II. Hearts, Glassblowers of Time

Here comes the second arc of Joker's Interlude. For an explanation of Joker's Interlude scroll two posts down to my Spades entry. A brief recap of the previous arc: I. Spades, Wardens of the Void is a dream concerning death and absence, everything that defines life and eternity without God. The Jack is an impish envoy who lures the Joker into the void. The Queen is the beautiful but heartless ruler and judge who condemns the Joker to death. The King is the hulking, beastly executioner who ultimately becomes the Joker's devourer. The Ace embodies death and the sword, acting as punctuation in the piece.

The second arc of the Interlude is meant to be the antithesis of the first, so we begin with the theme of life and eternity with God. Since the piece is based on the suit of Hearts, love is obviously going to be discussed. Now take the ideas of death and absence and reverse them, and you get life and substance. I take the idea of substance even further and call it transformation, because if anything is more substantial than substance, it's substance in motion. Combining eternity, God, love, life, and transformation, we see God's love transforming life into eternity. This is the story behind this arc of the dream.

Now, in defining the setting and characters for this arc, we look at the symbolism in the suit of Hearts. In tarot, Hearts are known as Cups. Cups associate with water and the clergy and deal with creativity, compassion, love, healing, and new beginnings. Thankfully this works perfectly with my own ideas about the piece. The setting and characters for the piece are hard to define because they all deal with a process, not a place. The best way I can describe this arc is through metaphor. I would ask you to close your eyes, but you obviously have to keep reading.

Imagine you are on the ocean. There is nothing in sight but water. You drift comfortably, yet you are also lost and helpless. This has been the story of your life and it is all about to change. You feel motion in the water as the ocean before your eyes starts to ripple towards you. The ripples slowly become tiny waves which rock against you as if you were sitting on the shore. Eventually the wave are washing over you, cleansing you and warming you. The next thing you see is an enormous tsunami rising in the distance. The waves running before it crash over you, each more forceful than the last, but you are never dragged under or made to suffer. The tsunami comes nearer and soon you are at its feet. As you climb its belly, you are slowly turned skyward, and the wave never lets you fall. You are turned by the barrel of the wave until you are upside down, hanging from the crest. Here you are held until you reach into the roof of the wave. You break through the water and find yourself upright, staring across the ocean, but this time riding on the head of tsunami. This is a place of solace and bliss, the absolute peak of existence. In past experiences you have always had to come down the back of the wave and resume life as you know it, but this time something different happens. Instead of rolling back down to the ocean you are carried from the crest of the wave into the air, like a mist. You are lifted higher and higher until you forget everything of life on the ocean and remember only the infinite sky.

That is the best way I know to describe this piece. It resembles the highs of life like marriage, dreams fulfilled, salvation, only that this time, the high does not end. It ascends to heaven and lives forever. This is the setting of the piece. It divides into three stages, Condensation, Transformation, and Ascension. The Jack, Queen, and King oversee their respective stages. Together, they are what I have decided to call the Glassblowers of Time. The blowing of glass consists of gathering sand, melting and shaping it, and allowing it to cool in its new form. Since the glassblowers in this case are molding life itself, they are glassblowers of time. Interestingly sand and time are synonymous when one considers an hourglass.

So, it's a mouthful of metaphor, but that is the piece. It is not yet written, but I am extremely excited and already have a major melody written. I also know that I will be dealing with six performers, as in my last piece. The piece will be scored for oboe, piano, harp, violin, cello, and wine glasses. The wine glasses are a nifty feature of the piece as they are both symbolic and musically beautiful. If you've ever seen the old party trick of making wine glasses vibrate and sing, then you know how they work and sound. The instruments are symbolic as they contain water, are made of glass, and correspond to the suit of Cups. The sounding of wineglasses will represent the Ace in this piece, the same way the bowed cymbals did in Spades.

This all I can say about the piece until it is written. I will be sure to announce its debut. I hope to have it ready for performance in time for the second Project 21 concert of the semester, but we will see. In the meantime, here is a video of me and my brother playing wine glasses. On a side note, I know that wine glasses as an instrument are often called a glass harp, but this presupposes that the wine glasses are arranged in a full scale. I intend to only use enough glasses to play a particular motif, so I don't consider them a full glass harp.

Enjoy the video. Pray for me and wish me luck for the piece.

P.S. If you like the picture above, check out the artist's deviantART page.