The Stirling staircase cascades down its landings.
Descending you approach
as in one long David Lean take of Sherif Ali approaching the well
my eyes are held blinkless.
Gradually a figure forms
wrapped against the winter chill
the sheep’s skin jacket crowned with a leather hat
adorned by multi-coloured pheasant feathers.
As we pass
from below its brim shine two chestnut eyes
as dark as the midnight sky
as bright as the moon leading the traveller home.
My north, my south, my east, my west, my anchor
Forever I am bound to them and the warmth of their accompanying smile.
For today’s Halesworth U3A Music Appreciation Group meeting three of us did our Desert Island Disks, a choice of 3 each from 3 of us. If I have mistaken any of the pieces in any way, apologies
First Up Joan with
(1) Salvatore Accardo playing Bruck’s Violin Concerto with Leipzig orchestra conducted by Kurt Masur.
(2) Barbara Streisand with Barry Gibb singing Stranger in a Strange Land
(3) Elisabeth Welch singing “In No Time” a comic song which I cannot find a working link to online but you can see more of her stuff on her Youtube channel and they might even have repaired the link
Next Up – Michael with a locally themed collection
(1) Halesworth Community Choir singing Red Sails by Bridget Cousins – its an amateur recording and amazingly I found it on YouTube!
(2) Shir playing Shalom Aleichem from the album From the Heart which you can listen to on Soundcloud its track 8.
I was asked to pick 3 recordings as my "Desert Island" disks for our Music Appreciation group which meets tomorrow. After much deliberation I picked the following -
(1) Ch Chullain, from Adiemus: The Eternal Knot by Karl Jenkins - because it reminds me of my Celtic heritage and is uplifting;
(2) Bi Lamban by Toumani Diabete and Ballake Sissoko, two master players from Mali of is probably my favourite sounding instrument, the kora, from west Africa;
and
(3) Tan Dun's Eroica - The Internet Symphony because I love fusion is all things - food, music - and this has it, with intertextual homages and great percussion, I love it.
Todays scenario for our Writing Group in class exercise was as follows: On the beach you find a scrap of paper with hand writing saying “John says it would be better this way – but what do you ……” , write the background to this
Should I go or should I stay? Will my nights become my day Will shadows into colour blend or stagger forward to the end?
Should I go or should I stay? Will rainbows push away the rain? Tears dried up but streaks remain Mascaraed eyes to hide my pain.
Lightning claps and thunder sounds My head is spinning round and round Storm filled the howling seawind blows Should I stay or should I go?
( I am imagining a tormented woman had been on the beach, contemplating whether to stay in her abusive relationship or not, where to stay in life or not, after her partner has said it would be better if she were dead)
8 lines curve upon the screen a minimalist caricature of the puppet master. the music begins Gunoud’s Funeral March of a Marionette his silhouette floats by an eternal cameo.
definitive, trademarked totally identifiable this self deprecating cartoon of his old man’s curve. the ponchy, chubby, tubby soul this master of suspense looks weirdly like an elder Tintin without his trusted dog.
He’s suited up Hairline receding double chin flapping as he walks and talks Those eyes, peering down his nose through glasses that were never there Over his pug dog droopy jaws penetrating, demanding, interrogating, making us look deep into our own souls maximising the fear we see within.
he always appeared slightly aloof from his herd of actors like his cameras props for his craft pitching up to transform us into willing voyeurs to bring our gaze in close only to find him there “in cameo”
This weeks prompt was a silver Victorian/art nouveau hand mirror similar to this picture. Our tutor asked us to look at ourselves in the mirror, image some 10 or 20 years previous and see where that reflection took us in our writing.
I found this quite hard as I don’t normally do much character based writing, but after a hesitant start which ate up some 5 of my 20 minutes, I came up with the following.
I see you, you look at me Are we the same? Always and forever linked in past and present, Stepping together into our future You pull one way, I another. Yet somehow we find a common path.
If I met you on the street would recognition follow? Would I like you? Find you fun? Your smile infectious, your skins soft, your eyes appealing?
You tell me off when courage fails Laugh at my silliness Shoulder my pain. Know all my fears and dreams.
Are you my missing soul mate? my partner in crime? my unborn twin whose dent is still in my ribcage or merely a reflection of me?
Divine hands at work. Particles expand. Whatever! Am I bothered? Does it matter? Dark matter Big bangs, multiple universes expanding ever outwards into nothingness.
What was there before? A void? the absence of all is surely something in itself? A singularity? Located where? in what? on what? The Kantian fallacy of absolutes gives way instead to spacetime curvatures.
Dynamic, unfixed, shaped by matter and energy bubbles in the boiling pot summing possible histories into inflationary expansion strong gravitational fields propelling a quantum potential?
There amongst the thermal cosmic background a cosmological constant? Einstein’s blunder revived as the accelerator for dark energy ignition of life.
Of life. Of death. Transitions measuring time’s passage, confirming our finite nature within the Infinities and Aristotle’s adage that something eternal is more perfect than something created
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