Evenings with the Stars, Part 7 of 10

(Welcome. We’re here today with Mr. Fred Karlin. He is an award-winning composer. And welcome, it’s nice to see you again.) Hallo, Kathryn. It’s good to see you. […]

(How did you come to get involved with the concert?) Well, a mutual friend of many of the organizers in Master Suma [Supreme Master] Ching Hai’s group and mine, he asked me whether I would be interested, because they were mounting this concert, which incidentally did turn out to be extraordinary. It was a wonderful experience. And they wanted somebody who had film music background to set a number of Master’s poems. And the more I thought about it, the more excited I got about this as a musical opportunity for me. And that turned out to be absolutely true. It was a break for me in other ways. In terms of my psyche, it was very good for me. I had a wonderful eight months really working on it. […]

When I got the second notebook of poems, the poem that leaped out at me was a longer work called “Silent Tears.” And in that work, if you’ll forgive me for doing this, I really… because we’re talking about Her poetry, and it’s so wonderful, and also it had such a bearing on the concert and on my piece, just to read a few lines (Oh, I love it.) from one of the poems within “Silent Tears.”

This is the first thing you hear in my piece. You hear an actor come on stage, and he says, “Once upon a time, a true peace lover wandered around the many worlds in search of eternal happiness. She walked over the face of the Earth, the Suns, the Moons, and the clouds. At last She found that it was all the while hidden in Her very heart.” And I thought right away, “Oh, well, this is wonderful, because there’s a major theme here. What we’re all looking for (Exactly.) is right there inside us.” […]