This vibrant, fast-paced piece is about those moments when an experience reshapes you: you visit a place, meet a new person, or learn something new about yourself you'll carry with you for the rest of your life.

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The text for this piece began as an erasure of an essay about how it feels to experience an artist residency. At an artist residency, you have abundant time. You determine how you spend each day, and you find a routine that serves you. Ideally, when you return home, you bring these new revelations and routines back with you.

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Perhaps most importantly, artist residencies were where I first learned to put my own mental and physical health above all else, above even my composing work. That realization—that you are the best person, or maybe the only person, to prioritize your own well-being—is reflected in the lines “You learn to watch over yourself / when there's no one else / to watch over, and no one to watch over you.”
 

You Find Yourself Here was commissioned by and is dedicated to the Anaheim High School Chamber Singers (Jeffrey Derus, conductor). This piece was partially composed in residence at Dorland Mountain Arts Colony.

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Peruse or purchase all three voicings of this piece at Graphite Marketplace.

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YOU FIND YOURSELF HERE

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You find yourself here,

different somehow,

learning to build a life worth living.

You carry it home.

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You learn to abandon what isn't important,

to sit still,
to stay in one place.

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You learn to watch over yourself

when there's no one else
to watch over,

and no one to watch over you.

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You see yourself reflected;

you learn to love what you see.

You live with yourself,

you live.

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You find yourself here,

different somehow,

learning to build a life worth living.

You carry it home.

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—Dale Trumbore