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About the Composer
Reginal Wright
Graphite Publishing
How to Start a Fire: Manifestation
Every step we take in life is movement, drawing us away from fear and doubt.
for SATB div. choir and piano
An ambitious symphony of sounds and ideas, “How to Start a Fire” takes singers on a journey from fear and doubt to an ultimate resolution of peace and affirmation. Rapid changes of meter, key, and emotions are strengthened by the partnership of keyboard with singers. Moderately challenging, yet eminently singable and expressive, the experience of performing “How to Start a Fire” has the power to change lives.
Composer’s Notes
In my own life, I have moved along a spectrum from contentment to ambition, working to find a balance between the two. Within my faith, I believe there is purpose, but for many years I struggled to discover where that purpose lived.
Cara’s text offers an internal depiction of those searching moments: the thoughts, desires, and longings of a person who yearns for a life that is more intentionally meaningful. The piece unfolds from the quiet introspection of “wanting more,” through the murky waters of navigating fear and doubt, toward the wide horizon of possibility that becomes visible as purpose reveals itself.
Ultimately, the music arrives in the clarity and courage that come when peace becomes knowing and knowing becomes doing.
Performers are invited to allow the piece to evolve with an authentic sense of growth: embodying and transmitting the emotional arc of each phase of becoming. I hope you feel as inspired to perform this piece as I was to write it.
– Reginal Wright
Too often our dreams can feel daunting and overwhelming. Maybe we have a vision. Maybe we know where we want to be but the “how” can seem elusive. Maybe we’ve tried and been met with the sharp burn of failure.
The choice to pursue what we are called to do means negotiating with ourselves about what we are willing to risk, what we are willing to forsake, what we will lose if we don’t try. We have to break it down: execute the first step and then the next. Even on days when we can’t yet see how far we’ve come, each step is movement, drawing us away from the fears and doubts that held us captive towards the peace of knowing we’re headed in the right direction.
My writing is the best example of this journey for myself. It’s so easy not to. But on the days when I shut down the critics, when I free up the time and put pen to paper, everything that ends up on the page is confirmation that I have been called to words.
Reginal’s music takes the kinetic energy of our passions, our yearnings, our gifts and creates that forward movement, breaking us from static complacency and asking us to risk. It embodies the hope and the courage we all need to take that first step and then the next, to cast off doubt and security for the bold wonder of becoming more.
– Cara Cullen
Text
The courage to want
more
than this path,
buried under the ashes
of should and musts
and maybe somedays;
Sifting through drifts of
fear and doubt,
fingertips singed
by embers of joy
possibility, wonder.
The wanting becomes the idea,
the void becomes breath,
the peace floods in
and I contain it.
The peace becomes the knowing
and the knowing becomes the doing
and the doing becomes
the idea set alight.
– Cara Cullen
About the Poet:
Cara Cullen is a writer and educator whose poetry explores themes of change and grief while reckoning with our human capacity to hope and heal in a broken world. Currently a middle school teacher in Houston, Texas, working with young teens keeps her curious, engaged and always on her toes.
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