‘Divenire’: Song #4 from the Boundless soundtrack + Two BONUS tracks!
In BOUNDLESS, my newly published memoir, I start paying hard attention to what it means to become your next self.
Filled with lush meditative movements, this track from Ludovico Einaudi, ‘Divenire (To Become)’ moves me to embody birth and rebirth so I can find out how to become someone new. ++ Two bonus tracks! + ‘Nuvole Bianche (White Clouds)’ and ‘O Holy Night’
BOUNDLESS is a story of becoming. And we are always becoming, as Michelle Obama, tells us in her memoir, BECOMING. Growing up is not a finite point. She writes, “Becoming requires equal parts patience and rigor. Becoming is never giving up on the idea that there’s more growing to be done.”
So it’s fitting that one of the songs that was laced through our lives during the twins’ passage into adulthood was “Divenire,” by Ludovico Einaudi. It means “to become,” and it opens with the sense of burgeoning seeds beneath the soil, about to sprout free.
When the melody bursts, it flowers. The high melody is lush and laden with the triumph of having come through.
Einaudi’s gorgeous piano compositions became the soundtrack in our household because they were perfectly suited to studying and writing college essays.
My son, known as Paul in BOUNDLESS, played “Nuvole Bianche (White Clouds)” anytime he took a study break.
He played it on acoustic guitar.
I played it on piano.
We tried to get my daughter, known as Grace in BOUNDLESS, to sing, only with mild success. She was singing a lot—she has a heartbreaking gorgeous voice—but it was all for her original compositions and covers so she could get into music school.
When Paul first comes home from college, six weeks in, he arrives near midnight on the night of a full moon. I welcome him home, and he sits down on the couch to play “White Clouds” on his acoustic guitar. This is how we say hello again, adult son to mother.
We are a musical family, and that is something of a birthright. My mother was a pianist who practiced her craft with a high level of discipline. So many times, when I went away, she would “play me home.”
In honor of my mother on Christmas Eve, I offer you the song she always played to welcome me home for Christmas, “O Holy Night!”
BOUNDLESS has a soundtrack!
In honor of the December 21, 2024, release date, I give you 12 days of songs that tell the story of Living Boundlessly.
Music runs all through the story because I passed on my great musical inheritance to the twins. (And probably the wordsmithing inheritance, too… Grace wrote a play in middle school, and Paul wrote a sci-fi novel in fifth grade.)
Boundless is available!
BOOKSHOP - proceeds go to Bookworks, an independent bookstore in Albuquerque
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The Sixteen Superpowers of Memoir Writers
For the next 12 days, I’m making my most popular post free
It’s easy to write a memoir! All you need to do is write something with universal resonance that is true and comes from your life.
Let’s get real. To write a memoir, you need a basket of superpowers.
Related posts
Boundless has a birthdate! Coming Dec. 21, 2024
Why Writing Your Book Will Change You As Much As It Will Change the World
From Lived Experience to a Book: The Path of My Memoir, Boundless