Three Songs from Athena
Soprano (or Mezzo-soprano) and PIano
Duration: 8-10 minutes
Language: English
RELATED: #Tranquil #Fast #Joy #Love #Community #Womxn #Aleatoric #ComingOfAge
Photo Credit: Shruthi Rajasekar
I. Morning Song
II. Leaving Home
III. Friends
Three Songs from Athena are a coming-of-age collection: songs that honor the parental figures and sisterhood of friends that have shaped and carried a woman to maturity. I commissioned poet Athena Kildegaard to write on this theme to express my gratitude to the people whose love “carries” me always. Kildegaard transformed my personal sentiments into these striking and universal texts:
I. Morning Song:
Wash my hair, mother,
this last time,
the weight of it in your hands,
how the light lifts it up.
Dry my hair, mother,
and comb it out,
pulling the morning’s
warmth to the ends.
Mother, braid my hair,
your quick fingers turning
and turning beauty
into beauty, this last time.
Duration: 2-3 minutes
Duration: 2-3 minutes
Duration: 3-4 minutes
II. Leaving Home
Sun in your tomatoes,
Wind in the yellow lilies
bees secure their futures
how does the earth turn
but by gravity?
How certain I am
of loving you, papa,
and how certain,
like the bee, of leaving.
No, what do I know
of bees’ desires?
What do I know of wind?
Except it carries me
out the narrow door
defying gravity,
defying gravity.
III. Friends
For Sue who gave me seashells
with their echoes
For Diane and your violin—
for those lazy afternoons of arpeggios
How else could I get by?
For June whose warblers
taught me patterns
and surprises
For Maeve with your lullabies
How else could I get by?
For Barb, Liz and Nancy—
how we steamed clams
and sliced fennel tissue thin
and fed a dozen friends
For Tanya, how you let me call
at two or three; made me bread and rubbed my feet
and Margaret, so much my sister
though you weren’t
How else could I get by?
Three Songs from Athena, performed by Shruthi Rajasekar (soprano) and Jessica Arnold (piano), 2018. New Jersey, USA