Beneath the Pale Light 

• The lost abstract painting Way Home, sent by Tommy Chen to the São Paulo Biennial in 1959, inspired me to create this special piece of music—an attempt to weave together the fragmented memories of that era ...

Between dusk and the birth of dawn,

a boundary fades

white light, like snow, devours all form,

save for a single silent tree.

Far off, perhaps a sea,

or the layered tides of memory.

Shadows stagger, brushstrokes whisper,

black and gray quarreling in quiet ink,

then falling still into the hush of a river.

A winding path leads to nowhere named,

as if someone once walked there—

footprints gone, story unfinished,

only dust and the echo of light remain.

We’ve seen this landscape in our sleep,

not sure if before we were born,

or after we are gone.

Beyond the canvas, someone sighs.

Beneath the pale light

it's me.  And it’s you.