Note from the Composer: 

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The text for this piece came dark and early in the morning. Shortly after waking up, the sun only beginning to pass the horizon, I wrote in a free-flowing state of dreamlike consciousness.

 

While composing this piece an image came to mind. In the moment, I did not cognitively understand what I had drawn, yet it ended up being a map for structuring this piece, one deeply related to time and our experience within it.

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Within the structure of this piece, there are multiple dimensions of time weaved throughout: linear, ribbons which are implicitly present always yet sometimes more explicitly known within the linear experience of time, and the turning of time, the cosmic clock within which we exist both on micro and macro levels.

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I had been thinking a lot about silence, specifically in relation to the idea of “creation from nothing”. Where does the nothing come from if it is not implicit within some form of reality? Has it ever been truly nothing, or is it more a type of invisibility that shows itself through the silence, a givenness in each sacred and embodied creature that exists, in each resting moment, each breath given and taken, in each sliver of time spent within all oceans of time? Sometimes it seems that the receiving is in the waiting, an honoring of time itself.

 

The visual poetic for this piece was filmed by hand and the music was recorded remotely during the summer of 2020.

 

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givenness

free-written by the composer

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to cherish means to hold in warmth

we are free to do this

to allow for growth

for life already there

 

to melt the crust

we did not see

to see the life beneath

 

to melt the crust

we did not know

to know the one within

 

to see our selves

beneath the crust

and others in between

 

to see beyond the eyes of one

 

at night the warmth glows freely on its own

to spread a canopy of fire

 

beyond the worlds of mystery known

a seed sits in the earth

 

life shows its way within the rippling arms

of vein and branch and river

 

the water’s flowing is its own

as blood runs through its member

 

we have no choice that’s not our own

unless we do not see it

 

until we enter through

the crust between us

we will not know

what we are lacking

 

we shall not know

what we are lacking

until that final glow

unless we seek to know it

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