WRITING

Opera

TRAVERSING THE VOID
(Libretto)

MOV 1: A WHITE FLASH A white flash traverses the sky
a serrated cry
grates the stillness of the pink evening
She leads the way
a course chorus of kindred cries
Cockatoos
announcing the soft veiling of soon-to-be-night.
They take flight rapidly
ascending like clouds
Momentarily billowing
like cumulescent pillows
before disappearing into fissures of white feathered filaments.
She navigates the land
tracing magnetic lines
mapping the terrain
by an invisible guiding grid
Sinuously weaving her within its field

MOV 2: BELOW
Below, another grid emerges
a static suburban kind
fixed with an uneasy permanence
a wound splitting the land
Those ragged rigid lines
steadily grow
interfering with her guiding flow.
An insidious creep of alien boxes
coveting horizontals invading verticals
framing denuded earth
into flat green patches, bereft of ochres
the contradistinction of this topographical scab.
For her, an unnatural accommodation
with growing instability she hovers between two worlds.
But it is the intrinsic one so deeply imprinted
through dreamtime aeons
which enable another day
from rising to setting sun
of song and survival

MOV 3: IN OIL SLICKED WATER
In oil slicked water
the reflection of my face
bends, slides and mutates
As I plunge and grasp
it fragments into a million shards.
Suspended in a web of hairline fractures
I struggle as they enmesh me further into a stifling cocoon
preventing touch with the world beyond
I have difficulty in breathing.
I am set in resin
no voice can penetrate within or without

MOV 4: THE BODY INEFFECTUAL

The Body, ineffectual
weaves a dream body that passes through walls
yet prefers flight to gravity.
I walk through the crowds
eyes avert my glances
not existing until I spin the air into warm gyrating waves
seeping beneath their skins.
Now their eyes follow curious

MOV 5: A CONFLICT
A conflict forms
before I was only seen when absent
heard when voiceless
touched upon failing

MOV 6: THE FLEETING CARESS

The fleeting caress of their eyes
do not reach the little voice
hidden deeply within the recess of an inner cave.
They walk on further distracted

MOV 7: A FLASH IGNITES

A flash ignites a brilliant shearing light
a bridging of positive and negative
sky and earth.
Or sparks of careless human intervention
carbon intention fuelling a transformative force
orange red tongues licking devouring
raging atomic balls leaping air gorging forging
furnace trails fly through carbon laden skies
devouring the crude suburban grid
vaporising the colonial invention
the levelling power of ash

MOV 8: SHE SIGHS

She sighs
witness to black sprouting green
cyclical regeneration each renewal slower than the last
her diminishing serrated cries
traversing transcendent skies
consumed by a dark horizon