Tjark Album

Musical Monument for a Missing Seaman



It’s Christmas Eve 1866. Tjark Evers, a young sailor and navigation student is stranded on an offshore sandbar in the middle of the sea. The tide is rising and there is little chance of help. Caught between water and sand, between dreams and reality, the young man seeks refuge in words and sentences.... Recognizing the power of the sea, he challenges his fate and starts to write. He is so alone. Nobody has missed him, no one is expecting him. His fellow students and the boatmen think he’s on the island, his parents and brothers and sisters are sure he’s in Timmel. But he is out here on a sandbar. They will be thinking of him, he belongs to them, he’s part of their lives, but they’ll have the wrong pictures in mind. None of their thoughts can find him here; no one can touch his fate. He won’t be with them until after he’s dead, until they start searching for him at the end of the Christmas holiday. The water stands three hands high above the sand and is starting to feel heavy, like some awful dense matter used to getting its own way. The sea will have him. That is its law, its price for overstepping the mark. Very well, he will pay for the moment when joy and impatience and a small sense of victory made him blind. He will pay the earthly God his dues and be done. He can do nothing more for his body. He can say goodbye with hope. Tjark clamps the kitbag under his arm, opens the book and starts to write. He fills three pages with loops of beautiful writing, writing that should be set in stone: Dearest Parents brothers and sisters I am here on a sandbar and will drown I shan’t see you again nor you me God have mercy upon me and comfort you I will put this book in a cigar box. God grant that you receive these lines from my hand. I send you my love for the last time God forgive me my sins and take me to him in Heaven Amen



the composer´s video:



https://youtu.be/MEpZcGlNBAA