Rising – Smith, I would stand and watch them

Kile Smith – "I would stand and watch them"
from The Arc in the Sky

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Sunrise, Tuesday May 26

We were talkative yesterday. 

The fisherman in Robert Lax’s poem “I would stand and watch them” are not. 

they’re torn. they’ve been broken into.
the night-fish have leapt through them
in the sea.

They are practical. They speak in succinct phrases. 

every night they break them;
and every day, we mend

Though we dramatize our lives, the days roll out roughly the same. 
Sun up. Sun down. 
Magnified now.

There is a great joy in the simplicity of the penultimate movement of Kile Smith’s The Arc in the Sky. It seems to have its own thoughts. 
A musical work that thinks about itself. 
A series of canons. 4-voice, 8-voice, eventually 12-voice canons. 
Reliable structures. 
Predictable.

I would stand and watch them
as they sat at their work.

But the lace created by a canonic form when the voices increase is both calming and intriguing, as the substance of the melody recedes into a cloud of similarities – a month, if you will, of the same melody, overlaid. 

<<what are you doing?>> i’d say.

It’s Tuesday. 
The holiday has ended. 
The sun is up.

What are we doing?

Be well. Listen. 

- The Whole Team @ The Crossing

The Arc in the Sky
8. I would stand and watch them

music by Kile Smith

words from the Robert Lax

recorded live in concert at The Month of Moderns 3,
June 28, 2018 at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill

audio by Paul Vazquez of Digital Mission Audio Services

video art by Beth Haidle

* * *

I would stand and watch them
as they sat at their work.

<<what are you doing?>> i’d say.

<<we’re mending our nets,>> they’d say.

<<mending?>>

<<yes. mending our nets.>>

<<why must you mend them?>>

<<they’re torn. they’ve been broken into.
the night-fish have leapt through them
in the sea. every night they break them;
and every day, we mend.>>