…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…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”…

As I’ve worked on this essay in my apartment in the midst of a citywide curfew here in San Francisco, after having spent the afternoons protesting the murderous brutality of the police against black men, these poems and Vaughan Williams’ accompanying music – which brings them even more vividly to life – feel as relevant as ever. While all ten of these songs in Vaughan Williams’ cycle have a relevance to today, none are more timely than these two, as we work to recognize and combat the dangerous divisions in our society….

At the risk of sounding saccharine, I really do relish my life in music. Thus, I relate deeply to the first line of Blake’s deceptively simple poem. In these times of pandemic, as we are physically cut off from our audiences, the fleeting sweetness of pre-COVID musical life is brought into extra sharp relief… 

…It is so easy to look back and focus on the wounds life inevitably inflicts upon us, railing against the injustice of them, clinging to the suffering we felt and blaming them for the predicaments of our present moment. It is so much more difficult to accept them as immutable and embrace them for making us who we are today…

…Blake’s poem, London, doesn’t really paint the most beautiful nor flattering picture of urban life, and although we have certainly made progress in regards to the hygiene and health of our cities over the centuries, our current predicament illustrates just how short a distance we have come since Blake published this poem in 1794…