I wrote this piece in December in 2023 I believe. The words are from Laraine Kentridge Lasdon’s poem of the same name. It describes some of her experiences while at Lake Superior, and how she was feeling at this moment. She ponders humans role in earth and nature, and the evolution the earth has gone through over time. The music, attempts to capture that essence. This was performed Saturday, May 4th by me, and the absolutely amazing musicians who helped me. They are my best friend Alex Lew, and another dear friend, Juli Orlandini.
“Waterways, red cliffs, ancient underwater caves, back to the Pangea age, continents fused as one.
I stand in the stardust of a million-year-old memory, a flutter of song birds, a bouquet of warblers, the wild swoop of blue jays.
Hummingbirds check me out.
My breath hovers over crimson wildflowers.
Long before the idea of a kiss, when love was mystery, the earth entered its quaternary period, the age of humans.
A time of gestation, anticipation, the Great Lakes birthing, hawks soaring, the first migration.
All we see of that coded mapping are faint skeletal imprints, visible in glacial rock formations.
The stone I cradle, a mountain remnant, honors the ancestral presence my encounter with raw existence.
The lake shivers as falcons dive, beaks and talons fisted and footed.
A drop of water touches my face.
Profound.
As much as a human caress.”