Folk from JCFL spent three hours at the Basstone studio yesterday laying down a version of Beautiful Flower, poem and piano by Peter Kingsley, music and singing by me, 12-string guitar playing by Robert Enoch. The Harper's early guitar track didn't survive the edit...
Well... the song survived the process and I still rather like it: not always the case when you're recording something. Peter's got the master copy for internet purps and I'm really looking forward to hearing it on the stereo at home - away from the over sensitive (and accurate!) speakers of Aaron's studio.
Beautiful Flower/Gentle and kind... Mother of God and Mother of mine...
Teach me the way to the Heart of your son... your way of compassion/till the battle is won
It sort of rocks backwards and forwards and it's quite lyrical and very melifluous.
Ah! Bless!
Funeral today for Giles Wintle of Liz and Giles fame from Medici Choir, an old Westminster, solicitor and a Mary Magdalene congra man for 40 years and much loved by his family and many friends. Very gentle, thoughtful man, and a wonderful husband. Of course, everyone had expected Liz to predecease him (she's got throat cancer and is wheel-chair bound) - death has this funny way of happening - one week someone's pushing his wife around at a City of London concert, the following month he's being carried out of the church with the Nunc Dimittis being sung.
Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.
How many of us would pray the following though...?
Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days
that I be made sure how long I have to live...
(Psalms? Ecclesiastes? Ecclesiasticus?)
I suppose the World ticks by, partly because - as a general rule - we don't plan the date of our death. We build for a future we almost always won't witness, pension pots we won't entirely use up, food in the cupboard that will still be there (rotting) when our Alsation nibbled corpse is found a few weeks overdue of the best before date of the milk in the fridge...
For some reason, a snippet of trivia that has come my way over the years is that dogs (Alsations? Jack Russell Harmer's?) will balk at eating a man's hands or feet... maybe they'll find Jack or Jack's successor looking fairly well fed at my flat one day and just a pair of hands on the piano keyboard, and a pair of surprisingly heavy shoes on the pedals and maybe a hollowed out set of clothes...
This is less than savoury - apols!
But the truth of the matter is that we have to learn to start dying daily. Dying to oneself is something we have to begin doing this side of the crematorium curtain...
Guess that means I should start doing some guitar practise now, not later!
Grazie!
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