Larger than home
Commissioned by Steven Davis and the UMKC Wind Symphony
Larger than home is a line from the poetry of Nathan Bartel and the music here is a transliteration of the last two movements of my epic 13 movement electroacoustic suite, In lake’ch (or: “I am another yourself” in Mayan). This simple line, and the act of composing out the imagery that it inspired was perhaps one of the single most important moments in my life: it was a time of synthesizing the physical with the spiritual with the emotional and the intellectual: many things came together in this music. Home is the biggest place I know. It is where we are from, even if not in a literal sense, but it is a place (geographic, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, psychological...) where perhaps we feel the most comfort. It is the place we are constantly drawn back too. It is where we want to be, and where wounds heal, hearts grow and nothing is as important as just being. It is where spirit, mind and body come together in a tranquility that connects all parts of ourselves and we become aware. So what could possibly be larger than this? Well, the general answer is...everything. More specifically, there is energy around us that connects us with the past and the future, and expands our notion of home far beyond ourselves. When our inner world becomes one with our outer world and all our parts come together in openness, we expand to a place, indeed, much Larger than home .
