This is just breathtaking. Someone (Sam Perkin, his name is) put the first three chapters of The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible to music. It was performed at the Kilkenny Arts Festival in 2025 by a six-piece chamber ensemble, plus a mezzo-soprano and an incredible narrator, CiarĂ¡n Hinds. Together they make the words really come alive. I feel humbled by the love and care they put into this performance.
Please listen with a good speaker or headphones, when you have time to really drop in.
Deep gratitude to Sam and the musicians and vocalists. I am so grateful to you for bringing these words to life.
The fact that someone took the time to translate your words into music, to let them live in a different medium, to let them breathe through voices and string, is a testament to the life your work has taken on beyond you. There is something deeply moving about hearing words that were written in solitude being sung in a room full of people.
What I find myself sitting with is the idea that a work of art is never truly finished. It continues to be born in the people who receive it, in the forms they give it, in the ways they carry it forward. The book became a chamber piece. The chamber piece becomes something else in the ear of the listener. The cycle continues.
I love it.