A happening that is totally different from what Jan Terlouw has always done in the capacity of his political positions, his professorship and authorship. That is he will perform to the musical accompaniment of the Orion Ensemble. This form, the word supporting the music and the music supporting the word, has originated from the desire to combine the expressive power of music with the more accessible communicative possibilities of the word. A form illustrating the magic of either. Jan Terlouw gives verbal expression to the associations he has with the music played by violinist and pianist. Music itself exists by the grace of time steadily progressing. In a triple jump Jan Terlouw discusses the world changing at an ever higher pace. The musicians give their interpretation of it. Music and word are hardly audibly detached in this make-up. All the time the one thing prompts the other, speaker and musicians alternately stimulating each other to surprising inventiveness.
A poem from this programme by Jan Terlouw
Time
A child cannot be touched by time
because it has no past
on which an anchor can be cast
And its future path of life is still a secret line.
Youth, with its lavish taste,
and ignorant of permanence and peace,
burns the scarcity of time on lease,
and later begs, time slipped away, forgiveness for its waste.
Then time resumes its right.
The agenda states that every second rates.
Productive power fixed in working hours tight.
This will not remain. For at autumn chime
we have, or so it seems, oceans of time.
Ego vanished, emerging, flowing,
harmonious, in perspective going.
Little by little time trickles away,
passing imperceptibly, appeasingly into eternal day.
(rendered into English by Piet Koers)