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Dale Trumbore
Dale Trumbore
Closer to Home (SSAA)
In this fast-paced piece, we learn to carry “home” with us even as we leave a place we once loved.
SSAA, a cappella
“Closer to Home” asks how we leave something we love when we know we may never return. Ultimately, we find peace in the idea that home will accompany us wherever we go.
While “Closer to Home” can be programmed by itself, this piece was composed alongside “Faster” as part of the Open/Close Consortium. “Faster” is about wanting to leave a place; “Closer to Home” is about returning to the same place for the very last time.
For a variety of ways to perform these works together or separately, visit daletrumbore.com/consortium-info.
Composer’s Notes
In Fall 2017, my parents sold my childhood home within a day of putting it up for sale. I barely had time to come visit one last time. Although I hadn’t lived there in twelve years, this was a place that I still thought of as home, in the way that you can leave the place where your life actually is–in my case, Los Angeles–to go “home” to New Jersey, and then, on the flight back to California, say once again that you’re returning home.
The place described in the text is real; there really are two acres of woods “just over the fence,” and there’s a river two houses down.
The person who bought this childhood home has torn it down and built another, bigger house in its place. Knowing that I’d never see the house again when I left made it even harder to leave behind. I did go back one last time before that childhood home was sold, though, and that experience was the inspiration for “Closer to Home.”
– Dale Trumbore
Text
To the garden full of lavender,
the woods just over the fence,
the trickle of a river that’s just past the dead end,
to the dog in the yard and the worn out floors
and the toys packed away down the hall—
it would’ve been easier not to come back at all.
And you’re closer to home than you’ve ever been before,
leaving the garden, leaving the halls,
leaving the woods and the river and all.
You’re closer to home than you’ve ever been before,
and you’ve never wanted to stay here more.
But the memories you made here
are only half the life you’ve lived,
and you have no choice. The woods and the garden
have given all they had to give,
and still you wonder if you’ll ever learn
how to leave a place not knowing if you’ll return.
To the garden full of lavender,
the woods just over the fence,
the trickle of a river that’s just past the dead end—
it would have been easier not to come back this time,
to leave the woods, the garden, the river and all behind.
But you’re closer to home than you’ve ever been before,
though it isn’t the woods and it isn’t the garden,
it isn’t the house or the dog in the yard—
you’re closer to home than you’ve ever been before
as you realize home isn’t here,
you finally realize home isn’t here anymore.
Now it’s time to close the door
on a house where you had a garden, a river;
you couldn’t have asked for better or more.
And maybe you’ll return someday, somehow,
but it’s time to go back to the life you’re living now.
It’s time to go home to a life you won’t outgrow.
Leaving the garden, leaving the halls,
leaving the woods and the river and all,
it’s time to go home, for finally you know
that home will be waiting for you,
home will follow wherever you go.
— Dale Trumbore
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