Rising – Gilbertson, Born
Michael Gilbertson – Born
Sunrise, Monday May 4
A new week. Week 8.
It begins as if in the middle of a thought, unspoken. What goes on in our minds.
So this is his mother.
This small woman.
It is good to be back together.
In May. With the Sun.
We love this piece. Michael Gilbertson’s Born.
So clearly written for us.
Its premiere was one of those, “this is in the pocket” moments,
right from the first breath.
Total collaboration.
Maybe it was an extra bit of concentration, knowing the piece was commissioned in memory of one of our Mothers, passed away exactly a year prior.
Grief. We live in it.
We are learning more about it.
But, the poem of Wisława Szymborska, on which Michael’s Born is based, is not about mourning. It’s about relationships. And silent understandings. One woman looks at another, Mother of her partner, and weighs their differing perspectives.
The boat from which he stepped
into the world,
into un-eternity.
We love singing this because of the way Michael reaches the revelatory moment, through the intertwining of middle voices – one male, one female – holding the fabric of our thoughts together, then slowly rising to an epiphany in which thoughts of birth lead to thoughts of the human condition. Michael responds with a kind of controlled howl. A declamation: simultaneously triumphant and despondent.
Born.
So he was born, too.
Born like everyone else.
Like me, who will die.
But,
we also love singing this because
we all know what it is like to miss
our Mothers.
The boat in which, years ago,
he sailed to shore.
We are discovering nuanced layers of “missing.”
We are realizing that, unlike many, we have previously been fortunate enough to be sheltered from extremes of “missing.”
Now we know.
Or, at least, we think we do, for now…
This is my mother.
- The Whole Team @ The Crossing
Born
music by Michael Gilbertson
words by Wisława Szymborska, from No End of Fun
translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
recorded live in concert at The Crossing @ Christmas
December 17, 2017 at The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
audio by Paul Vazquez of Digital Mission Audio Services
video art by Dan Cole
commissioned for The Crossing by Steven Hyder and Donald Nally in memory of Margaret Martindale Nally (June 14, 1926 - December 31, 2016)
* * *
So this is his mother.
This small woman.
The gray-eyed procreator.
The boat in which, years ago,
he sailed to shore.
The boat from which he stepped
into the world,
into un-eternity.
Genetrix of the man
with whom I leap through fire.
So this is she, the only one
who didn’t take him
finished and complete.
She herself pulled him
into the skin I know,
bound him to the bones
that are hidden from me.
She herself raised
the gray eyes
that he raised to me.
So this is she, his Alpha.
Why has he shown her to me.
Born.
So he was born, too.
Born like everyone else.
Like me, who will die.
The son of an actual woman.
A new arrival from the body’s depths.
A voyager to Omega
Subject to
his own absence,
on every front,
at any moment.
He hits his head
against a wall
that won’t give way forever.
His movements
dodge and parry
the universal verdict.
I realized
that his journey was already halfway over.
But he didn’t tell me that,
no.
"This is my mother."
was all he said.