At the end of her description of the quilt titled “NEARLY INSANE,” Kay McCarthy asks “Was I nearly insane to make this quilt?” This question really resonated with me musically, but I couldn’t put the pieces together as a lyric. I asked poet Mary Moore Easter if she could work on a text, and what she created worked perfectly for me. Her phrases became pieces/patterns of the quilt that I could weave, overlap and stitch together musically. This ‘piece’ may drive you nearly insane unless you simply listen to the whole in the way that you might first see the quilt at a distance.

– Ysaÿe Barnwell

Text

Jumbled diamonds halved and quartered
turned and sorted, smallest angles
all the same.

Does this cutting, folding, stitching,
piecing, pairing, splice of planes
drive me crazy or keep me sane?

Count the sunbursts, crosses, stars.
Count the prisms, ladders, bars. Lock
their union in your eye.

Does this cutting, folding, stitching,
piecing, pairing, splice of planes
drive you crazy or keep you sane?

Thirty-two panels, thirty-two worlds
thirty-two ways to measure our days
our days, our days.

Every diamond bright and cut
every point aligned.
Peace in pattern’s harmony
the chaos of the world contained
made shining in my hands
where peace has kept me sane.

– Mary Moore Easter

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