Her Body Holding Back The Day’s Arrival

for Flute, Clarinet, Violin, and Piano

The title of this piece comes from the Weatherford translation of Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo. In the scene it is taken from, an unnamed maternal character stands in the doorway of her son’s room at dawn; her knowing of, having to deliver, but also trying to protect her son, the titular Pedro Páramo, from the news of his father’s death.

From this scene I took the idea of moments of suspension, in which hammer has not met nail, the other shoe is still in the air, and the bell remains un-rung. These moments are the last ones where the world has a certain number of possibilities that are immediately narrowed upon the fruition of an impending action (new possibilities may be created, yes, but those that were beforehand are necessarily constricted afterwards).

The other idea I took from this scene is the role of threshold guardians (to borrow from Joseph Campbell). I think this scene is an interesting example of a threshold guardian, because this unnamed mother is clearly trying to protect young Pedro from what lies on the other side of this—literal—threshold, but also has to serve as the person to force him through it.

There are some instances where we can serve as dams between the ones we love and the world that seems to seek to harm them, but rarely, if ever, can the dam hold indefinitely.