Labor Day reflections

In the past week I've devoted some much-needed time to reading and composing for the prairie cantata. I've found some terrific poems by Kathleen Norris and Tom Hennen and Bill Holm. The trouble I'm facing is the task of putting my observations into music. Norris and Hennen and Holm all have made their observations, so that's helpful. But what about my interpretations of them? Or my own observations for the instrumental passages? How can I describe the prairie?

There is both an abundant freedom and a smothering dauntingness in knowing that there is no right or wrong way to express the prairie musically. There is no ideal way to express it. One possible solution to the prairie's vastness is to express it in layers that interact harmoniously in some way. But here's the problem: the sky is high above us and the ground just below us. They are two very different worlds, and while parts of one will occasionally come into contact with the other (birds and rain, for example), they only meet at the horizon. And the horizon is defined by the observer. This work is therefore necessarily subjective. It can't be a snapshot or a book report. It must be a thesis. An assertion. But of what?