Comments for Yesterday and Forever December Special

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Produced by Helen Engelhardt Hawkins and Marjorie Van Halteren

Other pieces by Helen Engelhardt

Summary: Documentary composition featuring six widows in remembrance of Lockerbie tragedy - on 17th anniversary
 

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Review of Yesterday and Forever December Special

Making sense of the Lockerbie airline disaster in a way that pulls sense out of confusion, much like the way the varied pieces of a quilt make a blanket, is how I would attempt defining the "whole" effect of the stories told, in this remarkable piece: "Yesterday and Forever".

The auditory experience, included a harp music bed for a dream-like-sense, under the grieving stories told by the families, and a list of those who fell out of the sky, interspersed, at varied times, over-lapping stories-- effectively conveyed the depth of the people this tragedy touched. Especially intriguing was a story told by a mother, who's daughter awoke from a "nightmare" of her father falling from the sky. She didn't really wake up at all, but foretold of events soon to follow.

The frustration and responsibility embraced by the families who, consequently organized airport security to "assure that this could never happen again", was a huge undertaking.

Indeed, their world, and ours will never be the same. And this piece took a day for me to try to put into words, the effect it had on it's hearing.