I am not a painter, I am a poet. Why? I think I would rather be a painter, but I am not. Well, for instance, Mike Goldberg is starting a painting. I drop in. Sit down and have a drink he says. I drink; we drink. I look up. You have SARDINES in it. Yes, it needed something there. Oh. I go and the days go by and I drop in again. The painting is going on, and I go, and the days go by. I drop in. The painting is finished. Wheres SARDINES? All thats left is just letters, It was too much," Mike says. But me? One day I am thinking of a color: orange. I write a line about orange. Pretty soon it is a whole page of words, not lines. Then another page. There should be so much more, not of orange, of words, of how terrible orange is and life. Days go by. It is even in prose, I am a real poet. My poem is finished and I havent mentioned orange yet. Its twelve poems, I call it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery I see Mikes painting, called SARDINES.
Written while at Tanglewood Music Centre as a composition fellow. Performed by George Fu and Francesca McNeeley at the Tanglewood Chamber Music Hall.
The title was inspired by the poem above.