Rising – Brown, Another Lullaby for Insomniacs
Matthew Brown – Another Lullaby for Insomniacs
Sunrise, Thursday April 16
Sleep, she will not linger:
She turns her moon-cold shoulder.
With no ring on her finger,
You cannot hope to hold her.
We admit this morning's Rising w/ reflects a current issue that, though personal, is shared by many.
Insomnia.
Ah, were it only as poetic as A.E. Stallings' poem on which Matthew Brown's Another Lullaby for Insomniacs is based. Matthew writes:
The double meaning of the poem, at once about sleeplessness and the personification of sleep as a lover, spoke to me on a deeply personal level, and that longing and nostalgia for the elusive – what Brazilians beautifully call saudade – is reflected in my setting.
The form of the poem, a pantoum, requires that lines are repeated in new positions in following verses, causing their meaning to shift in an elegant manner. Matthew allows for this nuanced elegance to gently emerge by restricting the writing to just four parts with delicately shifting harmonies that reflect the tossing and turning of the sleepless. The true restlessness of the work lies in the constant eighth-notes of the piano (here played by guest collaborator and friend Laura Ward), which recalls the ticking of a clock, the unrelenting passage of time, waiting.
There's distance in her eyes.
We love to sing this because, while the vocal lines are quite simple and direct, the chords they form arrive and depart as a surprise, as if an idea is revealed and then concealed as subtly and quickly as it appeared. Like in a dream – or the hazy attempt to remember one.
The unrelenting passage of time. Waiting.
Words with new meaning in our Today.
Good morning.
- The Whole Team @ The Crossing
You can hear more of Laura's playing at lyricfest.org
Another Lullaby for Insomniacs
music by Matthew Brown
words by A.E. Stallings
recorded live in concert at The Month of Moderns
June 14, 2015 at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
with guest pianist, Laura Ward
audio by Paul Vazquez of Digital Mission Audio Services
video art by Beth Haidle
* * *
Sleep, she will not linger:
She turns her moon-cold shoulder.
With no ring on her finger,
You cannot hope to hold her.
She turns her moon-cold shoulder
And tosses off the cover.
You cannot hope to hold her:
She has another lover.
She tosses off the cover
And lays the darkness bare.
She has another lover.
Her heart is otherwhere.
She lays the darkness bare.
You slowly realize
Her heart is otherwhere.
There's distance in her eyes.
You slowly realize
That she will never linger,
With distance in her eyes
And no ring on her finger.