There was a time
when I could imagine a life, however vaguely
My life, or someone else's
being otherwise

I have always liked it here
liked to run my hands along the chalky, ashen rock
to surrender myself, enveloped
a supple body yielding
against the cave wall.
Then, the Rower still came
with eager reaching hands
then, I had known the way back

Where leads dark Lethe now
her downward-going course cloven ever anew
vermilion hues lap against the shore
glittering as I drink my fill;
seeing my reflection I ask
Will you have some too?

---

The piece follows the underground course of the river Lethe — the river of forgetfulness, one of the five rivers of Hades. It explores the strange comfort of powerlessness: drifting like flotsam in an immense current, or yielding to the weight of a thousand-ton stillness.

This sensation of surrender extends to the sound material. As no one steps into the same river twice, so the sonic palette is continuously regenerated. A computer algorithm produces constrained random values, using brownian motion at the sample level to create evolving, non-deterministic waveforms.

The work concludes in the eponymous cave of Hypnos, through which Lethe flows, a place untouched by the light of either sun or moon. At the end, a glimpse of an opening: a receding shadow, an invitation to follow, or to remain.