First, this: I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Mary Claire Murphy of WGTE Public Media in Toledo, Ohio. You can view our breezy eighteen-minute conversation here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu89ECl8B18

Now, to business!

If you’ve seen Thornton Wilder’s play, “Our Town,” you’ll remember these lines from the final scene:

“EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?"

STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some.”

Those lines encapsulate the play, bringing home the message: you’re alive, so realize it. Being alive is the most precious of all gifts. Don’t sleep walk through life. Be awake, be aware. Even the most trivial moments are miraculous.

Yet, can anyone live like that? Saints and poets maybe, but not the likes of you and me.

What did Thornton Wilder do in response to that beautiful, shaming, melancholy thought? He taught; he wrote novels and plays. He acted, too. When “Our Town” and later “The Skin of Our Teeth” played on Broadway, he played the leading roles.

And me? What did I do? Lots of things.

And you? I can’t speak for you or Mr. Wilder but I admit that Emily’s question challenges me. I’ve fallen far short of “realizing life … every, every minute.” I couldn’t bear the strain of it.

Thoreau puts it this way: “I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?”

Still, I keep trying. For instance, I’ve rediscovered clouds. What marvels they are, emerging, shifting, glowing in grays and blues and tones of salmon and lavender. Not just white. Walking the dog, I stare at them. While the dog is ‘doing his research’ I try to ‘realize’ them.

And I do my art. Last August through November, I wrote three works for string trio. One is subtitled “Saints & Poets” in acknowledgement of the inspiration, those lines from “Our Town.”

All three trios have now been beautifully recorded by three marvelous Cincinnati musicians: violinist Doug Hamilton, violist Rose Gowda and cellist Michael Ronstadt. These recordings will be issued on a new CD / album that will also feature two single-movement works for string quartet and my piano quartet. The cost of producing this album is partly covered by the generous contributions some of you made when I asked for help last Spring. Thank you.

The opening movement of the Trio #4 shares, I think, the simplicity and some of the beauty and melancholy of Wilder’s lines. See what you think.

To hear the first movement of my String Trio #4 “Saints & Poets,”
click the link above. There's also a link to a PDF of the score.
 
I'd love to know what you think about this music; feel free to reply if you're inclined. But please don't feel that you are expected to reply. I'm just glad to share my work in this way.

As always, feel free to forward this message to friends who might enjoy it. Maybe a friend who enjoys sailing.

Anyone can be on my little list of recipients for these mpFrees (as I call these musical emails). To sign up, people can email me at rick@sowash.com, sending just one word: "Yes." I'll know what it means.

🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶

Near the beginning of the third act of “Our Town,” the Stage Manager looks the audience in the eye and says:

“Now I’m going to tell you some things that you know already, things we all know. You know ‘em as well as I do, but we don't take ‘em out and look at ‘em very often.

I don’t care what they say with their mouths, everybody knows that something is eternal. We all know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings.

All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being.”

Hearing this, the audience is hushed. No mention is made of denominations, creeds or theology, yet we find a religious assurance in these words.

The Stage Manager speaks for all of us -- we in the audience but also all of us in the past 250 generations -- telling us something which he says we “know in our bones.”

Just think: pert near every culture we know of has expended huge amounts of capital and energy to construct vast monuments in response to this notion. These monuments are scattered all over the globe. That new-ish Mega-Church just off the interstate, yes, but also the Pyramids of Egypt and of Central America. Chartres Cathedral in far off France and the Serpent Mound just 50 miles east of where I live. Chaco Canyon way out west and that tomb in China where all the clay figures of soldiers were found, along with a lot else.

And that is just the architectural response. Think of all the art, literature and music that has been created in response to this notion that “something is eternal” and that that something “has to do with human beings.”

Believer and infidel alike admit the strangeness and wonder of it, that our species has undertaken so much in response to something which no one has ever perceived with their senses. Except for a few saints and poets, maybe, who may claim to have heard a Voice. Many who have never heard that Voice have felt, nevertheless, that their lives have been directed in some unfathomable way by “something that is eternal.”

I certainly feel that now. How I would have scoffed at such a notion forty years ago! But the decades slip away and we ask ourselves how we got where we are. And the answer is, we traveled paths we did not foresee but which somehow combined to form a route, plopping us down at length just here and nowhere else, precisely where we ought to be.

“Now what?” That’s the question I ask every day. Now what? I am waiting for direction. You, too?

While we’re waiting, let’s listen to music almost no one has heard yet: a NEW recording of the Cincinnati String Trio -- violinist Doug Hamilton, violist Rose Gowda, cellist Michael Ronstadt -- performing the wistful, delicate third movement from my String Trio #4 subtitled “Saints & Poets,”
click on the link above. There's also a link to a PDF of the score.