A Squirrel Died On Saturday

soprano saxophone & live electronics [2023]

A Squirrel Died on Saturday is a piece that satirizes the experience of looking at Maurizio Cattelan’s Bidibidobidiboo, a work that features a taxidermied squirrel among miniature, scaled-down furniture. Indeed, the piece’s narrative trajectory of trying to deduce the mysterious circumstances behind the squirrel’s death, with no shortage of seemingly random thoughts, was taken directly from my own interaction with this work at a recent Cattelan exhibit in South Korea. A Squirrel Died on Saturday is meant to be a parodistic work, absurdly over-dramatizing a seemingly trivial moment through the evocation of instrumental and theatrical clichés.

TEXT:

A squirrel died on Saturday. I don’t know what killed it.

It was found sitting on a chair, Head on the table. A cadaver.

No ants yet. But the odor, How fragrant.

A squirrel died on Saturday! Well, it was found on Thursday,
But “Saturday” had a better ring to it.

I found the squirrel with two other friends.
One laughed at the scene while the other seemed disinterested.

But who would kill a squirrel?
A squirrel that has a literal boiler in its dining room, A squirrel that...

You killed it. You killed the squirrel.

Why are its eyes still open? Maybe it’s pretending to be dead.

For attention?
If anything, a musician’s funeral is their most successful performance.

No. You killed it.

When the boy starts playing his little blue drum,
Everyone stops looking at what’s in front and starts filming the performance.

Sound diverts attention.
Yet I continue to fixate on the squirrel.

But poor horse,
Poor refrigerator,
Poor police officers,
Poor feet,
Poor rug,
Poor Sistine Chapel,
Poor dog,
Poor crucified student,
Poor banana...

I notice that I’m doing the same thing too.

Shot glass on the table,
Pistol on the red carpeted floor.

Maybe it killed itself.
A squirrel died on Saturday.