before we were ocean

for Nash Ensemble 

​

I wrote this piece while I was back home after three years apart from my family. I had read this poem by Marie Howe while quarantined in a hotel. The coincidence of time and a sense of emotional resonance touched me, especially as I reached the closing line - home, an invocation, an incantation, an eternal word. I developed the piece into five sections based on the poem. The process from instability/oscillation to stability/harmony in music is the sense of belonging that I seek in my heart across space and time, selves and species, and the myriad artificial unbelonging we have manufactured in the past.

 

 

would that we could wake up   to what we were
— when we were ocean    and before that 

to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not

at all — nothing

before we came to believe humans were so important
before this awful loneliness.

Can molecules recall it?
what once was?    before anything happened?

No I, no We, no one. No was
No verb      no noun
only a tiny tiny dot brimming with 

is is is is is

All   everything   home

 

SINGULARITY by Marie Howe