Librettist’s Note: This requiem is in many ways an exploration of the question “how we celebrate life by commemorating death.” It uses the choir as an alter ego of the passed character, and as a consequence, the very purpose of this requiem is to lead the individual to inner peace by reflecting on and reconciling with many narratives of life.
Conversations between the soloist and the choir provide a rough structure of such narratives. Before the soloist enters, the choir invites the audience to picture a world where there is no perturbation and distraction of the minute details of life— such is how the choir characterizes death. The soloist, walking into the scene with little idea of what to expect, could not distinguish death from life due to life’s mundaneness (as they observed and practiced throughout their life). The choir guides them to remember and appreciate what made living a unique experience, which triggers the soloist to complain what they had missed while alive— the many “could-haves” and the “would-haves” if they were not “bruised and abandoned” by the life events out of their control. They worry about leaving no legacy before death, and hence, no memory in the afterlife.
The choir’s multilayered response focuses on directing them to accept every version of oneself and applaud them for their resilience and perseverance. The choir insists that death is a reunion with many possibilities of oneself from multiple contingencies (multiverses, one may suggest), which gives death a special layer of depth and meaning beyond “the end of one possibility of life.” As such, humanity forms a collective legacy through the countless life stories the soloist had witnessed, generated, and remembered. The narrative concludes with a brave self-actualization as the soloist embraces their memory and dies to re-experience life through re-memory. The requiem is not a passive prayer for eternal rest but an exploratory process to facilitate the “ceaseless life” through imaginations and actions, leading to an ultimate legacy.
“Ceaseless life” is an everlasting concept from Chinese philosophy, originally featured in the Book of Changes. It highlights the organic connections between living an individual life “as is” and contributing to the life of humanity “as a whole”. Bombarded and confused by tragedies on so many levels, consumed and bored by stasis of routines, we may be at a loss of purpose at any stage of life. In Camonghne Felix’s words, we occupy “a small space/ Between becoming/ And being found.” This libretto is a humble attempt at resituating our conditions in the scope of human history, viewing “death” as a necessary and important component to complete, elevate, and continue an individual’s living experience.
I dedicate the libretto to those experiencing loss. A ceaseless life lives within us despite our finite spacetime, here and now. A ceaseless life integrates our loss into its infinite embrace; it gives us the courage to beat on with memories of the past and visions of the present.
Libretto
S: Soloist C: Choir
I. Dying Rage
C: Quaeris quo iaceas post obitum loco? Quo non nata iacent. Abiit nemine salutato; Acta est fabula, plaudite-- consummatum est. [1]
Do not go gentle into that good night Do not go gentle into that good night Go gentle, into that good night Good night
Rage, Rage against the dying of the light The dying of the light The dying Light[2]
II. Red Dusts
C: Rise, rise with specks of red dust in a misty morning When the dust settles, the world passes by your shoulders; Time and space collapse into oneness.
Walk, walk into emptiness Where ocean boundaries blur into white foams All sounds are purged but silence.
Watch, watch the lotus petals Detach from the stem and suspend mid air They make no waves, no ripples.
No chance for uncertainty. No room for ecstasy. No destination for destiny. No grief is necessary.
Lead her in, death, Deprive her of symbols and meanings, desires and memories— Cast her away from the red dust, And make forgetfulness an eternity.
S: I entered a tunnel with no end; I dreamed of birds with clipped wings. Powdered clouds enclosed me As fire penetrated the mist.
I have been accustomed to departures I ask not where from, where to. Hustles of life have sutured my wounds, But no place is my home. Is this death? Or everydays of life? I do not care to tell. I walk morbid in a world That has kept me dull.
Have I arrived at where it took me? Where— nowhere— I stood. Tortures from work I have had enough, I rest— finally— alone.
No funerals, no wreaths or prayers— The hypocrites are gone. I have been clothed by spiraling dusts I forfeit my will.
III. Soft Shells
C: You trod into quicksand Only to leave the earth. You plunged into nothingness Only to escape life’s worth.
A leaf alienates itself from a tree. A skeleton, from memories. Death may end life, But make death not life’s end.
How does one acquaint with death Without knowing how to live? How should dust record passage of time if there is no object on which to land?
S: I don’t deserve your noble cause— Nostalgia is a privilege I dare not. I don’t have greatness to be written:
When surviving was surreal, escape was realism.
Whence journey? I was but breathing between concretes. Leave nothing? My only legacy Exists in oblivion.
C: We stretch space to explain time’s mystery— How life’s span could define greatness. In this mortal journey What do you seek— to be seen, forgotten, or everything in between?
To be seen one has to see; To be forgotten one has to let go. To escape the ordinary, One has to admire life’s messes.
IV. Tethered Strings
S: Shatter that frosted glass! From death to death, My memory has been bruised and cut. Fire in fog fumed fragile faces, Lives in lies lost longing places. Streets of walking bodies converged, Yet I have been missing.
C: You are the missing part of you.
S: When all ambitions turned into gray hair, I longed for a branch to rest.
C: Rest, home lives within you, rest.
S: My dreams flew high but tethered, Tethered to rituals and papers.
C: A kite with a thin string, Stretched to the fullest.
S: Lead me in, Death, For you are the greatest equalizer, The gateway towards The holiness of annihilation.
C: Or the hollowness of cessation.
S: Do my rigid but vague wishes Deserve a burial site? I am but the lonely watchman Ringing somber bells to pronounce their death.
C: Your brief visit was a floating ice melted into the water. No matter the waves, No matter the rains.
To choose which ocean you float on And what path to go: For the authority of life– A life after life– Instructs you so.
S: At this, the end, I stand alone Looking back through time’s great sea Each wave shaped the core of me The bliss and the pain I embraced equally. Good or bad, every page turned with strife, Such was my life, my unique life
V. Coming Together
C: We had been walking, We had been walking, towards death since birth.
S: I once believed time was mine to squander, Yet now, it comes to an end Too brief for love, like petals untimely plucked, Too fleeting for dreams, slipping through fingers like grains of sand.
Now my journey wanes to its close, The tapestry of existence unraveling, As if I were never present, The room echoes with solitude, Friends carry on the tale that no more includes me
C: We had been walking, We had been walking, towards death since birth.
We had been walking, We had been walking.
S： I had been walking.
C: Admire our brief presence In the vast open field. No haste in passing, But be absorbed in waiting: The space you filled Will fill you. The songs you sang Will sing for you.
We had been walking —
S： I had been walking.
C: Our stories converge to form a legacy. Death was a reunion. Come together, Come together.
VI. Breaking Free
S: Aphasia crawled over; Sight was blurred. Time's current has dissolved my memories, blankets of snow covering my footprints.
Forgive my physical absence, my dear, allow me to complete this rite of passage. But I'm here to stay, in your steps, your songs, I sway.
Fortunate I was to weave my body and soul in civilization's flow where each ripple tells a tale.
I reunite with a constellation of lives: I follow those who departed ahead. Behold the blooming springs for me, and cherish your life more than I could dream.
You will tread where I once roamed, and harmonize a voice in my echo. Carry me into your new journey-- am I not you, are you not me?
In death's embrace, I join, at last, you'll follow, too, in worlds beyond worlds' vast. Mourn not for me, for I'm near, celebrate life, with joy, not fear.
VII. Last Farewell
C: Farewell loses meaning When arrival is certain— If life had not an end, You would never feel alive.
Like red dusts falling back to the soil, Or raindrops converging in the sea, We learn to say goodbye By dreaming of being together.
Silent but ceaseless life Pushes each of us ahead Like the wind raking the falling leaves. Leave we must, to embrace the cycle of life.
Like comets sailing into silent darkness, or pages swallowing ancient inks, we learn to say goodbye By dreaming of being together.
May your soul rise like a phoenix from ashes And roam in the pond of moonlit blossoms To find each of us in a petal.
May it rest under the bodhi tree Planted by our ancestors, accompanying our offspring.
May the ancient sound of whales cheer for a sunrise from the abyss.
VIII. Ceaseless Life
C: You turn to dust. In your memory, Every tree reaches another to form a forest. Every life gives life to another. Every moment gives moments to eternity.
May you find peace in uncertainty, And find uncertainty a peace. May you and your history become one. May we be together, and free.
________________ [1] From Seneca, “Death Has No Terror”: “You ask ‘where will we go when we are dead forevermore?’ You'll be with the unborn. He went away without bidding anyone farewell. The story is done, applaud, applaud. It is completed (finished).” [2] From Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”