Art and Earth

WISTERIA (Click on arrow to play song)

Let’s not drive away just yet 
Give me a moment more 
To walk through those rooms again 
To walk through that door 

If we turn off the radio 
I’ve only to close my eyes 
And the wind in the sycamores 
Will carry me home 

The vine of my memory 
Is blooming around those eaves 
It’s true it’s a chore to tame wisteria 

I’m tempted to ring the bell 
Maybe they’d ask me in 
Or maybe it’s just as well 
To let it all be 

Remember the price we paid? 
It seemed like a lot back then 
Remember the love we made 
The day we moved in? 

It did need some pruning back 
I know it’s not my place 
How could they just cut it down 
And leave not a trace?

Let’s not drive away just yet 
Give me a moment more 
To walk through those dreams again 
To walk through that door 

The vine of my memory 
Still blooms all around those eaves 
It’s true it’s a chore to tame wisteria 

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Ann says: The image of wisteria as the twining vine of emotional memories is exquisite. I love the way the violin, which seems to represent the vine, isn’t heard until the third-to-last stanza. 

Click here to discuss this song.

Written and performed by Richard Shindell

Image: lovleigh.tumblr.com

THE GOOD IN ME IS DEAD (For the Marathon Bombers; click on Arrow to Play)

I sit at the border, this blanket my cover

I wait for my sister, I wait for my mother

The rain it is falling, but I do not feel it

I cant feel nothing, any more

A month ago they took my father

The village was asleep

Put a Russian gun to his temple

And put him in a jeep…(didn’t get his breakfast)

If you put that lens in my face again

I swear I’ll break your head

Sir the good in me is dead

In the hills of Prestina, my family worked the land

The images flow through my ticking mind, and fall like grains of sand

My brothers in those hills now, I saw him lying there

His eyes they did not see me, as my fingers touched his hair

As I kissed his dirty hair

If this is all that’s left now

There’s nothing to be said

And the good in me is dead

Last night the bombs came raining, I swear I saw his face

He came running cross the fields to me, in a safe and peaceful place

I woke shaking and thinking

About love that’s in the world

And if there is no bigger picture

How its all obscene, absurd

So pass me a revolver

Pass me a book I’ve read

Pass me a fresh cut flower

And ask me what I dread

That the good in me is dead

I sit at the border, this blanket my cover

I wait for my sister, I wait for my mother

I wait for my mother

I must wait for my mother

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Composed and performed by Martyn Joseph

CASTAWAY (A Birth Song)

Image: Katie M. Berggen

Kelly Mulhollan:

DESERT DREAM, My favorite Erotic Song! (Click on Arrow to Play Song)

On dunes of desert sand

A long-forbidden land

My world begins to spin

My eyes grow ever dim

And in this spinning place

I see your perfect face

‘Neath folds of caverns deep

You lie in quiet sleep

My slightest motion make

Mere ripples on a lake

Till one’s reflection brings

Your iridescent wings

And without touching skin

Our making love begins

My breath upon your breast

To loose your slender dress

Revealed to cavern walls

On down the fabric falls

‘Round bird and human form

A nest to keep us warm

Not touch but dare admire

As one can’t touch a fire

So close, but not to kiss

Your eyes and sleeping lips

Round bead-like tears are falling

Sweet drops of desert pollen

While down your yielding neck

Each bead I gently lick

Weightless my hand will rest

On flesh, so slight a breast

My thirsty mouth devour

Nectar of cactus flower

Beyond this garden womb

A rising crescent moon

My lips by cavern dark

Will sketch its graceful arc

And not a feathered space

Beneath my fingers trace

Along each downy crease

And down your silken fleece

Yet part my body must

Lest dreaming turn to lust

Just one false sound I utter

Might cause your wings to flutter

One kiss before I gather

Fallen dress round skin and feather

Take leave of desert dune

For the fate of earth and moon

As cogs in cosmic gear

Ever close yet ever near

Dance apart from death ’till birth

Still the moon does love the earth

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Written and performed by Kelly Mulhollan

Image: windling.typepad.com

The Broom o’ Cowdenknowes (Traditional Scottish Ballad Circa 1651.  Click on Arrow to Play!)

How blithe was I each morn to see
My lass come o’er the hill
She tripped the burn and she ran to me
I met her with good will 

Oh the broom, the bonnie, bonnie broom
The broom o’ Cowdenknowes
Fain would I be in my own country
Herdin’ my father’s ewes

Hard fate that I should banished be
So early in the morn
Because I loved the fairest lass
That ever yet was born 

Oh the broom, the bonnie, bonnie broom
The broom o’ Cowdenknowes
Fain would I be in my own country
Herdin’ my father’s ewes

Fareweel, ye Cowdenknowes, fareweel
Fareweel all pleasures there
To wander by her side again
Is all I crave or care 

Oh the broom, the bonnie, bonnie broom
The broom o’ Cowdenknowes
Fain would I be in my own country
Herdin’ my father’s ewes

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Performed by Silly Wizard, from a collection of traditional ballads by F.J.Child, circa 1651.

Image:  Tour Scotland Photos

Ann says:  ”Burn” is the Scottish expression for a stream.  ”Broom” refers to Scotch broom, a plant with bright yellow flowers that once grew abundantly on Scottish hillsides.  Notice the distinctly Scottish pronunciation of words in this song.

Says King Laoghaire web site:  This song began as a ballad about a shepherdess who encountered a gentleman passing on horseback… She and the gentleman had an instant attraction to each other, and spent some time enjoying each other’s company… The gentleman continued on his journey, leaving the shepherdess expecting a child. Just before the child was due to be born, the mystery man returned, declaring himself to be a wealthy lord, and married her.

Cowdenknowes is a Scottish estate on the east bank of the river Leader Water, 32 miles southeast of Edinburgh. The original tower house built by the Homes of Cowdenknowes in the 15th century is still occupied.

She Will Not Say by Krista Detor

Tonight an ill wind is blowing, blowing
Something wicked comes this way
To the woods your daughter’s going, going
For what she will not say

I hear a fire is glowing, glowing
And women dance around
Why this is I am not knowing, knowing
But they never make a sound

Get your horse and your saddle, saddle
And ride up to the hill
Mind you stay in the shadow, shadow
And you keep very still

They say they conjure a blue light, a blue light
And hold it in their hands
They cast a spell on the ones that they desire
to get their wedding banns

Pity the man whose woman, woman
Is not mild or meek
Pity the man who finds himself wed
To one he did not seek

For if she’s dancing in the moonlight, moonlight
The fire feeds her need
And if she’ll wander off without him, without him
His rule she will not heed

I hear a fire is glowing, glowing,
And women dance around
Why this is I am not knowing, knowing
But they never make a sound

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Composed and performed by Krista Detor

Image: Luis Ricardo Falero

METEOR CITY by JOE PURDY*

I know a girl in Meteor City

We used to drive down on Moon Crater Road

I would hold her hand, and she would look pretty

Didn’t worry about the things we just didn’t know

I spend my days in this run-down cafe

Working for a room at the top of the stairs

And she would work the counter, man

Just to be around her

Was the only thing that kept me there

Couldn’t wait for a cool night…

I said “Oh, Sophia, were’d you get a name like that?

Luminous and dirt-road dawn.”

She says I think she was a movie star

My father saw before I was born

But I really don’t remember now

He left when I was so young…

All the night stars they all jump through the sky

With the dreams I miss so much

I have the emptiness and the pain inside

Miss the whiskey and a woman’s touch

But that’s as good as gone…

I knew a girl in Meteor City

We used to drive on Moon Crater Road

I would hold her hand, and she would look pretty

Didn’t worry about the things we just didn’t know

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*Ann says: I’m touched by the contrast between the simplicity of the young and naive couple and the fact that they reside in a place where meteors strike the earth.

Composed and performed by Joe Purdy

IN HONOR OF THE ITALIAN EARTHQUAKE SCIENTISTS CONVICTED OF MANSLAUGHTER* (Please click on Arrow to Play Song)

Did Galileo Pray?

When he looked
Into a starry sky upon Jupiter,
With its cold moons
Making their weary rounds.

Did he know that the Pope
Would claim that he ran with Lucifer
And a prison cell
Would be where he’d lay his head down?

Was he wearing a thorny crown?
When he plotted the motion of planets,
Was Mercury in retrograde?
But he found the truth when a lie was what was demanded.
When the judges asked him pointedly
He was a’ trembling that day.

Did Galileo pray?

And he said,
“Tell Ptolemy, tell Copernicus,
That the Sun is at the core of us
The Church, the Pope
Can’t deny the Milky Way

And every flower that follows the sun,
Has known all along
What God had done
They whisper truth
As the seasons each give way.”

Don’t shoot the messenger,
The postman delivers Truth today.
And Truth will march in Birmingham
It will block the tanks in Tiananmen.
Put the judges on the witness stand
Let’s see what they all say.

In the heavens you’ll see it
As God has conceived it.
Oh, believe it.
Oh, what have you got to do to believe?

(Composed and performed by Ellis Paul)

Image: Galileo before the Holy Office, a 19th century painting by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury

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*Editors’ Note:  Earthquakes are impossible to predict. Click here to read more.

*For more information on Galileo’s 1633 trial, click here. Who would have predicted a repeat 379 years later?

SEPTEMBER 11TH REMEMBERED IN SONG

(Please click on the arrow above to play song).

THE GRIM CATHEDRAL

The grim cathedral arch alone,
Towers over dust and stone,
Monument to flesh and bone,
Twisted, stark and bare.

And the floodlights sharp relief, 
Magnifies the weight of grief,
In the ruins that lie beneath,
That emptiness of air.

The papers from the building flew,
Hung in the air, in a sky of blue,
Souls of the newly dead and gone,
Shone so bright, on a Tuesday morn

In the canyon streets, the towering cloud,
Tumbles on the running crowd,
Falling like a funeral shroud,
Darkening the sun.

Staggered statues, concrete grey,
Man as ashes, dust and clay,
Desolation of the day,
Falls on everyone,

The papers from the building flew,
Hung in the air, in a sky of blue,
Souls of the newly dead and gone,
Shone so bright in the morning sun.

I watched it on my TV screen, 
Devolution of the dream,
Images a nightmare scream,
To wake the likes of me.

A charnel house of sight and sound,
Familiar streets a killing ground,
The day they brought the buildings down, 
Down for all to see.

Written and performed by David Francey (Nov.8/2001)

THE FALL OF A POET (RAGLAN ROAD)

(Please click on arrow above to play song).

On Raglan Road on an autumn day,
I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare
That I might one day rue.
I saw the danger and yet I passed
Along the enchanted way
And I said let grief be a falling leaf
At the dawning of the day.

On Grafton street in November,
We stepped lightly along the ledge
Of a deep ravine where can be seen
The worlds of passions pledged.
The queen of hearts still baking tarts
And I not making hay,
For I loved too much; by such, by such
Is happiness thrown away.

I gave her gifts of the mind.
I gave her secret signs
That’s known to artists who have known
the gods of sound and rhyme
But words and tint without stint
I gave her poems to say
With her own name there and her own dark hair
Like the clouds over fields of May.

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet,
I see her walking now. Away from me,
so hurriedly. My reason must allow,
for I have wooed, not as I should
A creature made of clay.
When the angel woos the clay, he’ll lose
His wings at the dawn of the day.

On Raglan Road on an autumn day,
I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare
That I might one day rue.
I saw the danger and I passed
Along the enchanted way
And I said let grief be a falling leaf
At the dawning of the day.

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Ann says:  Wow.  I read this as a romance between an intuitive (the poet) and a sensor (the woman) which is doomed due to her inability to appreciate poetry.  Not having their work appreciated might serve as a mortal blow to any artist.

Raglan Road written by Patrick Kavanaugh, performed by The Twilight Lords. Image: Cobalt Blue and Heavenly Ambiance by Nik Helbig.