A New Series! Reflections from the Stage: Edition 2
Songs and Poems from Hauser and Wirth NYC: Catherine Goodman. Silent Music
The last few months have been filled with performances, events, rehearsals, and gatherings, a few of which I haven’t been able to post photos or videos, or share much about yet. There just hasn’t been enough time! :) So I thought I would pause everything now to do a mini series of reflections on each of these moments that have meant so much and were moved on from too quickly.
Since I just shared this Instagram post yesterday, I will start today with that event, our performance at Hauser and Wirth last Thursday to mark the closing of our dear friend Catherine Goodman’s exhibition, Silent Music. I would love to hear your reflections and have a discussion around the poems, paintings, and themes in the comments. :)
Catherine Goodman: Silent Music
Our dear friend Catherine’s exhibit, Silent Music, was at Hauser and Wirth gallery in NYC from January 30 to April 12. We were honored when she asked Becky and I to share an evening of music and poetry with her to close her exhibit.
Originally the event would include readings and words from Catherine and her friend Eric Karpeles. Poetry was very important to Catherine during her time in the studio conjuring and creating these paintings, especially the works of Elizabeth Bishop and Rainer Maria Rilke, so it was important to have their voices included along with anything Becky and I might additionally bring to the evening in response to her work.
Catherine was slated to arrive in NYC from London on May 31 in preparation for the closing and our collaborative night all together, though her dear father died, and then only 10 days later, her dear mother followed in his path as Catherine said, ‘united as they have always been.’ Catherine stayed in London with her family, and we took the honor on with even more responsibility, to honor both Catherine and her beautiful parents with all our love and focus.
Here is the press release for Catherine’s show which tells more about Catherine, the exhibit, her paintings, and her vision as an artist.
‘Catherine Goodman. Silent Music’ presents a series of new, large-scale paintings by the British artist, where her characteristically expressive brushwork yields animated surfaces that pulse with the dynamic energy of their making. For Goodman, the studio is a place of spiritual meditation. Each painting represents an act of intimate transmutation—a way for her to turn closely held memories and personal vulnerabilities into newfound stability.
Along with Nikolai Fraiture on bass, guitar, and vocals, and Jessie Askinazi joining us for a poem, we shared an evening of poems, stories, and songs with Catherine hold close in our hearts, surrounded by the warm and nurturing life force of her work.
To begin the event, I read some words that Catherine had prepared for me as an introduction in her absence. I knew the event would be emotional, though I didn’t expect to be seemingly unable to get through her words. I asked my dear friend Laura Protzel to join me as we delivered Catherine’s message to everyone.
Then I talked about the words echo and resonance, and the phrase ‘silent music,’ words Catherine chose to represent her work. I talked about how anything we consume, whether a song, a painting, or anything else, is taken in through our senses, has some effect on us, and is either floated away or absorbed into us. We are effected by its energy, it becomes part of us, and we take it with us wherever we go next. The thing resonates with us, and its presence echos into our lives, long after we’ve left the gallery or the concert. I talked about how Catherine’s spirit and love echoed across the ocean and could be felt by us all, and I asked the audience to echo that same care back to her. Whether standing together present in the room or separated by geography, we were all together.
My favorite painting in Catherine’s show was one called ‘Echo,’ and without either of us knowing that, my mom chose the following poem for me to read. <3
Echo
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again tho’ cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.
-Christina Rossetti
Nikolai, Becky, and I then played a set of songs together, and shared words of art-making and love, climate action and injustice. I sang Legacies, Becky sang I Only Wish This For You, and Nikolai sang Moonshiner and a song he wrote called ‘A Line Next to a Line.’
It was very important to Catherine that we read ‘I Live My Life in Widening Circles,’ a poem from Rainer Maria Rilke in Sonnets to Orpheus. I didn’t get the chance to talk with her more about why this poem was particularly meaningful to her in the studio, though I read the words, imagining her in meditative preparation, standing before a blank canvas, cans of paint and her brushes waiting.
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
I read the poem while Nikolai and Becky played one of her songs without words, But It Was All of Us, on cello and bass. Wanting it to last a bit longer, I chose two other poems by Rilke that I thought followed well: Pathways and Before Summer Rain.
Pathways
Understand, I’ll slip quietly
away from the noisy crowd
when I see the pale
stars rising, blooming, over the oaks.
I’ll pursue solitary pathways
through the pale twilit meadows,
with only this one dream:
Before Summer Rain
Suddenly, from all the green around you,
something-you don't know what-has disappeared;
you feel it creeping closer to the window,
in total silence. From the nearby wood
you hear the urgent whistling of a plover,
reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome:
so much solitude and passion come
from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour
will grant. The walls, with their ancient portraits, glide
away from us, cautiously, as though
they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying.
And reflected on the faded tapestries now;
the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long
childhood hours when you were so afraid.
In adding these poems here now, I realize I made a mistake that turned out to work somehow. I forgot one line of Pathways, the last line which reads, ‘You come, too.’ That was supposed to be the dream! But instead, the way I copied it, completely forgetting these were two separate poems, the description begins with ‘Suddenly,’ and the visual of ‘the green all around’ was the dream. I read what I thought was intended by Rilke, in these actually totally separate poems. With the reading and the music though, and surrounded by Catherine’s paintings, it all worked out perfectly, just as it was meant to be.
We were also joined by our friend Jessie Askinazi who read two poems, Heat by H.D. and Design of Gongs by Pattiann Rogers.
“The press release for “Silent Music” observes that Catherine’s distinctively expressive brushwork generates animated surfaces that “pulse with the dynamic energy of their making,” and characterizes the paintings as “bursting with energy.” In response to this kinetic intensity, Jesse and I have selected poems that we feel embody a similarly impassioned, frenetic vitality.
The text also asserts that Catherine “constructs charged pathways between the physical world she observes and her own inner landscape,” noting that her recent abstractions often originate from landscapes and portraits imbued with personal resonance. Accordingly, we will be sharing two poems that engage with imagery rooted in these layered terrains—at once physical, material, psychological, and spiritual.” - Jessie Askinazi
Heat
O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.
Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air—
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.
Cut the heat—
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.
H.D. 
It was a beautiful space in which to play the piano, to be surrounded by friends and visitors, to play music with Becky and Nikolai, and to share words from writers, artists, and poets from different centuries and places. I loved the way Catherine’s colors and brushstrokes were reflected in the black of the piano, mirroring back to me the intention of the night, the reason we were all there, a reminder of silent music, of art and sound mending together in both the seen and formless realms.
Thank you to all the friends who joined for the event, and the new friends who were made through attendance. It was certainly a night of love, appreciation, celebration, and togetherness. Thank you Catherine, for bringing us all together in your honor.
Thank you all so very much for reading! Please share any thoughts you have in response to the paintings, the poems, the ideas, anything at all.
Once again, here is Catherine’s exhibit.
And here is more about her work and life.
Have a wonderful day and thank you for attending today’s edition of Reflections From the Stage. :) Share any of your own reflections in the comments! As always, I look forward to reading them. <3
Thank you to Sachyn Mital, Wendy Nichol, and Kristine Eleni Menelaou for the photos. <3
Here will be the next subjects in this series, named for a post of mine from 2024, Reflections from the Stage:
April 12: Greenwich Library with my mom and brother, Jackson
April 10: Hauser and Wirth with Rebecca Foon and Nikolai Fraiture to celebrate Catherine Goodman’s exhibit, Silent Music.
April 2: Elizabeth Street Garden with my mom and Lenny Kaye
March 25/26: People Have the Power: Celebration of PS at Carnegie Hall and City Winery
Bonus: February 22: Edward Gorey 100th birthday event with mama <3
I really enjoyed this post, Jesse. Especially the poems and images. The one poem that stands out to me is "I Live My Life in Widening Circles" by Rainer Maria Rilke. These lines strike so well:
"I've been circling for thousands of years
and I still don't know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?"
Thank you for sharing.
I loved reading about this! I’m reminded especially of how I love HD’s work.
Among all of these evocative words and images, your phrasing of “echo and resonance” keeps reverberating with me. And now I’m going to let those words/ideas reverberate a bit more.
Thank you!