
“Losing my kids made me a better mother,” she says. “I
was so aware of time, and how little there was of it.”
‘IT HIDES IN THE SILENCE
OF MIST AND FOG’
As a young mother without access to her kids, Thigpen
did whatever she could to keep her relationship with her
girls alive.
“I felt like Joan of Arc,” she says.
Thigpen stirs, opening up a file of early musical sketches
from the opera. She rifles through the pages, some with just
a few notes and mostly empty space.
“My girls had to grow up — and be okay — so my
fairy godmother could die,” she says. “Trauma is unique,
as a psychic wound. It is the distant past, the proximal
past, it’s happening and it’s about to happen. Trauma is un-
contained by time.”
PHOTO BY TODD COOPER
Thigpen had done the best she could to mother her
children from a distance, but the pain of losing her parental
rights to them never went away.
Then one day, out of the blue, Thigpen received a legal-
sized envelope from her ex-husband.
“He was trying to clean up estate issues, property —
there were some leftover questions,” Thigpen says. “I was
reading this document and it put me right back there. In it.”
Thigpen remembers taking that walk in the woods —
five years ago — to clear her head. “My dam broke,” she
says. “A lot of our close friends knew I had children but not
about the trauma around losing my motherly rights. We, as
humans, spend an enormous amount of energy defending
ourselves against — and containing — our wounds.”
But Thigpen didn’t have a choice.
This was a story that was finding its way out.
‘TO BE REBORN AS MUSIC’
The journey toward creating The Woman of Salt took
Thigpen through a deep depression. Still, as she navigated
the well of hurt that had settled in her decades before,
Thigpen says she was continually comforted by what she
calls “infinite creative energy.”
“When there is a death — that’s when things flood
up. And that emotional flood is the germinal seed of
creativity,” she says. “In my case, music has — literally —
been transformative.”
The story for The Woman of Salt comes from the Torah,
in chapter 19 of Genesis. Before God destroys Sodom and
Gomorrah, he allows Lot and his family to leave and be
spared, but their successful escape depends on not looking
back.
Lot’s wife, named AhDoo in this opera, looks back and
consequently becomes a “pillar of salt.”
“This work focuses on her contemplating her given
choices, rejecting them and creating her own path,”
Thigpen says.
In the midst of heartache about the past, Thigpen began
weekly composition lessons five years ago with her friend
and neighbor Larry Wayte, a professor in the University of
Oregon School of Music and Dance.
At first, Thigpen says, she wanted to explore the way
music is scored — but in the midst of emotional turmoil,
it wasn’t easy.
She shows me a printout of the correspondence between
her and Wayte. Some days, she just couldn’t get to the
lessons — she was just too sad. Wayte patiently cajoled,
“Hope you feel better soon, Anice.”
But Thigpen’s experience crafting music soon took on
a surprising dimension.
In January 2013 Thigpen wrote to Wayte, “I think I
have the beginning of an opera.”
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