Infinite Sky (Crown of Stars)

[ Performed in pitch black. One soprano (alternating per performance among Felicia, Panacea, Becoming Human, or Light of Eden). Sacred minimalist hymn. Sustained string drone in fifths. Tibetan singing bowl. Sparse felt-piano. Breath sounds. Distant choir hum. ] Solo Soprano (In Darkness) You are not the storm. You are the sky. You are not the weather. You are the why. You are not the wave. You are the sea. You are not the body. You are what sees. [ Chorus — simple, hymn-like, voices in "fths. ] In"nite sky. In"nite sky. You are the silence the stars rely on. In"nite sky. In"nite sky. Already free. Already I. • • • Nothing to add. Nothing to lose. Nothing to prove. Nothing to choose. Here. Here. Just here. Where the world stops being strange. Where the heart stops being heavy. Where there is nothing left to change. Eternity is what you remember, not what you reach. [ Final chorus — barely audible, breath-only. ] In"nite sky. In"nite sky. [ Outro — long held note. Then silence. ] T HE EIGHT-SECOND SILENCE. • • • 120 Luis Miguel Gallardo Eight full seconds. Real. Not engineered. The lights are out. The voice is gone. The audience is breathing as one organism. Many are openly weeping. Some are smiling. Some are still. Eight seconds of true silence. Then — slowly, the lights begin to come up. Not on the soloist. On the floor center stage where Lia had been standing. There is now a di"erent #gure there. An older woman. Seventy years old. Wearing the same dress Lia had been wearing. The same posture. The same face — seventy years on. OLDER LIA. She is sitting cross-legged on the floor, breathing. The audience does not understand at #rst. Then they do. A lifetime has passed in the silence. OLDER LIA. And I lived. OLDER LIA. And I sang. OLDER LIA. And I forgot, sometimes, what I had been told. And I remembered, sometimes, when I needed it. And I was a child. And I became a woman. And I was loved. And I lost. And I forgave — eventu‐ ally, slowly, imperfectly. And I found the people I came back to #nd. And I told them what I had heard. And some of them listened. And some of them did not. And it was enough. OLDER LIA. And we built it. We built it. Slowly, and badly at "rst, and together. We built it. The four guides and The Severance — now part of the company — rise from the floor where they had been lying. They begin walking downstage. The orchestra begins again — but this time, joyful. Brass. A heartbeat at higher tempo. Con"dence. The leitmotif in the trumpets, ascending now, transformed. ···