Recommendation

Work Overview

Instrumentation: mixed a cappella choir and percussion
Commission: Suwon Civic Chorale
Premiere: May 28, 2010, Suwon, S. Korea, Suwon Civic Chorale, In-Gi Min, conductor
Duration: 7 minutes

Program Note

Even though my parents are of Chinese heritage, they both spent their formative years in Ho Chi Minh City. I have always wanted to visit the place where my parents grew up, and finally went there in December 2007. While there, we visited the Vietnam War Remnants Museum, which forcefully shows the horrors of war and terror through photographs and reenactments of prison camps. I was terribly shaken by the images—so much so that when I came back to New York, I decided to look for a text for this commission that would reflect my reaction to what I saw at that Museum. After much searching, I decided on Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Recommendation,” a poem that alludes to the evils of war, but transcends them by reflecting the hope that can bloom from compassion toward humankind.

Text

Promise me,
promise me this day,
promise me now,
while the sun is overhead
exactly at the zenith,
promise me:

Even as they
strike you down
with a mountain of hatred and violence;
even as they step on you and crush you
like a worm,
even as they dismember and disembowel you,
remember, brother,
remember:
man is not our enemy.

The only thing worthy of you is compassion—invincible, limitless, unconditional.
Hatred will never let you face
the beast in man.

One day, when you face this beast alone,
with your courage intact, your eyes kind,
untroubled
(even as no one sees them),
out of your smile
will bloom a flower.
And those who love you
will behold you
across ten thousand worlds of birth and dying.

Alone again,
I will go on with bent head,
knowing that love has become eternal.
On the long, rough road,
the sun and the moon
will continue to shine.

Reprinted from Call Me By My True Names (1999) by Thich Nhat Hanh with permission of Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, www.parallax.org.