Mixed Metaphors (2006)
PURCHASE SCORE
Mixed Metaphors
a set of three cabaret songs for soprano and piano // ~ 6:30
Texts by Lisa DeSiro
Commissioned by Lisa DeSiro for a concert of cabaret music
Program Note:
The poetry for Mixed Metaphors was written by Lisa DeSiro who, as a collaborative pianist, commissioned the songs in 2006. In writing this set of three cabaret songs, I tried to blend the absurd and the frivolous, the ironic and the satirical. The songs are serious and silly. They contain an inherent sincerity, a characteristic intrinsic in DeSiro’s poetry.
Songs:
Blinded (2:20)
Thirst (1:30)
Living Alone (2:30)
Texts:
Blinded
Caressing the bare skin of your back,
tracing vertebrae and the ridges of your ribs,
I tried to read you, feeling with my fingertips
for language, wordlessly in the dark;
I wanted to climb the surface of you,
sending tendrils and tender leaves in all directions
like a vine, twining my limbs around your body.
Thirst
Formidably high in the black sky
the half moon, like a chalice,
tilts itself toward the earth.
Would that I were able
to stretch myself up
and sip from that luminous cup.
Living alone
one is affected most not by
the singleness, the lack of company,
but by the absence of conversation
which leaves room only for thought.
The danger is that what the mind creates
the body accepts as real —
such is the power of imagination.
Even when the body escapes in sleep,
the mind doesn’t know how to stop
and continues its busywork
in the form of dreams. Thus
day and night, waking and sleeping,
one is tormented. The intellect
understands sometimes it is better to let go;
the heart always wants to hold on.
In-between, one’s life takes shape.