{"id":1206,"date":"2021-06-03T00:15:38","date_gmt":"2021-06-03T04:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/?p=1206"},"modified":"2021-06-03T00:20:53","modified_gmt":"2021-06-03T04:20:53","slug":"distance-shawn-okpebholo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/distance-shawn-okpebholo\/","title":{"rendered":"Okpebholo — Distance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Distance (2017) — Shawn Okpebholo (1981)<\/span><\/p>\n

Duo for Marimba and Cello<\/span><\/p>\n

From the Composer<\/span><\/p>\n

“In the dark months following the terrible losses, I found myself needing to turn to the language of poetry, if only to preserve the phrase Roger spoke after his diagnosis, that he was going into the treatment to experience “the complete sufficiency of grace.” This was poet Miho Nonaka’s response to her elegant poem, Distance, an elegy for Roger Lundin, and the inspiration for this piece. Roger was a Christ-follower, a husband, a father, a scholar, a teacher, a friend\u2014my friend. Our friendship grew out of Roger\u2019s humility: I, as a junior faculty member, for example, receiving encouragement, soaking up his wisdom, talking about shared interests, like music, the Negro spiritual, specifically.<\/span><\/p>\n

Distance is a duo for cello and marimba. I intentionally chose that instrumentation to reflect Roger\u2019s demeanor. The cello and marimba are considered soft instruments and both have warm and rich timbres. Even in a casual chat with Roger, one would experience his soft-spoken voice: a tone that was warm; words that were full of depth; insights that were rich in meaning. In this work, I aimed to musically weave the many ideas expressed in Nonaka\u2019s poem: the body, devotion, act of musical worship, joy (imagery of the flies), space, breath, and words (the Word).\u00a0 I included two musical quotations: the spiritual, Prepare Me One Body, and one of the great hymns of the church, For All the Saints (Ralph Vaughan William’s tune, sine nomine). Not only do these songs capture poignant themes of Nonaka’s poem, the songs were special to Roger.<\/span><\/p>\n

This piece was composed in memory of Roger Lundin and is dedicated to Sue Lundin.<\/span><\/p>\n

Distance<\/span><\/p>\n

Miho Nonaka<\/span><\/p>\n

(Roger Lundin 1949-2015)<\/span><\/p>\n

Snow started overnight, unexpectedly, in abundance<\/span><\/p>\n

making the drive to church beautiful, nearly<\/span><\/p>\n

impossible. And it would continue through the service\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

high windows like a slender book opened<\/span><\/p>\n

in the middle, pages growing whiter, emptier<\/span><\/p>\n

save for a few bones of the tree<\/span><\/p>\n

on the margin.<\/span><\/p>\n

Your body<\/span><\/p>\n

already bare, severe space<\/span><\/p>\n

of reformed architecture: a lone vessel<\/span><\/p>\n

breaking its path through the hush<\/span><\/p>\n

of human breath to the center, the unknown.<\/span><\/p>\n

That summer, a poem had started us discussing<\/span><\/p>\n

flies, a sudden legion of them in my kitchen.<\/span><\/p>\n

It amused you to no end to picture me<\/span><\/p>\n

swatting at them with dark passion,<\/span><\/p>\n

ta<\/span><\/p>\n

llying my victories each day until<\/span><\/p>\n

my husband finally located their colony.<\/span><\/p>\n

What flies, invisible, interpose between words,<\/span><\/p>\n

splinter the syntax of eulogy?<\/span><\/p>\n

Uncertain, stumbling, we<\/span><\/p>\n

turn to music, hymns, prayers. As if the soul<\/span><\/p>\n

is a kind of distance, measured around and still beyond<\/span><\/p>\n

circumference. We ache to feel exactly<\/span><\/p>\n

what our fragile faith tells us we can\u2019t<\/span><\/p>\n

but must.<\/span><\/p>\n

Inside your head was a library<\/span><\/p>\n

of unfinished books. An entire forest of them gone<\/span><\/p>\n

before the first snow. Your voice haunts me, tender,<\/span><\/p>\n

elegiac at the core, calling to the dead, your<\/span><\/p>\n

scattered tribe, a maze of jagged isles, high winds<\/span><\/p>\n

through the fog of the Baltic Sea.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was a time I thought that words, when<\/span><\/p>\n

true, would crystallize in their arrival.<\/span><\/p>\n

I believed that.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is such a long journey, Sue said<\/span><\/p>\n

at a late night grocery store. We were pushing carts full<\/span><\/p>\n

of essentials when we ran into each other<\/span><\/p>\n

under the florescent light.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had no words for her. We are still<\/span><\/p>\n

standing in that spacious church<\/span><\/p>\n

surrounded by silent crystals. Dusk<\/span><\/p>\n

gathers, the ceiling grows higher, and the whole<\/span><\/p>\n

building is an instrument full of air, aching to<\/span><\/p>\n

house the complete sufficiency of grace.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Distance (2017) — Shawn Okpebholo (1981) Duo for Marimba and Cello From the Composer “In the dark months following the terrible losses, I found myself needing to turn to the language of poetry, if only to preserve the phrase Roger spoke after his diagnosis, that he was going into the treatment to experience “the complete […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1206"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1210,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions\/1210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/percdb.szsolomon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}