Vanishing from the Flux of Time
On Schubert, childhood summers, and the elusive search for timelessness in adult life
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To be sung on the water
Amid the shimmer of the mirroring waves
the rocking boat glides, swan-like,
on gently shimmering waves of joy.
The soul, too, glides like a boat.
For from the sky the setting sun
dances upon the waves around the boat.
Above the tree-tops of the western grove
the red glow beckons kindly to us;
beneath the branches of the eastern grove
the reeds whisper in the red glow.
The soul breathes the joy of heaven,
the peace of the grove, in the reddening glow.
Alas, with dewy wings
time vanishes from me on the rocking waves.
Tomorrow let time again vanish with shimmering
wings, as it did yesterday and today,
until, on higher, more radiant wings,
I myself vanish from the flux of time.
Nafpaktos, Greece sometime in the mid-1980s
This is a liminal time of year, as concert-seasons and semesters come to an end and days of schoolwork and study bleed into summer days of leisure. Vacation destinations begin to brace themselves for the crowds of tourists on summer holiday, and many places of white-collar work start mandating half-days on Fridays, extending weekends by a half day. It’s a time that I loved as a child, in which I could begin to sleep in on the weekdays, enjoying unfettered time at home until we made our annual summer trip to visit our family in Greece. Those trips always fell into a routine once we landed in the family town of Nafpaktos, a sweet beach-town that grew up around an ancient Venetian fortress and harbor on the coast of the Corinthian Gulf. Every morning, my brother and I would head to the beach shortly after waking up, playing in the chilly waters of the Gulf until we were too sun-baked, and then heading to the beachside cafes to cool off under the shade of the plane trees that grew along the water, filling ourselves with meze and listening to the buzz of the cicadas and struggling to follow along with my mother’s conversations with our relatives in the Greek language neither of us ever managed to master fluently.
While they only ever lasted four to five weeks each year, those summer trips to Nafpaktos always felt like time stopped. Part of this was the time in which we grew up in the 1980s, a time before cell phones and the internet. A voracious bookworm, I read countless books on the beach those summers, with seemingly infinite time at my disposal. I remember the many voyages across the Atlantic to begin those trips, flying on the megalithic airlines of a bygone era like Pan Am and TWA on planes divided into smoking and non-smoking sections, navigating stressful layovers and flight delays in the Paris and Rome airports. I cannot remember a single journey home. I would lose myself in the heat of those long summer days hiking the ruins of the Venetian fortress that sprawled up the mountainside and swimming in the Gulf, unusually chilly from all of the mountain springs that drained into the waters by the beach.
I am convinced that one reason I ended up settling in the Bay Area is because the region’s topography and climate remind me so much of Greece. Hiking around Marin County or up in the Napa or Sonoma wine countries on warm days, the smells of the arid earth and the views of olive trees in the hot sun take me back to those childhood summers in Greece and fill me with a sense of nostalgia. I’ve continually sought out climates and places near water throughout my adult life, and knowing that I am steps away from an ocean brings me a sense of relief and calm.
The first time I thought seriously about Schubert’s Auf dem Wasser zu singen was on a vacation a few years ago, sea-kayaking with friends along the coast of the Cinque Terre in Italy. We rowed ourselves into a sea cave, and watching the rays of light that broke through the cave opening dance on the surface of the water was mesmerizing. Floating in that cave, Schubert’s tune popped into my head and stuck with me as we made our way back to the beach where we rented our kayaks. Back at shore, as soon as I was back at my phone, I looked up the text to Schubert’s iconic song and was immediately taken back to those Nafpaktian summers without end. I’ve been looking for excuses to sing it ever since.
Kayaking in Cinque Terre, Italy
In my adult life, summers are no longer timeless periods of escape, reading fantasy and science fiction novels and floating in the ocean. Instead, they are actually more intense months of work than the concert season proper, flitting between summer festivals in beautiful locales that I am unable to really enjoy, as I worry about my vocal health and studiously learn and practice unusual repertoire that can feel safer to explore in the festival format, where audiences can be a bit more audacious since they are already filling their days with summer adventure in these more remote places outside of the daily grind of urban centers.
Knowing that this summer is a particularly busy one, I made sure to schedule a few days of vacation in Hawai’i at the beginning of June, when I had a bit of downtime before the intensity of the summer schedule began in earnest. One of the perks of living on the West Coast is that flights to the most remote state of the union are reasonable, both in terms of price and length. Because it was only a short sojourn on the beach, I found myself all too aware that our time there was anything but timeless. One of the last things I did in the morning hours before we checked out of our hotel room and headed back to the airport was grab a snorkeling mask and dive into the ocean for a final swim. Swimming along the Kona coast, I watched hundreds of brightly colored varieties of Tang, Butterflyfish, and Morays swim in and around the reef. I even had the privilege of drifting alongside a sea turtle for a tiny bit and was chased out of a nesting area by a determined and defensive Triggerfish. My face buried in the water watching the incredible beauty of the oceanlife, I almost had the sensation that time was without limit. Lifting my head out of the water and seeing Noah waving at me to come back to the beach so we could finish packing our bags, I found myself acutely wishing that I could, like Schubert’s song, vanish from the flux of time.