Imagine this: You write down the words you wish to be told most in the world. Each sentence starts with “I
will.”
SUMMER
Movement I. SOLSTICE (Summer) (5 min)
(REPEATED) I will see you when you are speaking from unimaginable depths, and I will hold you. I will bear this burden with you and it will not be a burden. I will receive it. I will hold it. I will receive you. I will hold you. I will watch the setting sun with you as it fades from purple to blue to black, and I will be there afterwards. I will see your body bare and still, I will live here. Everything I have wanted is here. There is no need to be brave. I will be brave. I will hear you say you want all of this and I will not think you are ugly.
Movement II. CONVERGENCES (5 min)
FALL
Movement III. LIGHTS FISSURING (4 min)
(REPEATED) Lights fissuring in and out. Pressure rising in my chest. Snow drifting. Eddying. Dust haunted by light. It's almost March, and there’s an ethereal chorus in my left ear. Falling in love. I admire a sweep of cabbage leaf, hold it to my ear like a shell. I was deeply moved. I have been feeling younger, climbing a new mountain. I can feel you right behind me, especially, in the naked morning light. I am learning all your names. You breathe and it lands right in between my shoulder blades, the single point where light pools. Converges. The single point I see reflected in your pupils, when we watch each other, especially, in the dark.
WINTER
Movement IV. MANTRA (5 min)
(REPEATED, OBSCURED) In the dark, I repeat to myself a mantra:
I will cut my words two inches above the end. They will mend and grow with patience.
I will not fear the word “love.” I will instead remember that beyond my fingertips, there is breath.
Movement V. SOLSTICE (Winter) (7 min)
I have thought often since of the remnants of loss, the remains, so to speak. To grieve a body, despite, sometimes, the lack of a physical one. Objects given become bodies. Memories become bodies. The 17,000 photos on my phone become a body.
Our love, tumultuous as it was, made me feel as if I was cupped in the palm of the world.
When our time stopped, and mine continued, you did not disappear. You left me all these bodies to bury. Your remnants were strewn about, the remains of this vast, all-consuming love left for me to pick up. My writing as a body, but also, a burial.
I have set some rules for this burial. Before a body takes their place into the spaces I have unearthed, I must hold them tenderly, roll them around in my hands like a pearl. I must observe the ways they shine, count the scratches, and hold them to my ears to hear their soft whooshing. This may hurt. Sometimes, it may feel as if I am falling in. But every burial needs proper rites in order for something to grow. I will observe the soft earth that rests on top and wait to greet what pushes through.
(PAUSE)
On the peak of the mountain, I drew three lines in the sand. One for loving you with everything I was, one for loving you with everything I am, and one for loving you with everything I will be.
SPRING
MVMT VI. A SINGLE POINT (3 min)
I have learned since that I am not writing to you, at least not the you that you are now.
That these letters, if I may call them that, have instead become a ritual of repetition, and through this ritual, like a word repeated until it has lost its original meaning, taking on something new, (FASTER) through returning to the same points in this cycle, over and over and over again, I may coalesce these words into a single point, a point so bright and dense that it explodes from the inside, (pause) a supernova showering light over this struggling body of mine. (PAUSE)
(AFTER SECOND TONE) I once wrote something similar about my love for you, in a letter that I left on your pillow. I said, If we were to condense all our time spent together, all our time spent loving one another, would it condense into a single point? Would it explode, raining over past, present, and future, therefore proving the simultaneity of time?
MVMT VII. EQUINOX (4 min)
MVMT VIII. FIRST, (EPILOGUE/SOUND BATH) (12 min)
The night before I left, I dreamed I was swimming in a golden ocean, so pale and translucent that I could see the sand, glimmering, just beyond my feet. I couldn’t touch the bottom at first, floating gently over each puff of wave. There is someone far ahead of me, a silhouette against the red-rimmed horizon. I have been following them, swimming.
As I swim, the ground rises slowly to meet me, until I am walking, pushing against the gravity of the water, moving with great effort. The person remains at the same distance, I can see the trail of ripples behind them. Their presence feels familiar, like a long forgotten feeling that was once part of me. Right before another step lands, I wake. Sleep recedes from my body in waves. I can still feel the sand clinging to my feet. My limbs are heavy, waterlogged.
Imagine this: A mountain of which, from the highest point, the ocean is visible from all sides. Imagine, you and I are climbing this mountain in silence, our packs are heavy and we must save our breath. We stop to eat, to sit, to look, sometimes around us, sometimes at each other. On the peak of the mountain, we draw three lines in the sand. One for loving each other with everything we were. One for loving each other with everything we are. One for loving each other with everything we will be.
It’s getting late. It is here we must part ways.
I start down the mountain. I am eager to make it to my last stop before nightfall. I look back as the lines disappear over the curve of the hill and out of my sight.
SOLSTICE (2022-present), with Scott Li, Claire Beini Zhang, Eli Pandolfi, and Lukas Mackinney.
This website was made and designed by Claire Beini Zhang with special thanks to Max Hamilton.
SUMMER
Movement I. SOLSTICE (Summer) (5 min)
(REPEATED) I will see you when you are speaking from unimaginable depths, and I will hold you. I will bear this burden with you and it will not be a burden. I will receive it. I will hold it. I will receive you. I will hold you. I will watch the setting sun with you as it fades from purple to blue to black, and I will be there afterwards. I will see your body bare and still, I will live here. Everything I have wanted is here. There is no need to be brave. I will be brave. I will hear you say you want all of this and I will not think you are ugly.
Movement II. CONVERGENCES (5 min)
FALL
Movement III. LIGHTS FISSURING (4 min)
(REPEATED) Lights fissuring in and out. Pressure rising in my chest. Snow drifting. Eddying. Dust haunted by light. It's almost March, and there’s an ethereal chorus in my left ear. Falling in love. I admire a sweep of cabbage leaf, hold it to my ear like a shell. I was deeply moved. I have been feeling younger, climbing a new mountain. I can feel you right behind me, especially, in the naked morning light. I am learning all your names. You breathe and it lands right in between my shoulder blades, the single point where light pools. Converges. The single point I see reflected in your pupils, when we watch each other, especially, in the dark.
WINTER
Movement IV. MANTRA (5 min)
(REPEATED, OBSCURED) In the dark, I repeat to myself a mantra:
I will cut my words two inches above the end. They will mend and grow with patience.
I will not fear the word “love.” I will instead remember that beyond my fingertips, there is breath.
Movement V. SOLSTICE (Winter) (7 min)
I have thought often since of the remnants of loss, the remains, so to speak. To grieve a body, despite, sometimes, the lack of a physical one. Objects given become bodies. Memories become bodies. The 17,000 photos on my phone become a body.
Our love, tumultuous as it was, made me feel as if I was cupped in the palm of the world.
When our time stopped, and mine continued, you did not disappear. You left me all these bodies to bury. Your remnants were strewn about, the remains of this vast, all-consuming love left for me to pick up. My writing as a body, but also, a burial.
I have set some rules for this burial. Before a body takes their place into the spaces I have unearthed, I must hold them tenderly, roll them around in my hands like a pearl. I must observe the ways they shine, count the scratches, and hold them to my ears to hear their soft whooshing. This may hurt. Sometimes, it may feel as if I am falling in. But every burial needs proper rites in order for something to grow. I will observe the soft earth that rests on top and wait to greet what pushes through.
(PAUSE)
On the peak of the mountain, I drew three lines in the sand. One for loving you with everything I was, one for loving you with everything I am, and one for loving you with everything I will be.
SPRING
MVMT VI. A SINGLE POINT (3 min)
I have learned since that I am not writing to you, at least not the you that you are now.
That these letters, if I may call them that, have instead become a ritual of repetition, and through this ritual, like a word repeated until it has lost its original meaning, taking on something new, (FASTER) through returning to the same points in this cycle, over and over and over again, I may coalesce these words into a single point, a point so bright and dense that it explodes from the inside, (pause) a supernova showering light over this struggling body of mine. (PAUSE)
(AFTER SECOND TONE) I once wrote something similar about my love for you, in a letter that I left on your pillow. I said, If we were to condense all our time spent together, all our time spent loving one another, would it condense into a single point? Would it explode, raining over past, present, and future, therefore proving the simultaneity of time?
MVMT VII. EQUINOX (4 min)
MVMT VIII. FIRST, (EPILOGUE/SOUND BATH) (12 min)
The night before I left, I dreamed I was swimming in a golden ocean, so pale and translucent that I could see the sand, glimmering, just beyond my feet. I couldn’t touch the bottom at first, floating gently over each puff of wave. There is someone far ahead of me, a silhouette against the red-rimmed horizon. I have been following them, swimming.
As I swim, the ground rises slowly to meet me, until I am walking, pushing against the gravity of the water, moving with great effort. The person remains at the same distance, I can see the trail of ripples behind them. Their presence feels familiar, like a long forgotten feeling that was once part of me. Right before another step lands, I wake. Sleep recedes from my body in waves. I can still feel the sand clinging to my feet. My limbs are heavy, waterlogged.
Imagine this: A mountain of which, from the highest point, the ocean is visible from all sides. Imagine, you and I are climbing this mountain in silence, our packs are heavy and we must save our breath. We stop to eat, to sit, to look, sometimes around us, sometimes at each other. On the peak of the mountain, we draw three lines in the sand. One for loving each other with everything we were. One for loving each other with everything we are. One for loving each other with everything we will be.
It’s getting late. It is here we must part ways.
I start down the mountain. I am eager to make it to my last stop before nightfall. I look back as the lines disappear over the curve of the hill and out of my sight.
SOLSTICE (2022-present), with Scott Li, Claire Beini Zhang, Eli Pandolfi, and Lukas Mackinney.
This website was made and designed by Claire Beini Zhang with special thanks to Max Hamilton.
