The train, whose daily passage is marked by a whistle—sometimes calm, sometimes impetuous—points to faraway places; the ebb and flow of the waves and the quiet lapping of high tide that leaves a salty film as a reminder; the choreutic wandering of a little fly in clumsy landing and in exploration around an overly ripe pear. These and other things, I wouldn't know how many, are observed by Pharoah Sanders with arms crossed and a steady heart.
He carries eight decades on his shoulders, yet nothing weighs on his brass voice, nothing.
In the anxious wait for a time without time, Pharoah smooths and carves out his time into nine movements, each followed by a different silence.
A suite made for this silence and for the Promises it carries with it. A rising southwesterly wind blesses everything with a light touch.
Listen closely: time is neither an arrow nor a circle, but a crossroads of expectations, either unmet or waiting for new waiting: our promises intersect in the present.
Grasping the saxophone in his hands gives meaning to this senseless world:
With a mirror-like voice, reflecting the small things once mirrored in his iris, now expressed in his own way; things that time incessantly consumes and that his voice reflects on what they promised us, in a time that no longer has contours (for of these promises he speaks, of them alone).
With a river-like voice, like a subterranean river that peeks out here and there, marking a direction. Everything follows his voice, even and especially when it is silent.
To create a space for this voice and give shape to the waiting, following its natural folds and sewing a pure garment upon it, requires following its secret direction: the calm dowser Sam Shepard, known as Floating Points, who has tailored this harmonious garment, knows this well.
He seems to show us the key: it is the clear and nebulous timbre of Pharoah, quicksilver and unadorned, voice of river of mirror of trains and crashing tides, cathartic voice of a time without time, that which renders silence into music.
We could do without everything else.
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