The Dream of Flight is my first major work as a composer since releasing an eponymous debut album in 2001. It represents a new direction for me in the direction of larger & more cinematic sounds. My name is Kimberly Steele but I write music as Queenie, who in my mind is not so much a real person but perhaps more like someone I could have been in another life. There are certain moments in our lives where we realize that a thing that has great meaning to us may have little to no importance in the eyes of others. I stumbled upon a photo of a picture of an Okinawan geisha taken in 1912. In the photo, the geisha was not in her makeup: she is clothed in a heavy but casual kimono, her arm cocked over her stomach, her thick black hair long and streaming with a slight smile on her face. I was taken aback by the resemblance to the face and body I see in the mirror every day. Could this be the long lost Japanese great-grandmother I never had? Could this person be a connection to roots that as an adoptee I can never hope to trace? Perhaps and perhaps not. The picture means nothing to anyone else, but for me it has power, impact, and secret meaning. Music is like that for me. I am aware that most are not going to understand or even like my music and that in the end, I might be the only soul on this earth it holds any importance for. I am often frustrated by being musical (and generally geeky) but I draw a deep well of happiness and solace from having music in my life. The Dream of Flight contains fourteen songs. Track 1: Prelude: The Forest of Dreams Imagine a walk in the woods haunted by protective ghosts. When I dream of forests, they are always a place of refuge and shelter. The Dream of Flight begins a little nightmarishly before the slow, languid waltz "when you come to the forest of dreams." Track 2: Dream of Flight The title track is music I dreamed and woke up and notated over ten years ago. In the dream I heard the common chord progression I-V-ii-IV was while flying over a post-apocalyptic city that had fallen into the ocean. Track 3: Notes From Hell It's amazing to me how many civilizations have the concept of hell. Hell is used to do everything from scaring people into religious submission to providing a cosmic jail for the truly "bad." When I think of Hell, I tend to picture the Greek Hades. I imagined a woman condemned to hell while the lover who she perished for is in heaven. Track 4: In Times Gone By A weird song I wrote in my mid-teens that evolved and grew new parts. The bridge ties musically to the end track, Epilogue. Track 5: Sakura Sakura is a traditional Japanese song about cherry blossoms that I always felt sounded very gothic and austere, hence my goth-ethereal treatment. Sakura is the only non-original song on Dream of Flight. Track 6: Mermaid Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid is a tale that is both disturbing and terrible in its implications for women. Someday I'd like to make a movie or write a story where the mermaid actually kills the prince with the knife she is given by her sisters. Then she'd live happily ever after. ;-) Track 7: Home Home was inspired by a recurring dream I have about flying into a sunny field with a red barn. Track 8: Ukiyoe Ukiyoe (The Floating World) introduces a character I've invented called Qoph. She's a black widow--men see her and she's devastatingly beautiful, you could say that men want to eat her up but it's Qoph who does the eating in the end. Track 9: Quin's Song The beginning of this song ties with the Prelude's sound of nymphs in the forest. Quin is another character: she's a sad teenager who's been sent across the ocean by her cruel Nisei mother who is her only family. She is left isolated and alone in a haunted school in the remote mountains of northern Japan. Track 10: Life is Strange Funny how much nostalgic power a handful of events in times long past can have, all of the memories crystallized until they are yellow with decay, but did it mean anything to the other person? Probably not. Track 11: Impossible An anthem for the impossibly cruel, the passionless, and the distant. I think the first two lines say it all: "In the secret part inside my mind/ I'm the only one I'll leave behind" Track 12: Narcissus A Greek myth that's so sad it's silly. Young people are caught in the snare of caring about their appearance and seductive power: that has been true since the beginning of time. Track 13: The Courtesan Said Farewell is the character Queenie Sataro a.k.a. Amabel Laudner, a half-breed wanderer from the decadent half-world that figures into Quin's dreams. Track 14: Epilogue: The Forest of Dreams The end track ties together the waltz of the Prelude (Track 1), turning it into 4/4 time and marrying it to Dream of Flight (Track 2). The end ties in an idea from Track 4: Come and dream this little dream with me awhile. I present to you the Dream of Flight, part concept album and musical diary, it represents the end of a long era. May it take you on a journey where we can imagine worlds together. Kimberly Steele