"We were asked to set some of Cáo Xuěqín’s poems, in translation by Yang Hsien-Yi and Gladys Yang, to music. The unworldly mood and motifs of love, disillusionment, concern and grief fit perfectly with our own sensibility. The idea of the impermanence of all things has long been a central one for Elysian Fields; in the author of these ancient lines we found a kindred spirit. Another fellow traveler, cross-cultural storyteller Lu Chen, joined us to co-write a song to go alongside these poems. A final song was found surprisingly in the catalog of the late Warren Zevon, whose "Indifference Of Heaven" seemed almost to have sprung from the same pages."
