How many more times will you watch the full moon rise?
Because we don’t know when we will die
We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well
Yet everything happens only a certain number of times
And a very small number, really
How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood
Some afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive your life without it?
Perhaps four or five times more
Perhaps not even that
How many more times will you watch the full moon rise?
Perhaps twenty, and yet it all seems limitless
The voice you’re hearing is writer Paul Bowles’, who died in 1999. Sakamoto Ryuichi met him when he wrote the score for the movie The Sheltering Sky (1990), based on Bowles’ book, and apparently recorded this soliloquy he used for his 2017 album async, a stunning piece of music which I chose as my favorite album of that year, and is one of my favorite albums ever.
Bowles’ voice is backed by an ambient sound of what I understand to be ‘sinewaves‘, bowed cymbal and some sparse piano notes. This is then joined by a growing number of voices in different languages.
It’s a very melancholic piece that captures the feeling of loss so well, of things gone by, things you took for granted and never realised would never encounter again, except perhaps on photograps, or sound recordings. You knew it always, but you never realised. You never thought about what it really meant. (PB)
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