Rising – Ešenvalds, Translation
Ēriks Ešenvalds – Translation
from Jeff Quartets
Sunrise, Friday May 8
A tough day @ The Crossing.
Time to make decisions about The Month of Moderns 2020.
Difficult decisions
affecting the lives, the art, the income and stability of many artists.
And their families.
And friends.
Ēriks Ešenvalds' Translation has a message for us all. The message begins in the poem of Paulann Peterson. The message is a simple idea: the Universe is a buffet of objects waiting to be translated into Art.
By us.
Empty of words, not empty
of light, the moon’s face
awaits the touch of a pen.
Perhaps “waiting” is not quite the right word. The moon doesn’t care. It’s just up there being beautiful for its own reasons.
We care.
We are ephemeral.
Art, less so.
The Universe, not so much.
In Paulann’s “translation,” the moon becomes
a thin wafer melting
in the mouth, words
Imagination. (It gives us the myths we live by.)*
Imagination took Ēriks far in his Translation. We asked for a Jeff Quartet; we were surprised when we received a work for four solo voices
plus five choral voices…
plus six tuned water glasses.
A Quartet in Nine Parts.
A gift.
We love to sing it. It is an invitation to Listening.
A metaphor of Community – the whole and the parts, indivisible.
A means of Waiting.
A portrait of Patience.
the moon
waits for a sweep
of letters inscribed
in strokes deep as dark
in which it floats.
Some Art is worth waiting for.
Most.
We wait. We must,
and we will again sing…
words
having found their tongue
—The Whole (Sad) Team @ The Crossing
* quote from “On the meeting of Garcia Lorca and Hart Crane,” by Philip Levine
Further news coming later today.
We’ll be back, Rising w/ The Crossing, Monday @ Sunrise.
And Tuesday, and Wednesday, and...
Translation
music by Ēriks Ešenvalds
words by Paulann Peterson
recorded live in concert at the world premiere of Jeff Quartets,
July 8, 2016 at The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
audio by Paul Vazquez of Digital Mission Audio Services
quartet: Kelly Ann Bixby, Elisa Sutherland, James Reese, and Dimitri German
video art "Bird With the Sound of a Warmer Climate" by Christopher St. John (mixed media on paper, 2019)
* * *
Empty of words, not empty
of light, the moon’s face
awaits the touch of a pen.
Empty of ink, but not
of silver, that pale
slate that is the moon
waits for a sweep
of letters inscribed
in strokes deep as dark
in which it floats.
Emptied of nothing,
filled with story, the moon becomes
a thin wafer melting
in the mouth, words
having found their tongue.