Katrin Avison’s “Silver Clouds,” composed by Tizian Jost, uses the water cycle as an image of life, death, and renewal. They give th poem room to breathe, with Avison’s voice carrying the words over Jost’s piano, Peter Cudek’s bass, and Peter Gall’s drums. The clouds in the lyrics are not just passing through the sky.
They long to fall into the sea, become part of a wave, and travel through the water before the sun lifts them back into the sky. The poem keeps returning to this movement, from clouds to rain, from water to air. Its idea of infinity comes from that cycle rather than from something that lasts forever in one form. The clouds disappear, but their journey continues. As the opening track of Avison’s debut album Female Instincts, “Silver Clouds” introduces a poetic approach to the passage of time. The final “again” matters. It sends the clouds back into the sky, with no need to explain where they have been or how many times they will return.
