Rising – Shaw, Her Beacon-Hand Beckons
Caroline Shaw – "Her Beacon-Hand Beckons"
from To The Hands
Sunrise, Monday June 1
those yearning to breathe free
We claw our way into June, in free fall.
We had intended a lullaby for a Monday, as a kind of mourning piece.
This morning, the mourning is too deep even for that.
Maybe later in the week.
they cannot see
what lies beyond the olive tree
whose branch was lost amid the pleas
for mercy, mercy
We stumble into June, into Week 12.
The last week of Rising w/ The Crossing...for a short while.
A month-long break, beginning this Saturday, to collect our thoughts; to let all this sink in.
To reconsider what connecting means...in this moment.
To imagine and re-imagine.
give to me
your tired fighters fleeing flying
We limp into June, reminded that artists aren’t very good at answering questions.
We’re OK at asking them.
A kind of moral compass in the background of the pen, the paintbrush, the notes.
A way of seeing, of speaking.
give
give to me
tempest-tossed
i will be
We crash into June with Caroline Shaw’s To the Hands, one of the Seven Responses. Specifically, the third movement: Caroline’s rethinking of Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus,” a poem for The Statue of Liberty.
The sculptor called it Liberty Enlightening the World.
Lazarus went further: Mother of Exiles.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me
We love singing Caroline’s “Her beacon-hand beckons,” though it is a challenging journey requiring us to throw everything we’ve got at it. It feels purposeful, begins in triumph, then builds toward a moment in which cultures collapse onto one another – Western harmony, a half-sung/half-breathed technique based on an Inuit throat-singing game, a reference to Eric Garner’s death, six years ago.
I can’t breathe
Then, a prayer.
Caroline responds with quietness.
With listening.
With a promise.
we will be
we will
We wish this were not timely.
We wish it were a history from which we’ve been released.
We wish.
We try to remember singing.
Yearning.
- The Whole Team @ The Crossing
The final Rising w/ The Crossing: Volume 1 will be Friday June 5, the day intended to be our first rehearsal of The Month of Moderns. We will take a four-week retreat and return July 5 with more music.
To the Hands
III. Her beacon-hand beckons
music by Caroline Shaw
words by the composer, responding to the 1883 sonnet “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, which was mounted on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1903
recorded live in concert at the world premiere of Seven Responses,
June 24, 2016 at The Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral
audio by Paul Vazquez of Digital Mission Audio Services
video art by Steven Bradshaw
* * *
Her beacon-hand beckons:
give
give to me
those yearning to breathe free
tempest-tossed they cannot see
what lies beyond the olive tree
whose branch was lost amid the pleas
for mercy, mercy
give
give to me
your tired fighters fleeing flying
from the
from the
from
i will be your refuge
i will be your refuge
i will be
i will be
we will be
we will