These poems, by Minnesota poet Joan Wolf Prefontaine, offered many wonderful coloristic possibilities and deal with very deep, emotional aspects of life and the passage of time. Ideas of life as both circular and linear informed my musical decisions in Apparent Solids. The cycle opens with a piccolo tune that represents ‘the boy.’ The cycle also ends with the piccolo tune, so it sounds as if the piece could begin all over again. The cycle incorporates music that is circular and repetitive as well as music that is very linear—where the listener is not sure where the next turn will be.