Paul Pines

Pines Songs

This selection of poems, from several manuscripts, represent song cycles set by composer Daniel Asia, who has been working with Paul Pines's texts since they met over ping-pong at the MacDowell Colony ten years ago. A conductor, as well as a composer, he is the co-founder of the contemporary chamber ensemble "Musical Elements." His work has been commissioned by foundations (Fromm, musicians, (American Composers Orchestra) and colleges. The New York Times has described his music as "post-Webern impressionism…" This also describes his game of ping pong.

#6

  • Think of yourself as an idea
  • through which time is crystallized.

  • Say you have occurred to yourself
  • as an idea and time as the silent

  • architect of its outlines,
  • say further that you fear

  • its shape still conforms
  • to numerous things no longer here.

  • Consider yourself contained
  • by a form that seems determined

  • by absences, to depend upon them.
  • You ask yourself, "What am I

  • doing in this abstraction as if
  • it were my experience

  • and I were just an activity
  • of time trying to make itself clear?"

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