the shifting earth

the shifting earth takes its inspiration from René Daumal’s surrealist novel, Mount Analogue. It tells the story of a climbing expedition ascending the titular mountain, an invisible peak so large that its presence bends light around it. The allegory of the novel frames the climbing of Mount Analogue as a reaching for immortality, or a yearning for the absolute. Daumal passed before he finished the novel, so his mountaineers are frozen in time, mid-sentence, stuck with their heads forever looking upwards into the cloud-covered crags. The piece takes its title from the last three words of Daumal’s manuscript. the shifting earth was written for Donald Crockett and Thornton Edge and is dedicated to the memory of composer and friend Kris McCormick.