"That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?" Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it. "Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment."
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

This piece is an homage to the existentialist satire of Kurt Vonnegut. It begins with a metaphor: the sound of free flying insects or, more accurately, the echo of that freedom captured in the rounded contours of polished amber. The shape of the amber is formed by a swirling cloud of sound that flows without any firm destination, much like life itself. Melodies try to escape, new moments try to invade, but the boundary of the amber remains unbroken. In keeping with the sci-fi framework of Slaughterhouse-Five, I had the quirky soundtrack from The Twilight Zone in mind before I sat down to write this piece, although little of it survived. Instead, the caught-in-the-twilight aspect of Vonnegut's main character, Billy Pilgrim, who believes himself "unstuck in time", inspired these chord progressions. "Player Piano" was Vonnegut's first published story; I'm honored to add my piano to one of his best books. One of the many eye-opening books I had the good fortune of knowing as a youth, I read this one when I was 16 years old. I thank my older rock n' roll brother Tim for making me a life-long science fiction fan and my friend Peter Verbrick for introducing me to Vonnegut.

In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance.
― Jeanette Winterson, The World and Other Places: Stories

The energetic opening brings to mind the progressive rock of Keith Emerson and the 20th Centrury experimentations of Igor Stravinsky, with just a touch of Count Basie and Bob Fosse thrown in. The second half is more Erik Satie and Stan Getz. The spoken quotation sits in the space between chaos and quietude. Jeannette Winterson is sometimes a confounding author, revealing unexpected insights with profound, well placed philosophical one-liners. These revelations stayed with me far longer than any of her plots or characters. The music is a philosophical statment, rather than an accompaniment to any specific Winterson story.

“I have been mortal,” said the Unicorn, “and some part of me is mortal yet. I am full of tears and hunger and the fear of death, although I cannot weep, and I want nothing, and I cannot die. I am not like the others now, for no unicorn was ever born who could regret, but I do. I regret.”

[music interlude]

“Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart,” said the Butterfly. “I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

Based on the fantasy novel The Last Unicorn, this piece combines jazz, tango and blues to create a sense of magic, struggle and redemption. In addition to motifs for the Last Unicorn and the oracle Butterfly, a bit of the menacing Red Bull has worked its way into the music, especially during the tango portions. For those who haven't read the book, the Last Unicorn was transformed by Schmendrick the Magician into human form in order to disguise her from the Red Bull. She is transformed back before the end of the story, but her human experience haunts her in many ways, thus her unfamiliar feelings of regret. Even though the Butterfly seems to be the star of the piece, dominating the movement of the right hand, it was Schmendrick who had the biggest influence on my writing. The bumbling, uncertain, yet crafty and occasionally brilliant magician is the character with whom I most identified – and still do 45 years later. The tension between springtime's enchantments and the mortal heartbreak of coming winter define the interplay throughout.

In the evening a strange thing happened: the twenty families became one family, the Children were the children of all. The loss of home became one loss, and the Golden Time in the West was one dream. And it might be that a sick child threw despair into the hearts of twenty families, of a hundred people; that a birth there in a tent kept a hundred people quiet and awestruck trough the night and filled a hundred people with the birth-joy in the morning. Every night a world created, friends made and enemies established; a world complete with braggarts and with cowards, with quiet men, with humble men, with kindly men. Every night relationships that make a world; and every morning the world torn down like a circus.
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

I used an Oscar Peterson-style style of music to speak to the hopes and dreams of the era, in contrast to the loss and struggle depicted in much of the novel's action. Each verse demonstrates a different kind of inner optimism, grit, devil-may-care delusion, shared desperation and unstoppable drive that pushed thousands of people westward during the tragedy of the dust bowl years. Steinbeck alternates between character-based narration and poetic commentary; my scenes change and change again, creating a kaleidoscope of lives, energy, hope. There is a dreamy quality to the realism Steinbeck chronicled; I hope my music mirrors that, especially the section in the beginning (under my talking) and the recapitulation at the end when expectations recede into the swirling dust, just as they do in the book.

Love: the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The inventiveness of using multiple perspectives in The Unbearable Lightness of Being was a revelation to me when I first read the book as a young man. Profoundly haunting. I try to capture this essence with a simple left hand continuum overlaid by a melody that uses dissonance to highlight its beauty. Chopin influences emerge, yet there is something contemporarily cinematic about the piece which places it squarely in our modern world. Love takes patience, and these hidden phrases reveal themselves slowly. Kundera, a Czech-born French writer, was influenced by Kafka, Nietzche, Proust (and others). I've read every one of Kundera's books. I hope you can hear the Czech and French influences folded into the occasionally rushed phrasing, the the romantic melodrama and the hint of the ridiculous conviction that love is worth any amount of pain and ruination.

…I wish it had been a dream now and that I had never hooked the fish and was alone in bed. Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” I killed the shark that hit my fish, he thought. Now I do not even have the harpoon. The shark is cruel and able and strong and intelligent. But I was more intelligent than he was… Perhaps not. Perhaps I was only better armed.
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

The Impressionist opening creates a dreamy soundscape on the edges of insanity, like the effect the sea had on the Old Man that fateful day. Along with the Debussy/Ravel influence, there is a hint of Spanish melody and Latin polyrhythm during the whole-tone blues section, an homage to Hemingway's Cuban setting. As in the book, the listener is presented with the motion of waves, floating disorientation and unmoored exhaustion. Yet the lasting impression is of an unfinished mythic journey. In this novelette, "the one that got away" goes far beyond the normal fish story. Instead of being a simple fable about loss, or stretching the truth, the greatest gift imparted to the reader is an example of noble pursuit, humbling fortitude and admiration that can only be forged in defeat.

Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves.
― Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Dignity can create the illusion that nothing will deter you from being who you are, no matter the impediment encountered or the length of time that passes. The same can be said for the playful elegance of wearing scarves. This piece flows like a slow motion scarf in the wind, never striking exactly the same pose twice. Appropriately, there is a touch of cynicism in the graceful sophistication of the musical variations. Eggers is poking fun at "dignity" in this quote, but his characters courageously struggle to find it, to create it, although rarely with respectable consistency. Looking at them from the outside, society might see nothing dignified about them. But on the inside, they are splendid and noble and confounding. Taking a page out of both Duke Ellington's and Brad Mehldau's stylings, I pay homage to them as well as Eggers. Side note: This quote and music also reminds me of Masha when she says, in Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, "I feel as if I had been in the world a thousand years, and I trail my life behind me like an endless scarf."

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or have your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never fear or distrust, never dream of regretting. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
― T. H. White, The Once and Future King

When I first encountered Merlin giving this advice to young Arthur, he might as well have been talking directly to me. The character of Merlin has been a Jungian archetype at the center of my identity for as long as I can remember. My father was a huge Le Morte d'Arthur fan, which I read in 5th grade. The Once and Future King catapulted me into more modern Merlin novels, from Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave to Parke Godwin's Firelord to Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon and more. Once I felt like I had exhausted the fictional aspect of the story, I turned to academic studies on the Arthurian legend; on druids and shamanism; and Medieval history in general, books that provided research for my unfinished Celtic musical/opera, Merlyn. I began Merlyn as a college student in 1980 with my friend Lyn Miller, then revived the idea in 1994, but other projects intervened. Although this piece is in a completely different musical style than Merlyn, it is buoyed by optimism, nostalgia, playfulness, curiosity and the power of learning, all hallmarks of the magical wizard. There is even a darkly stygian section where you can hear him casting spells as time runs backwards in an effort to escape the tragedy he tried so hard to avert. Indeed, the anti-intellectual forces of the coming Early Middle Ages nearly swallowed the light that was Merlin's Camelot. Nearly.

…Now I will do nothing but listen,
To accrue what I hear into this song.

My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.

Writing and talk do not prove me,
I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face,
With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself.
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from,
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,
This head more than churches, bibles, and all creeds.
Divine am I inside and out.

I fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing soul,
My course runs below the soundings of plummets.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from under the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

― Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” (edited/rearranged), Leaves of Grass

I often wonder if I would have become an artist if I had never encountered the writings of Walt Whitman. More than any single author, he was responsible for me becoming a writer. It was a Whitmanesque-styled poem I wrote as a sophomore in college that proved to me I could write. But more than that, his all-encompassing love and courage inspired me to pursue honest self-expression. He is in my personal pantheon of saints – for his life choices as well as his words. For this piece I've rearranged some of his more famous phrases from "Song of Myself," the central poem of "Leaves of Grass." The music I chose is the title track from my first solo piano album, Morning Whispers. The version on that album always seemed more an anthem than a deeply personal statement and I've wanted to rerecord it for years. I've include a version without me talking as a free download bonus track at the end of Disc 2 (see Track 18 below).

We sense in music an extension of ourselves, a reminder of our own potential. Music is an aural manifestation of the Universal; the Unspoken. Through its language, we become one... with stars, with the condensation of Disorder, with the Math of Existence; with Harmony, Dissonance, Resolution. It speaks importantly to the troubled, dispelling loneliness and discontent; and, sometimes spelling them out with empathetic honesty. It offers no excuses, no subterfuge; occasional perfection. Its voice discovers deep recesses of thought and feeling where truth implants itself. It transforms a map of the revolving, interdependent heavens into a heaven within – an Eden of unmasked joy and naked pain, of co-creation and shared destruction, of linkage and love. I've always dreamt that with my two hands I would touch the sky.
― Tobin Mueller, adapted from thoughts presented by Seymour Bernstein

These words are heavily inspired by the great piano teacher Bernstein and his outlook on life and music. The music is from my 1995 musical drama, Creature, and I cannot help but hear the original lyrics as I play: "I won't leave you; what survives lives in your heart. I won't leave you; I will always be there. What is memory but the love you have breathed within? Sing it, sing it on your lips… to mine, to mine." There is something romantic about imagining we are made of stardust, not just metaphorically but evolutionarily. I'm inspired by the poetic congruencies between celestial physics and the rigorous structures of music theory. Like gazing up into the stars, experiencing music transcends rules and theories. There is a deep magic in listening closely; an augmented magic in composing, in playing, in channeling music; an evolving through-line of genres and theory that has been passed down through the centuries. I experience a sense of magic every time I sit at the piano – a very old magic that, paradoxically, makes me feel very young. This piece is meant to represent a prologue to that kind of rebirth, an appeal to the cyclical wonders of life.

I can’t tell you exactly what I’m looking for, but I’ll know it when it happens. I want to be breathless and weak, crumpled by the entrance of another person inside my soul. I want to be violated by insight.
― Aimee Bender, "Call My Name," The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

This haunting piece plays out as if I, the pianist, am searching for something, only to interrupt myself before it can be found. "I can't tell you exactly what I'm looking for..." I confide in the middle of the song, as if I'm talking about the meandering music. This is intentional. I wrote this more as a study of the kind of women Aimee Bender portrays than to illustrate the specific words I quote. "I want to be violated" is a particularly jarring phrase, yet there is nothing jarring in the music. Bender's female characters are often overcome by melancholy, yet respond with volatility, as in the jilted young woman who goes to the local library and has aggressive sex with a stranger, betraying the quiet sanctuary of the books she loves. Or, sometimes they respond with powerless calm, like the woman who watches the lover she no longer loves slowly devolve into an ape, then an amphibian, then a primordial amoeba – and she still cannot leave him. So, instead of capturing the desire to be "violated by insight," I instead reveal the person who wants so to be filled with something she cannot define. I change keys at the end in a hopeful nod to a happy surprise perhaps waiting around the next turn.

'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.'
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

Flourishes of garden faerie magic and childlike storytelling open the piece. Once the Wooden Horse explains the physical downsides of becoming Real, I switched into a more adult blues style. The bluesy middle section is a testament to the fortitude and resilience required to be Real. I fashioned a certain amount of 'rabbit hopping' into the lurching left hand in order to maintain a sense of play throughout. Devotees of The Velveteen Rabbit might be surprised by my coupling this famous passage with one from a far different kind of novel: Atonement. (Devotees of Ian McEwan might be even more surprised!) Forty years separated my reading of these two books but, for some reason, the McEwan quotation made me think of the Skin Horse. I felt like it could well be a speech she would share with the Velveteen Rabbit a little bit later down the road... [I thank my son, Carl, for giving me "Atonement" to read. It is a book I would've otherwise missed.]

One day I realized that I no longer dreamed of what I would do when I was whole again. My will burned to reach that point, and then suddenly was nothing… I had adjusted, somehow. I had evolved in that unfamiliar region, plodding my stolid way to where the scientists and Remakers of the world congregated. The means had become the end. If I regained my [whole self], I would become someone new, without the desire that defined me… I realized I was not looking for fulfillment but for dissolution. I would pass my body on to a newborn, and rest.
― China Miéville, Perdido Street Station

These few lines encapsulate the crisis of life felt by many people as they grow older. Miéville is one of the best new voices in contemporary science fiction. The worlds he creates, unlike most of his predecessors, are based on completely alien cultures and psychologies. There are no human characters to interpret them or to rule over them. The reader must suspend all sense of ethnocentricity and historical destiny. The result is a tour de force of imagination and uncommon storytelling. Perdido Street Station is an extremely dark tale driven by characters whose moral standards and pursuits for fulfillment would fit well into a Victor Hugo novel. Magic and steampunk technology coexist alongside clashing ethical frameworks and a foreboding sense of inescapable doom. Guilt, the desire for redemption, scientific ambition and existential heroism in the face of devistation make this a fascinatingly poignant tale. I chose an unusual harmonic structure to give the piece a slightly alien musical context: Modal Blues Impressionism. Having a lullaby slowly develop within the music was my way of bringing in a sense of optimism, a hint of the better future we all hope for even as our own lives come to a close. [I thank my son, Anton, for turning me onto this book/series. The song itself is dedicated to my first grandchild, Eleanor "Nora" Chase Mueller.]

But this man had set down with a hammer and chisel and carved out a stone water trough to last ten thousand years. Why was that? What was it that he had faith in? It wasn't that nothin' would change. Which is what you might think, I suppose. He had to know better'n that. I've thought about it a good deal... And I have to say that the only thing I can think is that there was some sort of promise in his heart. And I don't have no intentions of carvin' a stone water trough. But I would like to be able to make that kind of promise. I think that's what I would like most of all.
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old Men

No Country For Old Men is the only book included in this collection that I read after seeing the film. Much of the film is harsh – and I wasn't sure I would have read the book until I watched the final speech by Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (played by Tommy Lee Jones). That's when I realized why my daughter, Sarah, wanted me to read the book. Magnificent. The story does not end with a confrontation between the hero and villain, like most westerns. Rather, Bell is sitting with his wife at the breakfast table and relates two dreams he had the night before. In the second dream, Bell explains that his father is riding ahead to start a fire for them in “all that dark, all that cold.” Bell knows death looms in the future, but he trusts that his father, who had passed away years ago, is waiting for him somewhere out there in the great unknown. Like his father, Bell now realizes he is living in “no country for old men.” His time, marked by cleaner virtue and straightforward encounters, has passed. Although this is a moment to which I strongly related, I chose instead a passage from the book that displays a kernel of hope that had driven Bell forward throughout his life, even if he could not define that hope in words. It's an innate faith that dwells in certain people, as deeply seeded as DNA. I had considered using country & western music stylings for this track, but settled instead on Hard Bob. (It is a wonder of the passage of time that Bebop can now be considered the music of old men.) The angular phrases reminded me of the strokes of a sculptor. Each modulation felt like a chisel being reset, a new layer of stone being carved out. There is also something unsettling about the shifting jazz meters, even as certain phrases repeat specific rhythms, like Bell's life. The music makes the quotation more of a momentary musing, philosophical questions posed as random thoughts while on a walk. Sometimes these sorts of thoughts end up meaning far more to us then we might imagine. Perhaps this is why, at the very end, the motif of the Butterfly from The Last Unicorn visits, fluttering over the stone trough, considering it in a new light.

Had I been dulled in the brain to match my lungs of dust
There'd be no recollection I could trust.
Yet I, despite my guilt, despite my grief,
Watch the Pacific sunset, in glowing colors and sharp relief,
Painting the white clouds when the day is spent,
As if it were my will and testament ―
As if my first impressions were my last,
And time had made them more defined...
But the sky is overcast, here in autumn, and my mind
Basks in the light I never left behind.
― Clive James, Sentenced to Life

I was drawn to this quote for many reasons. The first was James' reference to "lungs of dust." My own lungs of dust have freed me from much of life's previous ambitions, enabling me to reorder both what is important and what I view as beauty. His last line is fabulously unexpected yet perfectly framed, which is why I tapped it for the title. There is so much light inside our minds, so much that will never be released, recorded, heard or understood by others; so much that can never be shared. Yet it illuminates such a wondrous space within. This piece layers major 7ths and 9ths over minor 3rds and 4ths, creating a sense of open light floating over an other-dimensional dusk. Clive James is known more for his humor and social critiques, but this honest passage written as he confronts his final years is precious and true, perfect for the end of this collection.