The Land that Birthed Me

for piano & mEdium Voice

2026

The Land that Birthed Me is an exploration of ancestral land connection and particularly my connection to the land Norway, where the majority of my ancestors immigrated from. I wrote it in preparation to visit Norway for the first time, as a calling card of sorts, to guide me there and offer song to the land upon my arrival.

Movement 1 features a single line of text: “The land that birthed me has never known my taste.” This line is inspired by something one of the composer’s friends, Fio Gede Parma, often says: “We breathe in the land, but the land also breathes us” and the longing for the animal body to be known and breathed by the land of blood ancestors.

Movement 2, “Would I Could I,” begins with stuttering syllables, reminiscent of Berio’s Sequenza III or Nico Muhley’s Mothertongue: I. Archive. Gradually, these stutters turn into an exuberant song to catapult us over the ocean.

Movement 3, “Freyja Speaks” uses text from the Poetic Edda, a 13th-century Icelandic manuscript containing Old Norse poems by a variety of unknown authors. The particular verse in this movement comes from the “Þrymskviða” poem, in which Freyja lends Loki a falcon cloak to traverse between the realms. The composer came across this verse during a session of bibliomancy in devotion to Freyja. Sung in English and Old Norse, this movement is a love poem to the descendent seeking reunion with the animism of the composer’s ancestry.

Text:

I. The Land that Birthed Me
Lyrics by Silen Wellington

The land that birthed me 
has never known my taste.

II. Would I Could I
Lyrics by Silen Wellington

Would I should I 
if only could I
Find a falcon hide,
a rush of wind, and take flight.

Would I should I
if only could I
With pebbles of amber sight,
and strands of honeyed light.

Would I should I 
if only could I
by falcon hide, unbind,
Unwind.

Would I should I 
if only could I
return my taste to 
the land that birthed me.

III. Freyja Speaks
Text from The Poetic Edda, Þrymskviða (The Theft of Thor's Hammer), Edward Pettit’s public domain translation.

Freyja spoke:
"It would be yours,
even if it were made of gold,
And I would give it to you
even if it were made of silver."

Freyja kvað: 
‘Þó mynda ek gefa þér,
Þótt ór gulli væri,
ok þó selja at væri ór silfri!’