Time to Feel, Time to Heal (2019)
Flute, Clarinet, Basson & Piano
Over recent years my reasons for writing music have changed significantly. To a degree I am still seduced by the drug like stimulation of creating something which offers a fix of ‘good feeling’ upon listening. This seems to have, at least partially, given way to a desire to connect with my Celtic roots or a cathartic yearning for personal reflection and introspection. In this case, time to feel, time to heal represents the latter.
Grief is a brutal emotional state. We often exclusively associate grief with the ending of life, it’s most obvious, absolute and guttural form. I also see it in others, and feel it in myself, through a variety of lenses; when a loved one is far away, when a truth or innocence is taken, when a mind, body and soul is overloaded, when a deeply considered gesture is overlooked, when words causally spoken are searingly absorbed, when what once was can no longer be, when all that could be seems impossible.
In music we are blessed in our ability to represent this state. Timbre, dynamic, harmony and rhythm can all individually and collectively represent the beauty of unity and discord. To paraphrase from the movie ‘Amadeus’, what in life can be a cacophony of voices speaking but not necessarily listening, in music can be a balanced and understanding dialogue.
What you’ll hear in time to heel, time to feel is a journey from literal musical unison, through different emotional directions, and back again. The final statement is coloured differently to the opening, as in my experience when journeying through a moment of grief one is rarely on exit completely the same person as before.
This piece is for Don, Kim and Sondra; good people, who I know connect with me on this subject.
Brooklyn, May 2019.
Grief is a brutal emotional state. We often exclusively associate grief with the ending of life, it’s most obvious, absolute and guttural form. I also see it in others, and feel it in myself, through a variety of lenses; when a loved one is far away, when a truth or innocence is taken, when a mind, body and soul is overloaded, when a deeply considered gesture is overlooked, when words causally spoken are searingly absorbed, when what once was can no longer be, when all that could be seems impossible.
In music we are blessed in our ability to represent this state. Timbre, dynamic, harmony and rhythm can all individually and collectively represent the beauty of unity and discord. To paraphrase from the movie ‘Amadeus’, what in life can be a cacophony of voices speaking but not necessarily listening, in music can be a balanced and understanding dialogue.
What you’ll hear in time to heel, time to feel is a journey from literal musical unison, through different emotional directions, and back again. The final statement is coloured differently to the opening, as in my experience when journeying through a moment of grief one is rarely on exit completely the same person as before.
This piece is for Don, Kim and Sondra; good people, who I know connect with me on this subject.
Brooklyn, May 2019.