Forever is Composed of Nows

Forever is Composed of Nows sets a poem of the same title by Emily Dickinson. My piece is inspired by her concept of everlasting moments, but also by how the past remains alive through memory. In my piece I quote a single chord from Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” a sonority that holds a personal significance, characterizing for me a sense of nostalgia — a brief snapshot symbolic of a past “now” that always resides within us. The sense of the mutability of time is at the core of my work; elements of the past and present glide past each other and occasionally appear as one.