Our Sacred Lake: An Interfaith Gathering with Prayer, Poetry, and Music
I am honored to be participating in this event tonight. I will be playing viola AND reading my poem, “Remnants.”
“Remnants” was written as I was taking this photograph. I sat in the cold, wet sand watching the light fade, thinking about all the remnants I was witnessing.
Remnants of Bonneville, great basin, inland sea
Remnants of a salty lake, once known as Great
Its greatness receding before our eyes
into the distance, a silver line on a faraway horizon
so remote that it could be an illusion, mirage, hallucination
How far away does it have to go until we think
This is how it has always been
Or until we can no longer see what it was
Or envision what it could be again
Remnants of others’ paths
others’ journeys
visible in the wet mud, the oolitic sands that formed
from Remnants of a living organism
(The footprints themselves will not remain for long in the mud and will become
A Remnant of a memory)
Remnants of a fading day, a sun setting
Remnants of an hour
that transformed the day from gold to blue
I will also be performing the Sarabande from the C Major Suite for Solo Cello, transcribed for Viola, by Johann Sebastian Bach.
I am not a composer, I read music for a living, I don’t have the skill of writing music. So when trying to find the perfect piece to play today, I had to work with existing repertoire for my instrument and try to make a connection and create a relationship to Great Salt Lake that I found satisfying, and would be able to communicate through music.
I recalled an experience that I often had while photographing at Great Salt Lake. I would go out in the depths of winter to photograph and find hazy, inversion skies, and dark gray clouds. But just when you thought there was no chance of light, the sky would crack open and shine a little, just a little light, revealing what was there all along.
When I think about this Sarabande, I have the same feeling. The movement opens with a 4 note C major chord. It has an open quality, resonant, and earnest. Neither bright nor dark, but OPEN. As we work through the harmonies in the piece, we reach some darker places, Bach takes us through some stuff. It gets a bit angsty, a bit…d minor-y. And just when you think the angst is here to stay, Bach turns us around from d minor to a D Major 7 chord. (Don’t get to comfortable, the chord doesn’t include the root, so we’re not going to stay there very long.) But in this moment, we get a crack in the sky and the light shines through, and we can see the way forward. We end like we began, with an open C major chord, but this time we are a little changed by our journey.
The tempo of the movement reminds me of a mindful, slow walking pace. I hope you join me on this slow walk on the shores of our inland sea, and look for the moment the clouds break and let the light in.