On the nature of daylight by max richter
(Recounted from a road trip with Daniel Livsey
Summer 2010)
through the night we drove
and now
long shadows cast
as we glide
down the straight gray road
light through the aspens throws
their dark side slender
cross our way
and we traverse through
shadow and light
yellow ticking gray
blurred foreground
patterned panorama
aspen, sun, aspen, sun
shadow, light
yellow ticking gray
through the horizon
of new growth
and blackened decay
day broke, piercing, brilliantly,
again, the dark side of our turning
And we sit,
Daniel and I,
without words
as the strings emanate,
Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight”
from the randomized music machine
made audible through the speakers of this car,
the violin reverberating
the poetics of being
that we now sit witness to
a total moment
at just the right velocity
all tales
our story
the details
converge
now
I feel the history of humankind
ride with us
plucked from the past
and all the present
is here too
without their barriers
all come to commune
in this sheer moment
feeling the human
beyond this singular isolated entity
the being beyond I
the turnings of
the sun’s past and
the sun’s future,
as one,
lighting existence
nothing else matters;
we arrive
