Tumbling Away

Composer: Ada Palmer
Format: Two scripted lines, one background line and unlimited improv parts

This is one of our most difficult pieces, because it uses improvisation instead of scripted harmony under the melody. This means every performance is different, and each new combination of singers has to practice together enough to get a good sense of each others’ improvisational style so they can distribute the harmonies well. It has always been a big challenge, but very satisfying when successful. We also sometimes perform the improvisation by itself. This piece is sometimes performed in a pair with Wild Angel, since it segues out of it nicely.

Composer’s Comment: I wanted to try a more serious application of improvisation. I didn’t anticipate how difficult it would be, or how useful as a teaching tool for improving group coordination. Getting it to performance quality is a major effort every time, but afterwards I can hear how we then synchronize better with each other on everything else we sing.

Lyrics:

Chant:

…way, and tumbling away
And tumbling away
And tumbling, and thundering,
And thundering away,
And thundering away,
And thundering away,
And thundering, and tumbling,
And tumbling away…

Melody:

I thought I was
Walking on the ocean,
Supping on the marrow,
While empty as a scarecrow.
I thought he was
A permanent solution
To everything I wanted
While I was being haunted.

As he held me
I told myself he’d freed me,
While something there inside me
Was stifling and thundering away.
As he touched me
And used me so transparently
My well-constructed fantasy
Came crumbling and tumbling away.

Like towers,
Lost hours,
Like the lies I told myself
While doubts were thundering away,
Like his rages,
Like his cages,
Like the ocean where I found myself
Suddenly drowning.

Guess I did believe in love,
That dream of kings and turtle doves,
But as I lost my Ever After
Nothing changed.
I still found my satisfaction,
A little rest, a little action.
Guess I need no closer lover
Than the cold spring rain.

I need to value what I am
I need my life to have a plan
I need to look for something perfect
But still be free
I need to go my way alone
I need my heart to be my own
And I need life to have a purpose
And have it from me.

Now I wander
Looking for an answer
With love behind me
And the Quest inside me.
Round and round, like a
Solitary dancer
Leaping, bluffing
And Caressing nothing.

I kept wanting
The promises of fools to
Blind me to the emptiness
Still festering and thundering away,
Always vaunting
The promises that fools do
To keep my heart from quaking
And my ignorance from tumbling away.

Like battlements,
False sacraments,
Like the dam that breaks at last
As floods come thundering away,
Like armies,
Flawed harmonies,
Both assaulting and resulting in
The mind where I’m drowning.

‘Cause I don’t believe in Fate
and I won’t believe in Faith.
Though I may believe in God
That’s all He’ll have of me,
‘Cause I don’t believe in prayer.
Though I might believe He’s there
It’s nothing but a doubt
And that’s all He is to me.

I need a cause for what I am
I need my world to have a plan
And I need man to have a maker
But still be free.
I need to choose my way alone
I need my soul to be my own
And I need life to have a purpose
But have it from me.

Don’t forgive me for
The sacrifice I ask
It’s torture to unmask
The questions you have thundering away
I will strip you
Naked as an angel
Finally in pain you’ll
See your falseness tumbling away.

Final Descant:

And still to be alive
Still joyously alive
And terribly alive
And endlessly and horribly
And beautifully alive,
And painfully alive,
And dreadfully alive,
And finally alive,
Tumbling away.