1. |
||||
CENTAUR:
It’s like a murmur,
inside my head,
it never stops
a dry rustle, dead leaves,
and there is someone
treading on them
Like a story…
I have to tell it like a story.
Find the words to understand
what happened to me...to him…
because he’ll never, never…
It’s like a murmur… a buzz…
inside my head...
MAN:
I will go there, to him
There, to him.
WOMAN:
There is no 'there'
He's not.
He's not, and not,
and not.
CENTAUR:
Find the words
to understand
Write it down
like a story:
There’s a man
There’s a woman
He will walk
She will not.
MAN WHO WILL WALK:
No
It’s impossible
that we,
that the sun,
the clocks,
the moon,
the couples,
that blood in our veins,
that spring and autumn,
that things just are.
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2. |
Night Messengers
08:00
|
|||
MAN:
At night,
people came
They carried a message
in their mouths
They walked a long way,
quietly grave,
And perhaps, as they did so,
they stole a taste, a lick.
With a child’s wonder
they learned they could hold
death in their mouths
like candy made of poison
to which they are miraculously
immune.
We opened the door,
We stood there,
you and I,
shoulder to shoulder,
they
on the threshold
and we
facing them,
and they,
mercifully,
quietly,
stood there and
gave us
the breath
of death.
WOMAN:
I knew, tonight
you would come.
Don’t be afraid,
I did not shout
when he was born, and
I won’t shout now either.
|
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3. |
Come Chaos
03:00
|
|||
WOMAN:
Come, Chaos
Come, Chaos
MAN:
I saw
one eye
weeping
and one eye
crazed.
A human eye,
extinguished,
and the eye
of a beast
soaked with blood,
insane,
peered out at me.
CENTAUR:
Now,
for a moment,
they sink.
Both not saying
the same words.
Not bewailing him,
for now,
but bewailing the music
of their previous life, the
wonder of simplicity,
levity.
WOMAN, MAN & CENTAUR:
The earth
opens its mouth
and swallows us (them).
MAN:
Here I fall—
I do not fall.
I fall—
I do not fall.
CENTAUR:
Stop!
Return to her,
Return…
|
||||
4. |
||||
WOMAN ATOP BELFRY:
Step.
Another step.
He walks
and walks
to him.
He is
an unleashed question,
an open shout.
My heart beats:
he walks.
My blood pounds:
he walks.
No.
I did not go there.
Atop a belfry
I walk alone now
in circles
slowly, slowly,
nights, days,
while he
on the hilltops,
facing me,
days, nights
orbits his
own circle.
|
||||
5. |
Come, Son
03:50
|
|||
WALKING MAN:
Look at me, my son:
Here I am not.
Come!
I am not here.
The house is yours.
My blood your blood.
Come,
be present,
vibrate,
laugh,
everything now is yes.
so love,
burn,
lust,
fuck.
Quick, my child,
my eyelids tremble!
Quick,
devour,
be deep,
be sad,
rage,
rave,
hurry, my child,
dawn is rising!
Touch a warm body,
a woman,
breasts in your hands,
the head of a newborn child, unborn
to you.
No, Stop—
Go back
to rest,
to obscurity,
to oblivion,
just do not see
with my own eyes
what happened
to you.
|
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6. |
In Procession
09:04
|
|||
(Townspeople are drawn into the Walking Man’s journey; all characters are voiced by the Centaur)
CENTAUR:
Look there: It’s the midwife and her husband, the cobbler.
They walk behind the Walking Man.
MIDWIFE:
Y-y-y-esterday she
W-w-w-ould have been five
COBBLER:
Poisoning your soul again?
MIDWIFE:
W-w-w-hat is in your
m-m-m-outh? Open!
COBBLER:
Don’t touch!
Leave it!
MIDWIFE:
Th-th-th-there’s blood…
Sp-p-p-it the nails!
CENTAUR:
And look, look, there!
It’s the mute net-mender.
NET MENDER:
Agh...agh…
CENTAUR:
And the elderly math teacher
muttering his equation, like Spinoza:
ELDERLY MATH TEACHER:
The object—the life of the son—
must never be located in the universe
at a distance
from which the father—the observing subject—
may encompass all of him
with one gaze
from beginning to end.
CENTAURr:
…and they groan… and trip...and stand…
walking half asleep…
behind the walking man…
A wail rolls over the desert.
They walk towards
a cliff cut
into round smooth mountain:
A barren brain-hill.
It pulsates, perhaps
once in a thousand years.
It is the brain of the universe
It is not what emits the wail
It is desolation.
Only desolation.
Mute and deaf and
flat
It has no wails
No thoughts
It has no answers
And no love.
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7. |
Pierce the Skies
01:38
|
|||
8. |
Walking
14:43
|
|||
WALKING MAN:
Walking,
Walking my mind away
To understand.
Walking,
Sleeping my mind away
My head rests on your shoulders
I don’t know
who carries whom
CENTAURr:
He walks,
Puts himself
to sleep
WALKING MAN:
My legs
lift slowly
from the earth
Lightly, slowly
I hover
Between
here, and
there.
CENTAURr:
It breaks my heart, my son,
To think one could--
To think I have--
Found
The words.
He walks
And puts himself
To sleep.
He asks:
Where are you?
My son, my son.
WALKING MAN:
My legs
lift slowly
from the earth
Lightly, slowly
I hover
Between
here, and
there.
WALKING MAN & CENTAUR:
The thread will soon
unravel
and we will glide
and look
at whatever is there
at whatever we dare
to see.
WALKING MAN:
This void,
this crack, where your
absence still breathes,
palpitating, where one can still
touch the 'here',
still almost feel
the warming hand that touches
'there'
CENTAUR:
He walks
And puts
Himself
To Sleep
|
||||
9. |
If You Meet Him
03:05
|
|||
CENTAUR:
Hey, you, walking man
When you meet him,
if you meet him,
what will you tell him?
Will you tell him
of his brother,
born after him?
Will you tell him that
you took all his pictures
from his room?
That you couldn’t bear it any longer?
That you gave his dog to a boy in the street?
|
||||
10. |
Fly
04:07
|
|||
A WALKER (voiced by CENTAUR):
Look, there—
A leaf, green.
A miracle on the rock.
Look there—
A fly lands on the leaf,
cleans his body
and extends his translucent wings.
He hovers and then
lands again,
Vibrant… a riddle…
But he should be careful, right?
From the one in the web.
No! He touched it.
The fly, with the tip of his wing.
He touched it.
Lost.
Disaster.
We know, instantly.
He struggles,
tries to take flight,
and buzzes
until the skies
almost tear apart.
His mouth opens wide:
What?
What are you trying to say?
And what?
What is it that you know now,
that you did not know
when you were spawned?
|
||||
11. |
Go Now
13:37
|
|||
WOMAN ATOP THE BELFRY:
Go now,
Be like him
WALKING MAN:
You were right, woman.
I am here and he’s there
And a timeless border
stands between here and there.
Thus to stand,
to fill with knowledge.
As a wound fills up with blood:
This is to be man.
WOMAN ATOP
THE BELFRY:
Go now,
Be like him
Conceive him,
yet be your death, too.
Like his death
be now
but only till
the shadow of his end
falls
on the shadow
of your being.
And there, my love,
among the shadows
of father-son,
There will come peace—for him,
For you.
|
||||
12. |
Ayeka (Where Are You?)
05:55
|
|||
WALKING MAN:
Ayeka?
Where?
Where are you?
How are you there?
And who are you there?
Ayeka?
|
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13. |
Breathe
03:13
|
|||
Voice of a Boy:
There is
breath
there is
breath
inside the pain
there is
breath
|
Silkroad Ensemble Boston, Massachusetts
The artists of the Grammy award-winning Silkroad Ensemble represent dozens of nationalities and artistic traditions, from
Spain and Japan to Syria and the United States, and draw on a rich tapestry of traditions from around the world to create a new musical language that weaves together the foreign and the familiar.
The group's album Sing Me Home won the 2016 Grammy for Best World Music Album.
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