Press Release

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That Singing Voice

Opening reception - February 27 at 7:30, 2014

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In accompaniment to the show I have organized at Marta Cervera, Madrid, I’m including a poem. Composed of memories of long ago events, memories disappeared with the expiration of those who experienced them, the poem is written on a page to be given form and posterity. Similarly, the works presented here, which start life as thoughts, memories, translations and loosenesses, are given form through material and presentation. The posterity though is open to us, so please let us indulge and let her voice echo “Tuck me to sleep…”

—MM 

 

“That Singing Voice”

 

"Once, camping on a high bluff

Above the Fox River, when

I was about fourteen years

Old, on a full moonlit night

Crowded with whippoorwills and

Frogs, I lay awake long past 

Midnight watching the moon move

Through the half drowned stars. Suddenly

I heard, far away on the warm

Air a high clear soprano,

Purer than the purest boy's

Voice, singing, "Tuck me to sleep

In my old 'Tucky home."

She was in an open car

Speeding along the winding

Dipping highway beneath me.

A few seconds later

An old touring car full of

Boys and girls rushed by under

Me, the soprano rising

Full and clear and now close by

I could hear the others singing

Softly behind her voice. Then

Rising and falling with the

Twisting road the song closed, soft

In the night. Over thirty

Years have gone by but I have

Never forgotten. Again

And again, driving on a

Lonely moonlit road, or waking

In a warm murmurous night,

I hear that voice singing that

Common song like an

Angelic memory."

 

– Kenneth Rexroth