The Fire Outlives the Spark
The Fire Outlives the Spark (2023)
Geoff Nuttall was and is my brother in life and in music. We shared formative and memorable adventures together for 30 years. Here is Jeremy Eichler’s wonderful appreciation of Geoff’s extraordinary life that appeared in the Boston Globe.
Last year Geoff asked if I would write a piece for when he was gone. I wrote an aria called The Fire Outlives the Spark. The text consists of lines excerpted from Shelley’s Adonais that read to me like a true portrait of Geoff.
The Fire Outlives the Spark
Peace, peace! He is not dead, he doth not sleep,
He hath awaken'd from the dream of life;
He has outsoar'd the shadow of our night;
He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he.
He is made one with Nature:
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known.
He is a portion of the loveliness
Which once he made more lovely;
And bursting in its beauty and its might
From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's Light.