Cover Design of Michael Pisaro - Closed Categories in Cartesian Worlds (GW 010)
Michael Pisaro / Greg Stuart - Closed Categories in Cartesian Worlds (GW 010)
To be released in early November.
My Father's Design Tutorial Book (1966)
This is my dad's design tutorial book which was issued in Japan in 1966, titled 'Commercial Design: How to Create Store Design and Layout'.
I found this last issue at an online used book store and got it, since the one my dad used to have was unfortunately discarded by my family when he passed away seven years ago. The book was just delivered to my old home in Japan, one week before the seventh anniversary of my dad's death, and in the middle of the Bon holiday ('Bon' is a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the spirits of one's ancestors).
I saw this design book when I was a little kid, but have never read it seriously since then, so I am really looking forward to seeing it. I had never learned anything about design from my dad when he was alive, but I feel that his influence is always here to help me in doing design.
私の父（座間敏生）が1966年に出した商業デザインの本『コマーシャルデザイン 商店図案の考え方・作り方』の最後の中古の１冊を、ネットの古本屋で見つけたので購入した。父が持っていた本はすべて、他界した後に破棄されてしまったので、古本屋で入手できて本当に良かった。今日ちょうどお盆の最中、父が他界して７年目の命日の１週間前に実家に届いた。父も喜んでいるだろう。
Homemade Gluten-Free Orange Almond Cake
Homemade gluten-free orange almond cake, topped with unsweetened whipped cream. This is a perfect summer dessert to have with afternoon tea (my favorite is Earl Grey tea).
The amount of sugar for the cake sponge is less than half of the most similar American recipes, but it has just the right touch of sweetness. I used 1 tsp of orange oil instead of grated zest of 3 oranges, and poured 2 tablespoons of the mixture of freshly squeezed orange juice, lemon juice and sugar on top after taking the cake out of the oven. I also added 1 tsp of vanilla extract in the sponge batter (which was not written in the original recipe). Even though this cake contains no butter or oil, the cake is surprisingly soft and moist and flavorful.
The bright yellow color of the cake simply came from the organic eggs from Murray's (on Bleecker Street, NYC). I tried eggs from various places in NYC (including some famous organic farms at Union Square Greenmarket), but the ones from Murray's are the best both in taste, quality and freshness.
Recipe was adapted from Susannah Blake's book 'Afternoon Tea'.
MODIFIED RECIPE (8-inch cake)
Ingredients for the cake is: 3 large eggs, 1+1/4 cup (110 g) ground almonds, 1/2 cup (130 g) granulated sugar, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 1 tsp orange oil (or grated zest of 3 unwaxed oranges).
Ingredients for orange syrup is: 1/2 freshly squeezed orange juice, 1 tsp lemon juice, 2 tsp granulated sugar.
Baked at 350F for 25 minute (5 minutes longer than the original recipe).
Another (and crucial) modification I added was to wrap the warm cake in a plastic wrap soon after taking it out of the oven, instead of cooling the cake completely on the wire rack like most American cake recipes suggest. Cooling it on the wire rack will make the cake too dry, so it is important to keep it moist by covering the warm cake in Saran wrap or cake pan until it cools down completely. (This is a common technique used in Japanese cake recipes to keep it moist.) Then wrap the cake in double Saran wraps and rest it in a fridge for several hours to overnight to bring out the best taste. The leftover cake can be stored in the freezer for 3 months, individually double wrapped and put in a freezer (in a Zip Lock bag).
Antoine Beuger / Michael Pisaro 'this place / is love (erst 068)' is released
Antoine Beuger / Michael Pisaro - this place / is love (erst 068) was officially released today. Very happy with the final product, especially how the disc image turned out. One of my favorite CD covers and disc labels I have ever designed. (And the music is fantastic!)
You can see a bigger picture here.
Afternoon Tea on Our Deck
MENU FOR AFTERNOON TEA (6/15/2013)〜アフタヌーンティー at 自宅テラス
Mini Cheese Corn Muffins
Tomato & Cucumber Sandwich on Whole Wheat Bread
Chocolate Cake
Mini Chocolate Mousse Cup
Strawberries
Earl Grey Tea
(all homemade except strawberries, served on Royal Albert china)
Afternoon Tea at Home
MENU FOR AFTERNOON TEA (Thursday June 6, 2013) 〜アフタヌーンティー at Home メニュー
Buttermilk Scones Served with: clotted cream, strawberry jam, homemade lemon curd, whipped cream
Finger Sandwiches on Homemade Whole Wheat Bread (Curried Chicken & Watercress, Smoked Turkey Breast & Cucumber, Tomato, Mozzarella, Basil)
Mini Quiches (w/ bacon, onion, gruyere, parmesan)
Mini Cheddar Corn Muffins
Chocolate Cream Tartlets
Strawberry Tartlets
Mini Chocolate Cup Mousse
Mini Eclairs
Macarons (choice of macarons)- Rose Macarons, Coffee Macarons, Green Tea Macarons
Earl Grey tea (served with lemon slices, milk & sugar)
(All homemade, served on Royal Albert china)
Independent Art Fair 2013 (3/9 in Chelsea, NYC)
Above photo is Michel François' copper tubing work and Richard Aldrich's painting at Bortolami gallery booth, from Independent Art Fair 2013. Michel François was the most fascinating artist whom I found at the art show this year.
You can see more of his works here:
My other photos from Independent Art Fair 2013 is here:
The art show was held at the former Dia Art Foundation building, which used to be my most favorite gallery space in NYC.
Antoine Beuger's Music
Dissolve the borders between the outer world and the inner world with the equality of sound, silence, performer, environment and listener
In order to understand and appreciate Antoine Beuger’s compositions, I strongly recommend you to experience live concerts if possible. One memorable one for me was in 2010, when Ben Owen and Barry Chabala played Beuger’s un lieu pour être deux, and Dominic Lash played calme étendue in a small room of a church in the East Village of Manhattan. I would like to quote a part of my review I wrote afterwards, since it seems to connect with how Beuger’s compositions in general make me feel.
“At most concerts, the musicians and their performed sounds command most of the audience’s attention, but here it felt more like the performers and the environment were existing equally, sharing the same space and time, creating harmonious music as a collective entity of chance events. There was also less of a sense of boundary between the performers and the audience, as if the stillness of the audience were a part of the music, too, and the distance normally existing between the active performers and the passive audience in most live concerts felt much smaller.
The silence of the performer and his instrument seemed to be the core of the space in this piece. They were like a center which united all the environmental sounds heard in the room with transparent threads to the invisible music, so the rustle of trees, cars passing by, chirps of birds, and stomping noises of people upstairs started to feel like parts of the music which was developing silently. Despite there being no actual performed sounds at this point, there was a tight sense of unity over the whole situation – the performer and the instrument which remained still, the environmental sounds randomly coming from outside, the silent audience listening to the whole situation carefully – with all of them sharing the same time and space.
Dominic Lash’s silence did not cause a cooped-up feeling to reject the environmental sounds at all. Instead, it had an openness to accept all the other noises heard in the room, like breathing the air. The naturalness of his silence made me feel that the performer and the audience equally exist here, just like the wind and trees, rivers and oceans equally exist on earth.” (August 12, 2010)
Antoine Beuger’s compositions seem to welcome any possibility. It is not just music that is created by the sounds of the instruments performed from the score, but also music that accepts all the accidental sounds (and noises) happening in a situation equally. If it is performed in an extremely silent room where the environmental noises are hardly heard, or if it is performed in a room where various environmental noises are jumping in, or if the volumes and the natures of outside noises are different, the same composition may give the audience completely different impressions. By accepting these various elements of eventuality, Beuger seems to show that one single composition could contain infinite possibilities in the ways of experiencing the music.
The equality seems to be the key to Beuger’s music – where all the elements including the performers’ sounds, the silences, the environmental sounds, and the audience are all considered as parts of the music. The silence is as important as the sound, the environmental sounds are as important as the performers’ sounds, and the audience is as important as the performer. These elements, normally recognized as opposite subjects facing or confronting with each other (i.e. sound vs. silence, performer vs. audience) in conventional music, seem to become parallel in Beuger’s pieces to move closely together along the time. This unique signature of Beuger’s pieces can be seen in the following two CDs.
Antoine Beuger’s 2010 release keine fernen mehr is a double CD that consists solely of the sounds of whistling. In this piece, Beuger himself whistles in an extremely quiet manner to give the sounds a very fragile, fleeting, flaky texture. Between the individual whistles, there are almost inaudible faint sounds of Beuger’s breath and the room noises at a quiet white noise level. Rather than sounding like a particular pitched sound, Beuger’s whistle contains several different nuances of tones at the same time. The ambiguity of the tone of his whistles makes me feel as if I were listening to the sounds of the wind rather than human sounds. The translucency of Beuger’s whistling, that give the impression of blowing through the gray area between sound and silence, overlap with the white noise of the environmental sounds (both on the CD and in my room) and dissolve the border between the performed sounds and the environmental sounds – as well as the border between sound and silence. And at the same time, the personal nature of the whistling sounds appeals to the listener’s sense directly as if he/she was hearing the sound of his/her own mind, leading him/her to descend down to a deep, calm contemplation, and dissolves the border between the outer world (performed sounds and environmental sounds) and the listener’s inner world (contemplation).
This borderless sense (or equal sense) of the outer world and the inner world is also experienced in Beuger’s 1997 composition calme étendue (spinoza). In this piece, the performer is instructed to read the text of Spinoza’s Ethics very attentively and carefully in a very relaxed tempo (one word in every eight seconds), with a very quiet voice. The performer should not try and suggest a specific meaning to the individual words or groups of words, through emphasis or intonation. Spoken sections alternate with sections of silence. In these silent sections, the performer is instructed to sit quietly, doing nothing, with calm concentration. On the CD released from Edition Wandelweiser in 2001, Beuger himself read the text from Ethics.
With this monotonic manner of reading in between complete silences, Spinoza’s words start to be heard in a very interesting way. The genuine phonetic individuality that is inherent within each word (color, brightness, texture, darkness, softness, solidness, thickness, etc.) starts to emerge without being attached to its meaning. Each word contains a slightly different tone from others, creating a slightly different shape of ripple in the silence after, which makes each silence feel differently nuanced. Just like each person has a different individuality, each word contains a different inner world. In this piece, under these extreme sparse circumstances where each word is presented in its simplest form, the world inherent in each word feels as if it has been enlarged and projected into the following silence. Here, the sounds and the silences have an equal impact over the listener. The immanence of each word projected in the silence after, which contains a slightly different tone and impression, echoes the listener’s inner world to combine to truly compose the music. This makes the whole listening experience of this piece feel intensely personal despite the sparseness and the monotone of the sounds, letting the listener experience something similar to a deep contemplation specific to themselves.
Antoine Beuger composes his music with visible tones and invisible tones, opening a path to connect the outer world (performed sounds and the silences) with the listener’s inner world to make a more unified form of music.
実験音楽ウエブマガジン「surround」来月創刊予定
来月、米国を拠点に、実験音楽を扱うウエブマガジン「surround」が創刊されます。その初刊号に寄稿する長文の音楽評論を、数日前にようやく書き終えました。題名は「Silence, Environment, Performer」というもので、ヴァンデルヴァイザー派を代表する５人の作曲家アントワン・ボイガー、ユルク・フレイ、ラドゥ・マルファッティ、マンフレッド・ヴェルダー、マイケル・ピサロの各々の作品と方向性に焦点を当て、彼らが沈黙、環境、演奏家という３つの要素にどのように取り組んできたか、そしてこれらの要素をどのように関連づけて作曲をしているのかという点について論じてみました。
その下書きとして、過去にいくつかの関連エッセイや音楽評をこのブログに漫然と掲載してきましたが、今回は「沈黙」「環境」「演奏家」というポイントに沿ってそれらの草稿からポイントを絞り出し、５人の作曲家の作品をこの３つのポイントに関連づけて論じることに焦点を当ててみました。元々、まず日本語で仕上げてから英訳するつもりだったのですが、後半から英語に切り替えて、最終的に英語8400字の評論文として完成させました。日本語版は、いつか別の機会に改めて完成させる予定です。これだけ長い突っ込んだ評論文を書くのはずいぶん久しぶりでしたが、自分にとって最も深く共感できるヴァンデルヴァイザー派の音楽について以前から考えてきたことや、各々の作曲家の取り組み方や方向性の違いなどを、今回じっくり掘り下げて書くことができて、とても満足しています。
「surround」は、米国の巨大音楽掲示板「I Hate Music」の主宰者マーク・フローンの企画編集のもとで、海外の音楽ライターや評論家による様々なジャンルの実験的音楽に関する寄稿を掲載していくウエブマガジンです。
Michael Pisaro / Oswald Egger / Julia Holter - The Middle of Life (Die ganze Zeit) (GW 008)
Michael Pisaro’s new piece The Middle of Life (Die ganze Zeit), just released from the Gravity Wave label in January 2013, is his 2011/2012 composition inspired by Austrian contemporary poet Oswald Egger’s 2010 book Die ganze Zeit. The 47’20” long piece consists of Oswald Egger’s readings of the passages Pisaro selected from Die ganze Zeit, Julia Holter’s vocals, Michael Pisaro’s piano and sine tones, Antoine Beuger’s flute, and seven speakers’ readings of the one short sentence of a poem in their own languages. The seven speakers were: Taku Sugimoto (Japanese and English), Kristín Haraldsdottír (Icelandic and English), Kunsu Shim (Korean), Graham Lambkin (English), Didier Aschour (French), Lucie Vitková (Czech and English) and Julia Holter (English). Pisaro also inserted two other field recordings he made on the banks of a river in Neufelden, Austria. Egger’s poetry readings of the passages were recorded in the fields outside of his residence in Hombroich, Germany.
The atmosphere running through this piece is similar to the sense of drifting somewhere between reality and unreality. Oswald Egger’s poetry often contains simple surprises coming from his close and sensitive observations on the subtle beauties of phenomena happening amidst idyllic nature scenes, while at the same time also containing his profound thinking concerning philosophical issues happening in his inner world. In his poetry, the nature scenes in the outside world and his deep thoughts in the inner world move forward together in parallel like two rivers that occasionally meet, while being half overlapped or intertwined with each other, by sharing the same passage of time in the poem. In this piece, Egger’s soft, natural tone of voice with no forceful attitude sounds like he is travelling in tune with the environmental sounds of the river and the bird chirpings, as if he was a part of the forest as well. Meanwhile, his soft yet steady, unpretentious tone of voice conveys the warmth of human nature and the vibration of life. His German readings allow the non-German listeners to hear the sounds and rhythms purely with phonetic perception, without forcing them to be swallowed up in the vertical depth of understanding of the meaning of each word. The listening experience of Egger’s reading is similar to that of listening to the music, or listening to the subtle changes of sounds and rhythms of the river.
Occasionally, Pisaro’s soft sine tones overlap with the sound of the stream of the river or Egger’s reading voice. His sine tones remain subtle and discreet throughout the piece, almost hiding behind the ambient sounds, but also contain a human warmth and thoughtfulness in each tone. While sometimes synchronizing with the sounds of the river or other ambient sounds, his sine tones also seem to reflect the subtle vibrations of a human mind, perfectly echoing Egger’s poetry world where nature and human mind often intertwine with each other. Also in Egger’s poems, it is often found that one nature scene cross-fades to another nature scene and their faint images overlap with each other. A similar beauty is found in Pisaro’s music where his sine tone changes its subtle nuance slowly and gradually as the sound of the river changes its tone.
Another signature force in this piece is the field recording sounds of the rivers appearing in various parts of the piece - sometimes as a peaceful murmur of a brook, sometimes as a swelling torrent of a rapid stream, sometimes as a layer of heavily processed bass sounds of the water. Each change in the texture of the river sound resonates with the sounds of the instruments and Egger’s voice, and it casts a different shade of light on each part of the piece, resembling the delicate mood shifts in the poem.
Around 4 minutes in, there is a break in Egger's speaking parts, and Pisaro plays slow, simple piano sounds in a minor key over the ambient sounds of the river. The slightly melancholic tones of the piano casts a gray shadow over the piece, affecting the way of the sounds of the river and the chirping birds are heard. Soon after that, seven speakers start to read a passage of a poem in different languages of their countries (Japanese, Icelandic, Korean, French, Czech and English), in turn: “In the middle of life I found myself again in a forest (with no path).”
The quiet, contemplative tones of these seven speakers’ voices deepens the melancholic shadow of the piano tones, casting a vertical contrast in the horizontal flow of the music, like the birds’ chirps cast a vertical contrast in the flow of the river sounds. Here, the image of a deep forest overlaps with the depth of human life, and the dark tones of the scene draw the listener to contemplate life momentarily. The melancholic atmosphere in this section was later developed further via the dark night image of Mallarmé’s poem in Pisaro’s companion 2012 piece The Punishment of the Tribe by its Elders (GW 009).
Before long, the melancholic shadow disappears as if the sun came out between the clouds, and Egger’s reading voices begins again over the river sounds and the birds' chirps. In this section, the sounds of the river become louder and more intense, and the birds’ chirps become sharper and piercing. In the middle of these intense ambient sounds, Julia Holter’s soft and quiet vocal comes in. The fleeting, mysterious tones of Holter’s voice evokes in me the ambiguous beauty of two translucent images overlapping with each other somewhere in between the human world and the natural world, reality and unreality, or sound and silence. In Oswald Egger’s poems, there are often scenes like that where one word evokes in the reader’s mind two different images at the same time. This feeling of ‘experiencing something in between two worlds’ is similar to what Holter’s vocal evokes in me.
While Egger’s reading voices came and went over the ambient sounds of the forest, the processed sounds of the river grew more intense like a swelling torrent of a rapid stream. The contrast between the hard, intense sounds of the river and the soft, faint voice of Holter become more distinct here. The intense sounds of the rapid stream gradually recede as Holter’s soft vocal penetrates the air of the scene, as if the spirit of the forest slowly calmed down the tempestuous wind of the storm to reinstate a peace. This sequence is a symbolic moment when the human voice (performer) and the sounds of the river (environment) seem to interact with each other like two human beings – which is a signature of many of Pisaro’s recent pieces.
Around 24 minutes in, Antoine Beuger’s flute enters alongside Julia Holter’s vocal, both in almost inaudible soft volume, under Egger’s reading voice and the ambient sounds of the river and the birds. The faint sounds of Beuger’s flute and Holter’s vocal are perfectly tuned with the sounds of the river and the birds chirping, while bringing subtle wavers of harmonic overtones to the soundscape. Around this point, the harmonic balance of all the sound sources - Egger’s reading voices, the performers’ sounds and the ambient sounds - is remarkable, as if we were listening to a perfectly matched group of musicians.
In a deep silence near the end, Julia Holter’s vocal and Michael Pisaro’s piano (performing Holter’s composition) come in one after the other, accentuating the beauty and the warmth of this piece. Holter’s vocal echoes the faint lyricism and humane nature underlying Pisaro’s composition, while having an unpretentious, transparent air like the wind. These two essences are also found in Egger’s poems. This lyrical beauty of Holter’s vocal, evoking the subtle gradation between two colors, seems to connect Pisaro’s music and Egger’s poetry in an ethereal way.
In The Middle of Life, Michael Pisaro creates music that is deeply attuned to Oswald Egger’s unique poetry world, via the intimate co-performances between performers and environmental sounds. The sensitivity, the warmth and the translucent beauty of plural images in Egger’s poems are synchronized with the sensitivity, the warmth and the translucent beauty of the wavers of harmonic overtones in Pisaro’s music. Julia Holter’s vocal and Antoine Beuger’s flute gently project the essence of Egger’s poem in Pisaro’s piece, and the delicate, warm humane nature of Pisaro’s sine tones connect the world of Egger’s poem, the performers’ sounds and the environmental sounds of field recordings all together in an intimate manner. In this piece, music and poetry resonate with each other – the music contains the poem, the poem contains the music.
■マイケル・ピサロ／オズワルド・エッガー／ジュリア・ホルター「The Middle of Life (Die ganze Zeit)」(GW 008)
今年1月にGravity Waveレーベルから出たマイケル・ピサロの新作「The Middle of Life (Die ganze Zeit)」は、オーストリア人詩人オズワルド・エッガーの2010年の詩集「Die ganze Zeit」にインスピレーションを得てピサロが作曲したものだ。この作品では、オズワルド・エッガー本人による詩の朗読を軸に、ピサロの演奏によるピアノとサイン音、ジュリア・ホルターのボーカル、アントワン・ボイガーのフルート、ピサロがオーストリアで録音した川の急流の２種類のフィールドレコーディング音、そして７人の演奏家（杉本拓、クリスティン・ハロルズドティール、クンス・シム、グレアム・ラムキン、ディディエ・アシュール、ルチエ・ヴィトコヴァ、ジュリア・ホルター）による短い詩の朗読を素材に、47分20秒の曲が構成されている。エッガーによる詩の朗読は、ドイツの自宅の近くで野外録音され、その背景には川の水音や森の鳥のさえずりなどが入っている。
この作品を貫くのは、どこか現実と非現実の狭間にある、何かの中間を漂っていくような感覚だ。オズワルド・エッガーの詩は、自然界で起きている小さな現象の美しさを静かに見つめる素朴で繊細な視点と、人間の内面世界を探る哲学と深い思索にあふれている。彼の詩の世界では、外界の風景とエッガーの内的世界が半分重なり合いながら、同じ時間を共有しつつ川のように流れていく。ここでのエッガー本人による詩の朗読は、背景の自然界の音をさえぎるような強引さは全くなく、 川の水音や森の一部であるかのように、自然音と調和して共に流れていく。その低くソフトな声は、川の水音や鳥のさえずりと調和しながら、人間の生の命の鼓動と温もりをも伝えている。聴き手は、ドイツ語による朗読の意味の理解という垂直的な深みにはまることなく、川の流れの音の微妙な変化に耳を澄ませるがごとく、エッガーの音声とリズムに耳を傾ける。それゆえ、エッガーの詩の朗読は、言葉というより音楽の一部として聴こえている。
川の水音などの環境音やエッガーの詩の朗読の上に時折重なる、ピサロのサイン音のソフトで控えめなトーンが印象的だ。その音は、電子音でありながらも人間の声のような温もりと思慮深さを含み、ある時には、川の水音と共演するような自然さで川の音と重なり、ある時には、人間の心の揺れを思わせる繊細さで微妙にトーンを変化させ、エッガーの詩の世界と重なり合う。エッガーの詩の世界では、自然界の一つのシーンが別のシーンへと半透明に重なりながらクロスフェードするように移り変わっていくことが多い。それは、ピサロのサイン音の響きが、川の水音の変化に合わせて、ゆっくりとニュアンスを変えていく美しさに似ている。
もう一つ、この作品の要となっているのは、様々な場面で挿入されるフィールドレコーディングの川の水音だ。川の水音は、時には穏やかに流れるせせらぎとして、時には激しく流れる急流として、時には電子音のような重厚な音の層に加工されて、曲全体の随所に現れる。その川の水音の質感の変化は、人間の心の動きのような揺らぎを生みつつ、演奏音や朗読の響きと共鳴し、背後から作品の雰囲気を盛り上げている。
エッガーの詩の朗読が途絶えた後、川の水音の上に、ピサロが演奏するピアノの音が、ゆっくりしたテンポとやや重い響きで重なる。かすかにメランコリックな響きを含むピアノの音は、背景の川の水音や鳥のさえずりのニュアンスに、日差しが陰るような微妙な影を落とす。やがて、杉本拓ら７人の演奏家が、同じ一行の詩をそれぞれの母国語 （日本語、アイスランド語、韓国語、英語、フランス語、チェコ語、英語）で一人ずつ朗読する声が入る。７人の朗読者たちの内省的な低く静かなトーンは、水平に流れる川の水音の上に重なる鳥のさえずりの声のように、音楽の中に垂直的なコントラストを生みつつ、背後の静かなピアノの音に様々な色合いの陰りを落としていく。ここでは、深い森のイメージと人生の深遠さのイメージが重なり合い、聴き手を一瞬、深い思索の世界へと導く。このパートのメランコリックな雰囲気は、この作品の続編ともいえるピサロの「The Punishment of the Tribe by its Elders」(GW 009)におけるマラルメの詩の夜のイメージの世界へと引き継がれていく。
やがて雲間から淡い日差しが差し込むように、メランコリックな陰りは消え、再びエッガーの詩の朗読が、川の水音と鳥のさえずりの上に重なる。川の水音はやや激しさを増し、鳥のさえずりも高く鋭いトーンに変わる。そこへジュリア・ホルターの、オブラートで包まれたような柔らかいボーカルが、静かに入る。半分人間でありながら、半分自然界の森の精であるかのような不思議な響きを放つホルターの歌声は、人間界と自然界、音と沈黙、現実と夢の中間で、半透明に重なり合うものの姿をイメージさせる。エッガーの詩では、しばしば一つの言葉が複数の違う世界を同時に想起させ、読者の心に半透明な二つのイメージを重なって映し出すシーンがある。その何かの中間に浮かび上がるような曖昧なイメージが、ホルターの歌声に共通している。やがて、川の水音は激しく高まり、その激しい川の水音と、ホルターの淡いソフトな歌声との間に、コントラストが生まれる。あたかも激しく吹き荒れる嵐を森の精の声が鎮静させていくかのように、ホルターのソフトな歌声を背景に川の水音は次第に静まり、遠のいていき、静かな空間にホルターの透明な歌声だけが残る。このシークエンスは、川の音（環境音）と人間の歌声（演奏音）が人間同士のように交流する象徴的な瞬間だ。中盤に、川の音と鳥のさえずり、エッガーの詩の朗読の上に、アントワン・ボイガーのフルートの音と、ジュリア・ホルターの歌声が、半透明な淡いイメージで静かに入る。ボイガーのフルートとホルターの歌声は、川のせせらぎ音や鳥のさえずりと調和し、自然界の音の一部のように聴こえると同時に、彼らの音が生む倍音の揺らぎが、周囲の自然界の音の聴こえ方に影響している。ここでは、エッガーの朗読の声が、背景の音や楽器音と一層深く調和し、エッガーの朗読、川の水音、小鳥のさえずり、ピサロのピアノとサイン音、ホルターの歌声、フルートの音といったすべての音が、一つの音楽を構成する等しい要素として、楽器同士の共演のように聴こえ始めていることに気づく。
曲の終わり近くで、すべての音が消えた沈黙の中に浮かび上がるジュリア・ホルターのボーカルと、マイケル・ピサロが演奏する静かなピアノ曲（ホルター作曲）は、この作品の透明な美しさと人間的な温かさにアクセントを添えている。ホルターの歌声は、ピサロの作品に内在するほのかなリリシズムと人間的な温もりに同調しつつ、自然界の風の音のような素朴な透明感をあわせ持ち、その両方の特質が内在するエッガーの詩に共鳴して響く。くっきりとした光や色を発する音とは違い、何かの中間にある淡く繊細なグラデーションの美しさを想起させるその音は、ピサロの音楽世界とエッガーの詩の世界と優しく重なり合う。
マイケル・ピサロは、この作品で、オズワルド・エッガーの詩に深く共鳴する音楽世界を、演奏音と環境音による人間同士のような親密な共演を通して詩的に再現してみせた。エッガーの詩の世界に内在する優しさ、繊細さ、温もり、ほのかな半透明のイメージが重なる美しさは、ピサロの音楽がもつ繊細さ、温もり、音同士の共鳴が半透明な倍音の揺らぎを生む美しさに似ている。ジュリア・ホルターの歌声とアントワン・ボイガーのフルートの音から生まれる半透明な美しさは、エッガーの詩の世界を音楽の中にうっすらと投影し、ピサロのサイン音は、自然界の音と同調しつつ、人間的な繊細さと温もりを含む響きでエッガーの詩と演奏音と環境音を一つに結びつける。彼らの演奏音とエッガーの朗読と自然界の音の関わり方は、複数の楽器による息の合った共演を聴いているような親密な響きを含んでいる。この作品では、音楽と詩が共鳴し合い、音楽が詩を含み、詩が音楽を含んでいる。
