Sky High

Through age, we learn some things never change and others wilt and fade. Hannah Roberts travels back to her past to try and reignite a desire for lost freedom.

Sky High is a personal, reflective piece which explores the inevitable changes in perspective that age and maturity engender. The piece reveals the lost freedom and simple joys of childhood, where the protagonist’s only aspiration was the “ultimate conquest” of the washing line and this was easily achievable. Descriptive words, figurative language and use of the senses create a highly evocative journey from an adult perspective back to the simpler view of childhood. Use of the present tense throughout the flashback creates a sense of immediacy, while connotative words such as “bask” and “exalted” evokes the nostalgia of memory.

Along the journey of life change is inevitable as time. In a world that is changing more rapidly than ever before the ability to adapt and be open minded is a genuine asset as it reforms our perspectives making us the people we are. Hannah Roberts comes to the realisation that childhood is to be valued in its innocence and purity. Through their art forms the composers are able to express their true reaction to change. The composer reminisces of the simple joys of life experienced as a child and the magical significance in a child’s eyes of inanimate objects. “The best climbing tree stood proud on a small mound of concrete, festooned with socks and knickers” she is imaging the tree as a place of happy thoughts, were she could reminisce her childhood memories. Whereas “ today however it is bare” and like reality is dark and harsh. “It is an older more age-warped washing line” the narrator feels that she no longer can be that little girl that once climbed the washing line. The hyperbole of Sky High is a metaphor of her naivety of the way she perceived the world to be as she believes as an adult “there are too many things tying me to the ground”