19 August - 21 August... The CD Set comes in the 40th Anniversay
Roberto Clemente’s Birthday through the 21st
Personal Message: A Road Less Traveled
21 years ago, Stormworks Chapter 34: SON of the STORM was composed. This 88-minute “musical” spiraled from the 1988 piece “Stormworks” and its precursor, ONLY for NOW and became the basis for the following 21-year sojourn, divided into Chapters and called, “Stormworks.”
21 years ago, I had scored the Academy-Award nominated 1201PM. In 2010, 210-minutes of new Music were written. Chapter 21 is a part.
Adventure compels us to leave the Highway, take an exit that might lead to open skies. Off the ramp, there are a number of directions to go. Gravity assists. Let’s go this way. Through uncharted back alleys and parts of town unknown, you realize that you never know where you haven’t been until you go there. Potholes appear, heightening the road-dance. Bumps fail to detract. Instead, some inner engine urges faster, forward driving, further and farther away.
The Highway vanishes, somewhere beyond the rear-view mirror. Civilization passes. Gas runs low. At some indeterminate point, the road becomes cobbled… then dirt, and finally a scanty scratching in the earth’s surface. All you see is dust if you drive too fast. The road gets narrow. More narrow still. Trees and shrubs and unmanaged brush encroach. Suddenly it’s a Path. The car becomes expendable. You leave it. By foot, and with limited water, you venture ever forward. Through dark shadowy woods, then merciless jungle and incessant insects you stay on the waning Path until you are quite sure that no one has yet trampled the dry, dusty grass beneath your now aching feet.
The jungle fades. Night approaches. Should I have left the Highway? Then it happens. The road… the dirt Path, the footpath and any possibility of it… stops. You have reached the end. No Rainbows. No song in the end credits. Instead you lie on your back and for the Eternity of the night, you prayerfully smile back at the countless smiling stars in the now open sky. Ah! A meteor!
Morning comes. The Sun rises. You look at a magnificent world, outstretched before you in Time and space and realize: You are Free. The roads are gone, but where there are no roads… all directions are possible.
This less traveled road, this Ganó Camino is the Heart of Stormworks: Chapter 21: Won Way, summed in humble dedication to Roberto Clemente and others like him. Roberto Clemente who condensed all of what he accomplished in his brief Life into a simple, daring statement: “If you have the chance to do something good for someone, and you don’t, you’re wasting your time on this earth.”
This Music stands as a document that will extend beyond all the apparent roads, and “road-scholars” of this day. Under open skies, the Message of great Men like Roberto Clemente and others like him, will ring for as long as we are here to carry on.
Godspeed! Stephen Melillo