Pondering the fragility of the earth, the awe of nature, and the power of language to unite, or divide, society.
Works from Gregory Spears, Joel Puckett, and Toivo Tulev in a widely varied collection that draws on words and poetry of Keith Garebian, Denise Levertov, Thomas Merton, the Botswanan shaman Kxao =Oah, and Walt Whitman. The results: in Tulev’s hands, a churning, haunting rumination on death; in Spears’, a sometimes hymnlike, at other exuberant study on the collision of religion, technology, and conservation; and in Puckett’s, a mesmerizing mediation on transformation and the coming together of body and spirit into oneness.
The Tower and the Garden
words by Keith Garebian (b. 1943), Denise Levertov (1923-1997), and Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
a note from the composer:, Gregory W. Spears:
The Tower and the Garden is a setting of three poems for choir and string quartet. The texts juxtapose the dangers of technological hubris (the tower) and the need for a place of refuge (the garden) in a world threatened by war and ecological disaster. Each text suggests ways in which Catholic thought and imagery might challenge the status quo.
The first text, poem 80 from the collection “Cables to the Ace,” was written by Trappist monk and social activist Thomas Merton. It is an eschatological meditation on the garden of Gethsemane, where Christ’s disciples slept on the eve of his crucifixion. Merton compares their slumber to society’s indifference to the destruction of our natural world by potentially dangerous new technologies and war.
The second text was written by poet and Catholic activist Denise Levertov. It is a meditation on the Tower of Babel and the tendency for technology in the information and nuclear age to serve only its own growth and to potentially destroy our lives in the bargain.
The third poem, written by Keith Garebian, is an homage to queer filmmaker Derek Jarman and his cottage garden at Dungeness on the English coast. Situated precariously between a towering nuclear power plant and the sea, the garden was Jarman’s austere refuge during the final months of his struggle with AIDS. While an atheist and highly critical of the church, Derek Jarman was intrigued by the role religious and hagiographic narratives could play in his filmic indictments of Thatcher-era Britain. This is most notable in his film The Garden, which was shot on location in Dungeness.
I. and IV.
Slowly slowly
Comes Christ through the garden
Speaking to the sacred trees
Their branches bear his light
Without harm
Slowly slowly
Comes Christ through the ruins
Seeking the lost disciple
A timid one
Too literate
To believe words
So he hides
Slowly slowly
Christ rises on the cornfields
It is only the harvest moon
The disciple
Turns over in his sleep
And murmurs:
“My regret!”
The disciple will awaken
When he knows history
But slowly slowly
The Lord of History
Weeps into the fire.
—“80” from Cables to the Ace or Familiar Liturgies of Misunderstanding by Thomas Merton (1968). Used with permission.
II.
Each day the shadow swings
round from west to east till night overtakes it,
hiding
half the slow circle. Each year
the tower grows taller, spiralling
out of its monstrous root-circumference, ramps and
colonnades
mounting tier by lessening tier the way a searching
bird of prey wheels and mounts the sky, driven
by hungers unsated by blood and bones.
And the shadow lengthens, our homes nearby are
dark
half the day, and the bricklayers, stonecutters,
carpenters bivouac
high in the scaffolded arcades, further and further
above the ground,
weary from longer and longer comings and goings.
At times
a worksong twirls down the autumn leaf of a
phrase, but mostly
we catch
only the harsher sounds of their labor itself, and
that seems only
an echo now of the bustle and clamor there was
long ago
when the fields were cleared, the hole was dug, the
foundations laid
with boasting and fanfares, the work begun.
The tower, great circular honeycomb, rises and
rises and still
the heavens
arch above and evade it, while the great shadow
engulfs
more and more of the land, our lives
dark with the fear a day will blaze, or a full-moon
night defining
with icy brilliance the dense shade, when all the
immense
weight of this wood and brick and stone and metal
and massive
weight of dream and weight of will
will collapse, crumble, thunder and fall,
fall upon us, the dwellers in shadow.
—“In the Land of Shinar” from Evening Train by Denise Levertov (1992). Used with permission.
III.
Timbers black with pitch
shiver on the shingle.
Gulls wheel,
squabble over the fishermen’s catch,
quicksilver of the sea.
The tide invades
the arid strand,
home to larks and tough grasses,
cormorants skim the waves.
A cottage with two prospects
(the old lighthouse
and nuclear plant)
both lit by sights and sighs.
Barbed wire around your garden
cannot keep melancholy at bay.
—“Dungeness Documentary” from Blue: The Derek Jarman Poems by Keith Garebian (2008). All rights reserved by the author. Used with permission.
I enter the earth
music by Joel Puckett (b. 1977)
words spoken by Kxao =Oah of northwestern Botswana in 1971; edited by the composer
When people sing ... I enter the earth. I go in at a place like a place where people drink water. I travel a long way, very far. When I emerge, I am already climbing. I'm climbing threads, the threads that lie over there in the south. I climb one and leave it, then I climb another one. Then I leave it and climb another ... And when you arrive at God's place, you make yourself small. You have become small. You come in small to God's place. You do what you have to do there. Then you return to where everyone is, and you hide your face. You hide your face so you won't see anything. You come and come and come and finally you enter your body again. All the people who have stayed behind are waiting for you. ...You enter, enter the earth, and you return to enter the skin of your body ... Then you begin to sing.
—excerpted from "Folklore and ritual of !Kung hunter gatherers,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Dept. of Anthropology, Harvard University © 1975 Marguerite Anne Biesele (current pen name Megan Biesele) and used with permission. Grateful acknowledgement is made to Dr. Biesele who has granted permission to set and reprint these words. She asks that anyone moved by them consider making a donation to:
The Kalahari Peoples Fund
PO Box 7855
University Station
Austin, TX 78713-7855
A child said, what is the grass?
music by Toivo Tulev (b. 1958)
words by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . . [the produced babe
of the vegetation.]
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, [Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.]
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps,
And here you are the mothers’ laps.
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
[Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.]
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?
They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.
All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.
—from Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass (bracketed text omitted by the composer)
THE CROSSING
Katy Avery • Nathaniel Barnett • Kelly Ann Bixby • Elijah Blaisdell • Karen Blanchard • Colin Dill • Micah Dingler • Robert Eisentrout • Ryan Fleming • Joanna Gates • Steven Hyder • Michael Jones • Heidi Kurtz • Chelsea Lyons • Maren Montalbano • Rebecca Myers • Rebecca Oehlers • James Reese • Daniel Schwartz • Rebecca Siler • Julie Snyder • Daniel Spratlan • Elisa Sutherland • Daniel Taylor
String ensemble for The Tower and the Garden:
Brandon Garbot, Adelya Nartadjieva violin
Jordan Bak viola
Arlen Hlusko cello
Donald Nally Conductor
Kevin Vondrak Assistant Conductor & Artistic Associate
John Grecia Keyboards
This album was recorded October 22, 23 & 24, 2018 at Morningstar Studios in Norristown, PA
Recording produced by Donald Nally, Paul Vazquez & Kevin Vondrak, with Nick Tipp
Initial Production & Recording Engineering Nick Tipp
Additional Engineering, Editing, Mixing & Mastering Paul Vazquez
Album artwork by Steven Bradshaw stevenbradshawart.com
This recording was made possible through the generous gift of a long-time supporter of The Crossing.
We are grateful:
...for our audience, an amazing community of curious, intuitive, diverse, supportive, innovative, and caring friends; they have created The Crossing;
...for art, in this world, and the generous, creative, and determined artists who make it;
...for composers trying to make sense of things through creating;
...to our board and staff for their extraordinary commitment and support of our vision;
...to the entire staff and congregation of The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, our home: Rev. John Wilkinson, Minister; Daniel Spratlan, Director of Music; Esther Cole, Church Administrator; Ken Lovett, Associate Director of Music;
...to St. Thomas’ Church, Whitemarsh, for generously providing additional rehearsal space: Michael Smith, Minister of Music;
...to St. Clement’s Church, Philadelphia, for also generously providing additional rehearsal space: Fr. Richard C. Alton, Rector; Bernard Kunkle, Associate Organist and Secretary to the Rector; Peter Conte, Organist and Choirmaster;
...for housing our artists: David and Rebecca Thornburgh, Jeff and Liz Podraza, Corbin Abernathy and Andrew Beck, Beth Vaccaro, Rebecca Siler, and Colin Dill.