Ellisor drew her inspiration for No Place to Get to from a 13th-century poet name Rumi (officially Mevlana Jalal-e-Din Mevlavi Rumi). Born in today’s Afghanistan, Rumi wrote poems that commentators describe as dealing with divine love and mystical ecstasy. Ellisor referred specifically to these Rumi passages: “Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to,” a line which gave Ellisor the title for her music.
“Don’t try to see through the distances/That’s not for human beings… Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened/Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading/Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do./There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
Ellisor has had a long-standing fascination with the poet: “Its’ something I turn to quite often. In this particular poem, the idea of not staying in your fear, of doing what you love helps you realize that everything we do is in some way a celebration of life and a form of reverence.”
GRADE 4