the Ceiling stared at me but i beheld only the Stars is an ambient-noise electronic work that takes as its starting point the intricate stonework found on the ceiling of the Quire in Tewkesbury Abbey. The central idea explored in the work is encapsulated in this quotation from George Herbert's The Elixer:
A man that looks on glasse,
On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it passe,
And then the heav'n espie.
More specifically, the piece is concerned with notions of imposed restriction (the ‘ceiling’ of the title), with the concomitant reaction to – and transcendence beyond – such blind barriers. This is heard most prominently in the work’s fundamental conflict between two types of material, one noise-based, the other pitched and bell-like.