Such a world!

Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of little reminders that time is streaming, rushing past. Things like the announcement I got in the mail recently inviting me to my 50^th (!) high school reunion. My first thought was, “OMG, has it really been that long?” My second was, “OMG², this means I was born in the middle of the last century!” That sounds so like something you’d read about in a history book.

Not long after, we got a message reminding us that the car should be brought in for service. It hadn’t been serviced since August, said the message. “Nonsense!” said I. “I remember sitting in the waiting area, and that sure wasn’t six months ago.” So I looked it up. August. Six months ago. Half a year had passed.

Then a friend was telling me about someone who periodically says to her partner, “We have 20 good years left.” (You can fill in your own numbers.) “We wasted last year, didn’t do the things we wanted to do. Now we have 19 good years left. We’re letting this year slip away. Now we’ll have 18 good years left.”

Thinking of these things calls to mind an icicle we saw last week, hanging from a cornice at the roof's edge, draining the moisture from the snow above. Life is like that. The days just drip, falling away. If you don’t pay attention, they’re gone, and you didn’t get to see them.

All of these moments merge today with my reflections on the Resonance concert I heard last weekend. I've written about Resonance before, and this concert was, as always, wonderful: the rich sound of 130 women’s voices and the singers’ (and the director’s) obvious connection with the music creating the perfect setting for the concert's message. Or messages. I can only speak to the message I took from it, framed by what’s on my mind at the moment. And you know what that is from the paragraphs above.

The concert spoke—whether it was meant to or not—to my current ruminations on the meaning and experience of aging. It pondered with me, it seemed, this realization that time is growing shorter, and that the wealth of it all could slip away while I’m not paying attention. This concert was a celebration of the chorus' tenth anniversary, and former singers were invited to join for a few songs. So I suspect thoughts of aging, change, and the passage of time weren't far from many minds.

The concert was called “Imagine Such a World,” the title taken from one of the pieces. I loved this song. The words are a poem written by a member of the chorus, and the piece was commissioned for Resonance by a member of the chorus in honor of her late partner. The song reminded me, in spirit, of “Praises for the World,” which, as you probably know by now (since I've written about it over and over and over again), may be my favorite piece of music in the world. “Imagine Such a World,” has some of the same feel: This is such an astonishing world. Look! Are we not blessed to have time with it? Listen:

Imagine Such a World (excerpts from the concert program)

by Linda Millemann

Imagine a world where water falls,

just falls,

out of the sky.

A world that offers the soft arm of sleep

to follow every bursting day. . .

A world so longing to be heard

it blooms a meadow full of birds,

so longing for the dance

it sends a pulse of river over rock

of wind  between the  trees

and sways to its own joy

in rippled grassy fields…

Oh, world, almost too much to be imagined

only asking to be met

with our most keenly joyous vow

of yes.
No more.

No less.

Imagine such a world.

This wasn’t the only piece in the concert that evoked this sense of both the depth and the impermanence of life. “Somehow” (from the anti-war piece “Brave Souls and Dreamers”), “Under the Harvest Moon,” “Kinder,” “Love After Love”—all invited reflection on impermanence, joy, nature, sadness, finding yourself, the paradoxical connection between great love (of people, of nature, of life) and great loss. And in the midst of all this, the great grand privilege of being alive, of embracing it all, wrapping our arms around such a world.

I’m framing this all as a reflection on aging—and it is that, for me. But that’s not all it is. This awareness of the simultaneous transience and richness of life may become more poignant, more distilled with age, but the message is no less true in youth. Life is wondrous and short. Don’t wait to notice, because it all passes. Imagine such a world!

Hear for yourself. Resonance will perform this concert again twice next weekend, on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. Check out the “Performances” page on their website for more information.

Then get out there and see those icicles before they drip away!