Bosba Panh

i see others like me was commissioned by the Terezín Music Foundation and premiered at Boston’s Symphony Hall on October 21, 2024 by Coro Allegro, conducted by David Hodgkins.

One late afternoon in April 2021, Fanny and I spoke over the phone about setting her text. She shared with me her inspiration behind her poem, about feeling trapped inside a house but looking at the reflection of clouds on Boston’s skyscrapers, inspiring her poem on the theme of liberation. Although written prior to the Covid pandemic, her poem resonated with me as I sat on the other end of the line, confined at home. Quite early on in the concept and writing of what would become i see others like me, two images came to mind. The first image was of myself slowly falling down a building. The second image was Richard Drew’s The Falling Man.

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I try not to overthinking about the ramifications of collective trauma, though I find myself acknowledging the continued impact of my country’s genocide on my day to day life. The past only exists in the past: it doesn’t exist anymore. Memory cannot always be trusted. Yet, we gain a sense of self based on memory. We write stories about our life and tell ourselves those stories to form our sense of self. Because the past doesn’t exist anymore, remembering is (re)writing your story.

You are what you choose to remember.

I don’t particularly think of myself as an interpreter of maladies, as the malady I bear is not my own but passed down, yet I hold this real wound which I have tried to convince others of its severity. I see others just like me: interpreters of maladies, trying to persuade each other that the suffering that has been inflicted will always be superior to somebody else’s. Fanny’s poem warns us that our journey is a mirror of our past. Perhaps a liberation, or a captivation: we are leaving where we are coming from.

- Bosba