AH! SUNFLOWER

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Ah! Sunflower from Ten Blake Songs

Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun:
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the travellers journey is done.

Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:
Arise from their graves and aspire,
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

- William Blake

It’s almost unfathomable that for the first few months of the year, as we turned the corner into 2020, I never felt that I had enough time. Time felt like a precious commodity. It constantly felt like there weren’t enough hours in the day. Trying to carve out hours to accomplish all the tasks on my to-do list and catch up with the many friends, family and colleagues in my life felt like trying to hold on to water with my bare hands, drops constantly slipping through my fingers.

Now, with the world locked down for safety, I find myself feeling as though I’m drowning in time. Banned from our concert halls and opera houses, many of us musicians (Americans, in particular) have been told we will not be able to perform for live audiences until next year at the earliest. Even that start date remains tentative at best. Not really certain when we will be able to return to the live stage, isolated from our colleagues and audiences, this moment feels endless. Much like Blake’s droopy sunflower, I find myself “weary of time”.

Blake’s sunflower poem has a somewhat cyclical view of time: the Youth and the Pale Virgin are images that hearken back to an innocence lost. Their resurrection from their respective graves and aspiration to the same ‘golden’ paradise that is the Sunflower’s destination imply the future promise of an innocence regained. The sunflower has a multi-dimensional relationship to time: while it’s rooted in the present, it is simultaneously looking back to a time that has been lost and looking forward to a time when the future will meet the past.

We are so like Blake’s Sunflower in this way: counting the steps of the sun until a vaccine or an effective treatment (or better yet, both) arrive, believing that once a solution is found, we can re-open our economies and return to life as “normal”. But will it ever be possible to regain the innocence of our pre-COVID world-views? Should we? Aren’t there valuable lessons from this moment of seemingly frozen time? Hasn’t the suspension of our norms illuminated how some of our systems are not serving us nor keeping us safe? Shouldn’t we carry those valuable lessons forward into whatever comes next?

Either way, I’m still weary of time. I miss hugging my niece and holding my 1 year old nephew. I miss being able to touch a friend’s shoulder. I miss rehearsing with colleagues. I miss earning an income. I miss being in the concert hall. I miss the incomparable, uplifting feeling of 150 people joining together in the same space to make beautiful music that has the power to elevate the soul. I miss being able to bring strangers together through song.

I’m here, counting the steps of the sun to combat my weariness, and seeking after whatever sweetness that golden clime promises to hold at the end of this pandemic.

This project is a fiscally sponsored project of FRACTURED ATLAS, and was made possible in part through a grant from SAN FRANCISCO FRIENDS OF CHAMBER MUSIC / INTERMUSIC SF.

To find our more information and to make a TAX-DEDUCTIBLE donation to support the continuation of this project please visit: https://fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/nicholas-phan-recording-projects