Thalassa:

The sea, the wild bold sea,

  It has hill and dale,

It has heat and cold,

  It has sand and shale,

It has wealth untold

So vast and free.

The sea, the long-lined sea,

  It has countless dead,

It has sleeping souls

  In its world-wide bed,

Between the poles,

That deep dark lee.

The sea, the eternal sea.

  It has tossed the same

Where the condors tread

  Cycles before man came ;

It will rise and roll when all are dead,

When man has ceased to be.

(George Cecil Ives)

Thalassa, the primaeval spirit of the sea, is usually usurped in myth and legend by her more well-known successors as sea deities. However, her name has been maintained through the fables of Aesop and so many writers after. This particular depiction of Thalassa as a wild and unruly spirit comes from a book of verses Eros’ Throne by early homosexual-law-reform campaigner George Cecil Ives.

The poem itself contains the motion of the sea and this motion is something I wished to capture in the opening looping section of the piece along with the multitude of available soundscapes. See if you can hear the condors circling above and the slow crash of the waves around you. The text is then set on top of this ocean scene, allowing us to embrace this depiction of the sea as something that is eternal and will outlast mankind.