This piece was written around the same time as Synecdoche, and I consider the two works part of the same set. They share an

underlying structure and are both influenced by the writing of Charlie Kaufman.

The title Infectious Diseases in Cattle comes from a phrase mentioned in a Kaufman movie that is used as an example of a title

that could mean many things. That ambiguity strongly shaped my approach to the piece. Rather than using post-structural ideas

to only break meaning apart, this work tries to assemble something new from those fragments.

I approached the title as raw material—collecting and recombining broken pieces of meaning to form a new object.

I attempt to do the same with the musical material of this work.