"Only One Moment" (Wait for the Rising Sun)

"Only One Moment" is the fifth song on Tapestry's first magnum opus, Wait for the Rising Sun. At the beginning of the band's career, the group decided to use conventional subject matter---the epic Impermanence and religious works---to break their new musical techniques easily to a suspicious public.

Wait for the Rising Sun focuses on the Battle of the Rising Sun segment of the Impermanence cycle. It provides a fresh revitalization of the myth of Kakedi for audiences contemporary to Eràsis during a time when the Classics' popularity had dwindled in favor of fresh texts from the other six human worlds. For those of you who privilege foreign texts over those written by our own Ameisi-blooded kin, a summary is provided below the song.

our hearts touch
the summer moons dance
dappled on the horizon

slipping in the breeze
I fade away
I am lost within your breath

yet the moons dance on
the night moves on
love is transitory

we have until the sun
breaks from its cage
at the western tower

there is no tomorrow
there is no tomorrow
but time never listens

there is no tomorrow
there is no tomorrow
but time never listens

so take my hand in yours
take my breath in yours
let us be breeze-dancers

if only for a moment
if only for a moment
if only for a moment

In Book Seven, Kakedi is sold into slavery to a warlord named Kamradi, whose name means "hard-hearted." Kamradi mistreats Kakedi and the other slaves to the point at which Kakedi, in despair, tries to throw herself from a tower. A general whom she had not yet met, Himkara, stops her from committing suicide.* They begin a passionate love affair that lasts several months, but Kakedi is still tormented in her servitude. Two days before a major battle, Himkara advises her to bind the oldest tree in the forest with purple ribbon. Kakedi binds the tree. An ancient spirit orders her to untie him three times. She refuses until the great tree spirit commits to helping her gain freedom. The spirit tells her three sacred words that will help Kamradi win the battle.

Kakedi gives Kamradi the sacred words in exchange for her freedom, making him swear by the God of Wind that he will free her. Kamradi goes against his promise, binding Kakedi with iron and dragging her to the battlefield with him. She spends the night before the battle crying in a tent, her wrists bloody and chafed. Himkara enters the tent, and Kakedi abuses him for misleading her---obeying him had only made her more enslaved. Furthermore, with men's hearts so impermanent, Kakedi cannot ensure that the one she has sacrificed so much for will still love her once she has regained her freedom. When dawn comes, she says, she will leave him behind, no matter how much she loves him.

* This points to a tendency in Eràsis's work---and the work of Tapestry by extension---to focus on stories linked to suicide-by-jumping and existential impermanence. While the latter is an important philosophical topic discussed by everyone from playwrights to mathematicians, Eràsis's emphasis on the former is dangerous. One wonders what would have happened if the authorities had caught her obsession before it killed her.