music        news/events        bio        contact        recordings I Am You 1999 soprano guitar  cello duration 16' commissioned by Laurel Brown first performance: Laurel Browne, José Lezcano, Joel Cohe Cheney Hall, Franklin Pearce College / May 2, 1999 SCORE Say I Am You I Have Lived on the Lip of Insanity Only Breath Who Makes These Changes? Gnats Inside the Wind The Seed Market Chickpea to Cook Where Everything is Music In a Boat Down a Fast-running Creek TEXTS Say I Am You I am dust particles in sunlight. I am the round sun.  To the bits of dust I say, Stay. To the sun, Keep moving.  I am morning mist, and the breathing of evening.  I am wind in the top of a grove, and surf on the cliff.  Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel, I am also the coral reef they founder on.  I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches. Silence, thought, and voice.  The musical air coming through a flute, a spark of stone, a flickering  in metal. Both candle, and the moth crazy around it.  Rose, and the nightingale lost in fragrance.  I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy, the evolutionary intelligence, the lift,  and the falling away. What is, and what isn't. You who know  Jelaluddin. You the one in all, say who  I am. Say I am You.  I Have Lived on the Lip of Insanity I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I've been knocking from the inside!  Only Breath Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, or zen.  I am not from the east or the west, not out of the ocean or up  from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all. I do not exist , . . . My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul.  I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one . . . first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being.  Who Makes These Changes? Who makes these changes? I shoot an arrow right. It lands left. I ride after deer and find myself chased by a hog. I plot to get what I want and end up in prison. I dig pits to trap others and fall in.  I should be suspicious of what I want.  Gnats Inside the Wind Some gnats come from the grass to speak with Solomon.  “O Solomon, you are the champion of the oppressed. You give justice to the little guys, and they don't get any littler than us! We are tiny metaphors  for frailty. Can you defend us?”  “Who has mistreated you?” “Our complaint is against the wind.” “Well,” says Solomon, you have pretty voices, you gnats, but remember . . . I must hear both litigants.”  “Of course,” agree the gnats.  “Summon the east Wind!” calls out Solomon, and the wind arrives almost immediately.  What happened to the gnat plaintiffs? Gone.  Such is the way of every seeker who comes to complain at the high Court. When the presence of God arrives, where are the seekers? First there's dying, then union, like gnats inside the wind.  The Seed Market Can you find another market like this?  Where, with your one rose you can buy hundreds of rose gardens?  Where, for one seed you get a whole wilderness?  For one weak breath, the divine wind?  You've been fearful of being absorbed in the ground or drawn up by the air.  Now, your waterbead lets go and drops into the ocean, where it came from.  It no longer has the form it had, but it's still water. The essence is the same.  Chickpea to Cook A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot where it's being boiled.  “Why are you doing this to me?”  The cook knocks him down with the ladle.  “Don't you try to jump out. You think I'm torturing you. I´m giving you flavor, so you can mix with spices and rice and be the lovely vitality of a human being.  Remember when you drank rain in the garden. That was for this.”  Grace first. Sexual pleasure, then a boiling new life begins, . . . Eventually the chickpea will say to the cook, “Boil me some more. Hit me with the skimming spoon. I can't do this by myself.  I'm like an elephant that dreams of gardens back in Hindustan and doesn't pay attention to his driver. You're my cook, my driver, my way into existence. I love your cooking.”  Where Everything is Music Don't worry about saving these songs! And if one of our instruments breaks, it doesn't matter.  We have fallen into the place where everything is music.  The strumming and the flute notes rise into the atmosphere, and even if the whole world's harp should burn up, there will still be hidden instruments playing. . . . This singing art is sea foam. The graceful movements come from a pearl somewhere on the ocean floor. . . . from a slow and powerful root that we can´t see.  Stop the words now. Open the window in the center of your chest, and let the spirits fly in and out.  In a Boat Down a Fast-running Creek In a boat down a fast-running creek, it feels like trees on the bank are rushing by. What seems  to be changing around us is rather the speed of our craft leaving this world.  Jelaluddin Rumi (1207–1273) trans. Coleman Barks