Diorama started as a character study, but it extended to the point it needed a structure beyond verse/chorus. Its also one of the few pieces built with harmonic, rather than modal, materials.

Maria Alejandra Velasquez Restrepo – voice
Lisa Jensen – oboe
Holly Bryan – horn
David Sossa Fernández – guitar
Buff Allen – drums and percussion

~*~*~*~*~*~

She saunters down the shopping row
Invited by the goods displayed:
Hats and gloves and chocolates
Fine hosiery and pearls.

Don’t want to go back home so soon,
Let nanny stay a little late.

The store front panes reflect her back
She sees herself richly arrayed:
Hats and gloves and chocolates
Fine hosiery and pearls.

That house constricts, I scarce can breathe:
Those frowning cupboards, creaks and hums.

There’s nothing here she really needs
Its all an empty pomp parade:
Hats and gloves and chocolates
Fine hosiery and pearls.

And now she’s moving gracefully:
A spring in her step,
A swing in her stride,
Propelled toward horizon line.

I’m stifled by domestic life,
Mundane concerns and pleasantries.
Whene’er I pause, the dread descends:
Slow winding coils, the scrape of scales.

She feels her body in her clothes:
The beat of her heart,
The swell of her breast,
Inhaling deep the atmosphere.

In cavern seams, press deeper down
To feel the ends. Along forked chinks
flick orange glints, a licking tongue:
Cold barren stare, the serpent crawls.

A break in buildings, rolling lawn,
Inviting delay
From too quick return:
She climbs up to the parkland knoll.

Cloud clots in the sky
Sharp, gilt-edged and dark
Catch low angled rays in high relief,

And up overhead,
Unreachably high,
Reptilian ceiling lit from beneath.

A solid sky vault…
No, all is adrift,
The slow swerving crawl of vertigo.

Her perspective shifts
To fill the expanse:
The day’s eye lets slip its drooping lid.

Shadows rush outwards,
Lawn deepening green:
She finds that her steps have long since stopped.