One of more notable features of 2020 is how time seemed to warp, i.e., days seemed to melt together in such a way that one day seemed almost indistinguishable from the next. As a friend said of this to me: “There’s only yesterday, today and tomorrow now…and I’m not sure which of them it is now!” A painting (in a private collection of Irish art for which I serve in the role of Curator) “Harbour” by Elizabeth Magill also has that odd quality about it, in that it’s hard to tell what time of dawn or dusk is being represented. Inspired by this phenomenon, I composed this tune (which starts as an air first). The circumstances of the lone figure walking on the boardwalk are also rather murky and uncertain—why is she out alone in such a vast setting so early or so late? Like the strange fluidity of time in 2020, there is something unsettling or uncanny about the scene. The name references this strange experience of time-less-ness.

The air is “tentative” but, like the figure in the painting who “puts one foot in front of the other” the air morphs into the steady cadence of this jig.