Walk By My Side

dieser Track hieß ursprünglich "Beweg dein´ Oasch" und hatte entsprechende Textteile - doch alles ist anders gekommen

Poison

Cold Hard Rain
Words and music by 
Torrey Bliss and Ron Helm 
©2022 Glass Gate Music BMI 
Image courtesy of canva.com

The candle light, it dims and fades
Outside, there is a cold, hard rain
It chilling me down to the bone
Since I found myself here alone
I hear Your voice in the wind
It's calling out to me again 
I can't find a way to get You out of my mind
When I'm reminded of You, time after time 

Outside, I know there's a cold, hard rain
Inside, my need for You remains 
As life goes on, how can I carry on
Without You, it just ain't the same

Only You can ease my pain
I know You still love me, though I've gone astray 
The rain comes down as I watch it pour
It's telling me to come home once more
Here in this world, I feel I don't belong 
Someday soon I'll  be moving on
And together again, in the light, we will be
But here in the now, the storm is all I can see 

Outside, I know there's a cold, hard rain
Inside, my need for you remains 
As life goes on, how can I carry on
Without you, it just ain't the same

Outside, I know there's a cold, hard rain
Inside, my need for you remains
I know You see, I'm not who I should be 
I'll never make it on my own 

Outside, I know there's a cold, hard rain
Inside, my need for you remains 
As life goes on, how can I carry on
Without you, it just ain't the same

Outside, I know there's a cold, hard rain
Inside, my need for you remains
I know You see, I'm not who I should be 
Oh, I want to come home

COLD HARD RAIN

While The Worst are Full of Passionate Intensity (2022)

Rigid, The Skeleton of Habit Alone Upholds the Human Frame

haiku by Gary Clarke https://whaligoeeye.co.uk/

picture by Lavi Perchik https://unsplash.com/photos/bwm26JyAHBk

nawak

Lost in Spring (naviarhaiku486)

Thanks to Marcus Fischer for the great samples!

More on this 600th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Reaching Out (The Assignment: This is a shared sample project. Rework a set of seven WAV files provided by Marcus Fischer), at: https://disquiet.com/0600/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0600-reaching-out/

This project’s cover image is a detail of a photo by Marcus Fischer.

Reaching Out (disquiet #600) (FG Remix)

Star Family - She's Lost The Control

Completed August 23, 2023

Premiered at the Cube, Virginia Tech, September 26, 2023 by Derek Shapiro (cond.), Ariana Wyatt (sop.), Betsy Lantz (fl.), Michelle Smith Johnson (cl.), Kyle Hutchins (sax), Annie Stevens (perc.), Gloria Engle (pno.), John Irrera (vln.), Molly Wilkens-Reed (vla.), Alan Weinstein (vc.), and Charles Nichols (ambisonic mapping). 

Commissioned by Gordon Yee

I have a complicated relationship with Christianity. There are few, though, who could purport to have as complicated a faith as Saint Augustine’s. He was a thinker blessed with the two attributes needed to ensure one’s legacy: a relentless, obsessive, autocannibalistic thought life, and the need to write it down. 

And write, he did: Augustine’s seminal texts, the Confessions chief among them, are difficult works, filled with surprising vulnerability, heady hermeneutics, and harsh self-flagellation. A searing streak of humility - indeed, bordering on self-hatred - runs throughout, as Augustine believed that the existence of evil on a global and personal scale stemmed solely from human weakness.

Unlike many of my churched peers, I did not inherit my faith - rather, I had been the first in my family to convert, and I eventually realized I might be one of the first to step away. I was well- acquainted with the kind of Augustinian guilt that pervaded Christian thought, and I experienced firsthand the kind of painful self-loathing that came with such emphatic doctrines of sin. 

I was deeply struck when I encountered Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo’s wryly meandering poem simply titled To St. Augustine. Liu had been an insistent thorn in the Chinese Communist Party’s side for much of his life, though his contrarian nature meant that he was equally critical of Western ideology - including, naturally, Augustine. I was fascinated to see someone outside the faith engage with it so candidly, and I identified closely with his oblique perspective on Augustine’s work.

I chose to interpret Liu’s poem from my perspective as both an insider and an outsider to Christianity. The music veers between rumination and outcry, mashing together abrasive, distorted samples of hymns with floating, dreamlike textures. Though the piece searches for some kind of equilibrium in the contradictions of God, it ends with a perhaps inevitable ambiguity. 

This piece is dedicated to my brother, who was always a step or two ahead of me in matters of faith and philosophy. Many thanks to the Virginia Tech School of Performing Arts for commissioning and realizing the piece through their Yee Commission.

To Saint Augustine, for soprano, mixed ensemble, and fixed media

Bobby Ge

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