Critters & Creatures: White Spider Cup Back Story

Lastly comes White Spider Cup. You may have noticed that the first four tracks all include alliteration in their titles: Critters and Creatures, Layers of Life, Pre-Programmed, Graceful Gliders. It's always fun to set expectations, make rules... And then break them! So "White Spider Cup" as a title intentionally breaks the alliterative pattern.

I always keep a designated spider (or any bug) cup (and paper, usually an envelope) in my bathroom that I use to trap and release insects that come into my house. I had the idea of a spider skittering on the wall, and then I go over to it and cup it. Then I slide the paper underneath, pick it up, walk to the door and fling it outside. And that was my only idea...!

Since my mom passed away two years ago, we started seeing tons of white spiders. That honestly may have been because we were going through like two and a half decades worth of STUFF in her house, but we did see them in other places too. And we just thought it would be fun and kind of comforting to say that our mom became a white spider.

So, the piece starts with the spider skittering across the wall. Then I trap it (shown with the highest and lowest Bb).

After I cup the white spider, I look at it and say, "Hi, Mom!" The original C&C theme comes back, this time in a major variation. As I mentioned in the first track's backstory, my mom loved the original piece, especially the second theme. For the last two years I felt this pressure to "write a song about my dead mother", which felt extremely daunting. But this peculiar homage to her as a finale for these buggy piano pieces just felt so right.

I explored the lowest range of the keyboard and tried to find the sweetest edge of richness without too much mudiness. I had never really tried playing a melody in a very low register of the piano before.

Then I brought back the main melodies again, a little faster, with more of a pulsing nature in the left hand. I included a wonderful little transition mid-phrase to an octave higher, and added more harmonies, climbing up and up just as the title track does.

The piece climaxes at the last iteration of the second melody, including so many chord additions (2nds and 7ths, just to tug at your little heart strings!). In the VERY last appearance of the first theme, I added in one measure of the pulsing, left hand octaves that were in the original track.

At the very end, the right hand lands on Eb, the tonic, but the left hand plays arpeggios of the IV chord (Ab major), and it ends somewhat inconclusively but also with a kinda finite C-minor-7 glissando (the relative minor of Eb major) at the very top of the keyboard. It's like a very bittersweet send-off; I walk out the door, and fling the spider outside.

"Bye, Mom."