The Time We Had We Have

· Absence and Change ·

Piano, Violin, and Chamber Orchestra.

 

 

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When I feel or fear the absence of another, it shows their presence all the more...

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The Time We Had We Have

 

You and I grow up

A world apart

As seed from the same and happy tree

You and I are friends

You and I are foes

Known well

Feared much

You and I are little more than strangers on our path

 

I think of those who left their mark upon my days

My nights

My every afternoon

My mornings bright

From infancy

Through childhood

From youth

To years and more I think of you

The you I love

The you I fight with

Care for

Laugh with

Loath

Who plays with joy

Who makes me cry

I am myself with you as nature is with air and weathered eye

 

I think of you in field of wheat with love and summer sun

More love to give than drops that fill the ocean deep

Than all the grains of sand on every windswept beach

I think of you and more I feel for you this day

In time: far further than the moon to step by step

My moments from the past

My present love and life

The all I am is made of you

The you who is no more to touch

No more to be beside my hope

My pain

Yet here, inside my spirit

As real and present now:

My ever every passing moment with your life your lives remain

 

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Absence, Change, and Endings.

With art, music, and poetry, I take a different path on each occasion I return. Art in all its forms is a tool to revisit, rethink, and refeel what it is to live. It is not that any particular path of discovery is the right one, but rather that each path is valuable to ponder on, and to inhabit, at least for a short and mindful while.

I think about those I know and meet today, and those who I have loved and last met long ago. I think about how, when someone I love is not beside me in time or place, their lives continue to shape mine. Part of that shaping is my hope to share with them. So long as I think there is even the smallest possibility to share, I feel heartened. When however hope is challenged by a loved one's more permanent parting or loss, my immediate feeling is that something beautiful has ended. On reflection, this instinct seems mistaken because something ephemeral yet essential is not over, but rather, changed. 

When I feel or fear the absence of another, it shows their presence is with me all the more...

I think of life like a seed that does not end its journey, but changes, slowly, into a plant and perhaps, later, a flower. I think of childhood not ending, but changing into adulthood. I hear absence in music as silence, the essential quality that allows me to love all those things I hear. Perhaps the absence of those I love are equally essential to hearing the beauty of others.

For me, the music, art, poetry, and title of 'The Time We Had We Have' forms a whole which I think of as the artwork. The piano represents me (or you), and the violin, someone I love (or you love). The other instruments are others I love too (you love too). Music is my expression that the time I had we have. Music can be played again, and again, and like my life, seems only experienced through time, and yet I feel music is more than the moments of its sound. At the beginning of the piece the piano plays out alone, before the violin and others share their sounds as we become whole. The piece is in three sections of equal length that I view of as life's journey. 

The painting is of two children looking out across the water to a distant land. Perhaps they are friends, sisters, or strangers. As the sun or moon rises or sets, this place reminds me of how my childhood and those I met continue to shape the sunlight, sky, and water that lays ahead.

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This work forms part of Encyclopedia Utopia. A full size extract follows below.