During my stay at Civitella Ranieri in May/June 2018, I made inroads into a new work for violin and piano. Provisionally titled White Lines, this work (still in progress) will draw on musical material from a 1983 rap song of the same name by Melle Mel (a song that itself draws on musical material from another song – Cavern – recorded by the New York-based band Liquid Liquid, also in 1983). The Liquid Liquid/Melle Mel songs reposit several distinctive musical motives: a single note (C) played in fast repeated sixteenth-notes; a two-note (A-C) bass ostinato in 12/16 (set within a 4/4 metre); a paraphrase of the Beatles’ Twist and Shout‘s unfolding dominant-ninth chord gesture (Ah–! Ah–!! Ah–!!! Ah–!!!!) on G; a B-major root-position triad that slides up into a C-major root-position triad; a simple four-bar three-note diatonic melody in C-major; and a multiply-octave-doubled bass line refrain in irregular rhythm outlining a blues scale on G. All of these motives will be transformed (in various ways) and fashioned into an alternately fragmented and quasi-continuous narrative in my new work.