This piece was commissioned by NATS, with major support from Lori Laitman, and the Cincinnati Song Initiative for their 2022 Let it Be New Concert . It later became a part of my 2022 song cycle, Epiphanies. Teasdale’s words about faces seemed particularly poignant to me during the pandemic and our many masked meetings. Many of our societal interactions have drastically changed, and we may continue to see these effects for years. For many of us, the pandemic has been so difficult that we had no choice but to detach ourselves from the passing faces; to meet each other’s eyes but not really see one another. Perhaps the reason it is so hard to return to normalcy is because the fear and vulnerability of seeing someone else’s pain and being really seen after isolating for so long feels daunting or overwhelming. We have lost the freedom to talk with a stranger, to really see the person with whom we sit on the bus. Instead, we quietly maintain our judgements behind our masks, and we forget that we are all just people in the restless street who have lost what it feels like to really see and be seen.

Faces

Faces

People that I meet and pass
In the city's broken roar,
Faces that I lose so soon
And have never found before,

Do you know how much you tell
In the meeting of our eyes,
How ashamed I am, and sad
To have pierced your poor disguise?

Secrets rushing without sound
Crying from your hiding places –
Let me go, I cannot bear
The sorrow of the passing faces.

– People in the restless street,
Can it be, oh can it be
In the meeting of our eyes
That you know as much of me?