Lost Words: There's a wonderful project here in Britian to retrieve the words of nature being stripped from every day use, led by the gentle prescient Robert MacFarlane. Alongside his poems a group of musicians created songs to celebrate these same small creatures, birds, nuts. As a conclusion to the set is The Lost Word Blessing. I've danced away sorrow, sat with acceptance and mourned those leaving this life including my most beloved happy beacon of a cousin, Cathy. She listened to it as life slipped away:
Just watched the Lost Words Blessing on your u-tube link. It's just beautiful. I recently heard an anthropologist speak on the lost indigenous languages of history. With this loss, we also lose the special connection to nature that our ancestors had. The other day I woke up with the title of a new poem: Lost Languages. Sometimes I hear them calling me to slow down and listen and look.
Oh I so love The spell song series . I can’t wait to hear their next gig when they come to Edinburgh. So many awesome songs . This blessing brings me stillness and tears when I sing it .
I think you can get a new tattoo that somehow seems to have always been a part of you, and the same goes for songs; you can hear something for the first time and need it like it was your own substance. A few of those songs for me are Newcastle by Lankum, Watching you Without Me by Kate Bush, Mercy Street by Peter Gabriel, Only Skin by Joanna Newsom.
I also feel myself transported by a good Irish reel—I know they are meant for dancing but when I hear them all I can see and feel is the land, the birds and rivers and fields—even though it's a land I've not yet met. Music, language, poetry and land—all family to each other.
I'll also just drop here my heartfelt gratitude for heavy music. When I was just quitting smoking, 20 or more years ago now, I got into yoga so I could forge a new relationship with my breath. I lived in a 600 sq.ft. cabin with my partner who was simultaneously deep diving into obscure Southern sludge metal—low, droney, riffy, distorted, desperate music full of rage and sorrow with griefy screaming vocals. In yoga classes I would brace against the soothing music—nothing in me felt like that. At home, my whole being would soften in the resonant container of this heavy, distraught music.
Wow, cool to think of a song as always having been part of you. Heavy music, even music considered light by most, is what I brace against. I can imagine what you describe though. May have experienced some of that as a teenager. I once had a therapist who sent me a heartfelt song she thought I'd like. Couldn't get thru even the first verse.
The weird comfort of “ desperate music full of rage and sorrow with griefy screaming vocals”— thank you for bringing that up! I was never drawn to raging punk but it was a coworker’s shared tunes filling the dead space at a bleak desk job c.1987 that I found myself leaning against it, as you say, unexpectedly grateful for its honesty.
Playlist for my husband's eightieth this year, not our parents' playlist. 8 of us, not normally singers. sang during drinks, during dinner, after dessert, the last around a piano.I had printed out lyrics, not having Padraig's 6 hour memory. The first chord of each song from Spotify speaker made us all grin, or dance, and jump in, young and old. Let it Be, Ain't No Sunshine When You're gone, Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay, Here Comes the Sun, Angel from Montgomery, There's a Hole in Daddy's Arm (Sam Stone) , What's going on, The Harder They Come, Three Little Birds on my window, No Woman No Cry, Fields of Gold, Nick of Time, Have I told you Lately that I love You, At last. Redemption Song, That's What Friends are For, Living on a Prayer, Love and Happiness,Lean on Me.
Decades of friendship and parenting. family trips, protests, shared again. Can't wait to hear yours!
How I love this list of songs, my generation, and the image of you all singing and dancing together. The list of life events is beautiful, too, friendship and parenting, family trips, protests. A full life with an excellent sound track.
I am 79 years old. Wish I’d been a fly on the wall listening to your family do all of these for your husband. These songs are among my absolute favorites. The image of all of you singing throughout an evening is wonderful. Thanks so much for sharing your playlist.
I spent my 20s in the 60s so the music of my life was then and now the kind of music made by the likes of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez..."Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" "Blowin in the Wind," "The Times They are a Changing."
Thank you, Pádraig, and happy Sunday, everyone! So much music lives in me, a multitude of melodies by friends who don’t have vast platforms but have nonetheless lit my heart. But, since you mentioned Joan Armatrading, I gotta say. One of the best shows I’ve ever seen. I saw her as a teenager at Red Rocks. I had my hands flat on the stage, the amphitheater embracing the night with its ancient eternal magic, and I was so completely stunned, so thoroughly transported, that when I finally turned around after the show, every last person had gone. The seats were empty, my friends were waiting for me at the car, and I was standing there alone with her songs still ringing. Replaying each note. That had not happened before nor since. That is the transformative power of music. That the whole world can disappear and leave you changed. I haven't had the chance to listen to your conversation with Adrian Matejka yet. Will be listening this week, and until then, I will be enjoying the lovely anticipation for what is sure to be another engrossing and illuminating episode.
Beautiful Lisa. I, too, have wonderful memories of the music of Joan Armatrading. Though I never saw her live. Your experience at Red Rocks echoes mine, seeing Mavis Staples. I was literally awe struck and said to a friend, afterwards, that I felt like i had been to church. Good church, that is. :)
"I had my hands flat on the stage" -- I love this. I can see it! And apparently I need to check out this incredible musician. Thank you also for naming the less well known music that lives in us, too.
... my response to this invitation changes with time ... the song that calls to me in these days is "It is well with my soul," a gospel standard I first encountered in an African American an church in Charlottesville as we -- white and black and everything in between -- gathered after August 11-12, 2017 (neo-Nazis marching ... "good people on both sides"). We sang in response and in community. Though I am not always aligned with the Christian message, I find comfort in this music that has offered hope and solace for many generations of oppressed peoples in the US. How can I -- can we -- keep from singing?
Laurie, How can I -- can we -- keep from singing lives in my head as an old Quaker tune that a quiet and devoted guy from my church shared during a Music Sunday service one year. His deep spirituality mingled with the music quelled something in me. The has the mind of a skeptic, so it was especially poignant to hear his song.
I went to Charlottesville in 2021. My ragtag tour guide took me to the sculpture at U. VA that included the names of students and the architects of the university, including Black slaves who worked there. So powerful.
I find myself obsessed with watching the unlikeliest of singers — a school janitor, an elderly man, a diffident schoolgirl — give breakout performances on shows like "America's Got Talent." Like the man you described with fingers outstretched as he sang beside you, they channel the power of the songs they are singing in a way that's so raw that it brings many of them to tears — and me right along with them.
I never watched this show until I was visiting my Dad in Ohio. We were both crying the whole time! And it was just one of the early auditions episodes. The girl who was blind playing the guitar was the one that put me right over the edge.
In the midst of my untethered time between jobs this month, my little sister and I took a road trip. She compiled a playlist for the occasion. It was glorious. She did the driving, and I did the dancing from the passenger's seat. Depeche Mode, Erasure, the Pet Shop Boys, Nine Inch Nails, Tori Amos and more. All the music of our early years. And we still knew all the words.
I know it’s probably almost cliche but it’s the Beatles for me. So many songs that say so much and so well sonically produced. I can’t even begin to say I have a favorite song as that changes based on my mood. That’s what makes them special, so many solid choices….
What is the music that lives in me? Dixieland Jazz, the band practicing in our living room, my dad on the banjo, as my mother tucked us into bed. As if we could sleep... Well-known classical music phrases: Beethovan's Fur Elise, Gynt's In the Hall of the Mountain King, Bach's Ode to Joy, learned when I was taking piano lessons as a pre-teen. Scott Joplin's rags, which my sister learned while she took lessons, and I taught myself years later. My brother's trumpet and piano tunes. My family's jam sessions at holidays and birthdays. I chose to listen, to sing quietly, as by that time my sister played with my father on gigs, both of them banjoists. Celtic tunes from local bands and those I've heard in England, Scotland, Ireland during times I lived or visited there. James Taylor, The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell; soundtracks to movies- Once, especially now. Searching this week in the attic for something else, I found one of the only cards my father wrote to me. The front has drawings of three instruments and a quote from Nietzsche: Without Music, Life would be a Mistake." My father wrote inside: "I saw this card and thought of you." How well he knew me, how wonderful it was that he and my mother prioritized music in our lives. Thank you, Padraig, for having me reflect on what has been and continues to be such a joy!
Rufus Wainwright. Just the beautiful wonkiness of it all. He gets it. I get it. It's a home for sure. Probably a lot of other people get it too! There's a whole story to how I discovered him, too, related to dance. Big fave of mine is his Sonnet 43, another Shakespeare set to music.
Thank you Padraig for this prompt. I can't begin to share all the pathways it has taken me down. My husband and I met playing flute piano duets (Bach, Vivaldi, Hadyn, Telleman etc) After he died I followed a dream I had had for over 40 years, since hearing Jean-Michel Veillon play the Irish flute with the band from Brittany, Kornog. I had an Irish flute made at the end of the pandemic and have spent the last four years learning to play it. The flute has opened so many musical doors...music camps, music ensembles, the whole world of traditional Celtic and French Canadian music. Every once in a while I hear myself create a sound that I was drawn to all those years ago. It fills me with joy and gratitude. But I have a soundtrack for many different aspects of my life...joy (Celebration, Kool and the Gang ... Vent du Nord...and a million others) doing the dishes (Pointer Sisters) grief (Keep Me in Your Heart, Warren Zevon) longing (again...a million songs...but Get Here, Livingston Taylor) tenderness (Bach's Sheep May Safely Graze) dancing (September, Earth Wind and Fire) and on and on. The play list stories reminded me that I spent hours (over thirty years ago) making a taped play list for the labor of my first child. Funny thing...I didn't listen to one minute!
Lost Words: There's a wonderful project here in Britian to retrieve the words of nature being stripped from every day use, led by the gentle prescient Robert MacFarlane. Alongside his poems a group of musicians created songs to celebrate these same small creatures, birds, nuts. As a conclusion to the set is The Lost Word Blessing. I've danced away sorrow, sat with acceptance and mourned those leaving this life including my most beloved happy beacon of a cousin, Cathy. She listened to it as life slipped away:
Even as the hour grows bleaker
Be the singer and the speaker
And in city and in forest
Let the larks become your chorus.
And when every hope is gone
Let the raven call you home.
https://youtu.be/Hg1xFYpXuWA?is=QKLejFxZ8m_UXySM
Just watched the Lost Words Blessing on your u-tube link. It's just beautiful. I recently heard an anthropologist speak on the lost indigenous languages of history. With this loss, we also lose the special connection to nature that our ancestors had. The other day I woke up with the title of a new poem: Lost Languages. Sometimes I hear them calling me to slow down and listen and look.
Keep slowing listening, I have it on good authority this is the crucial and only task to reconnect and recover that wisdom.
Oh I so love The spell song series . I can’t wait to hear their next gig when they come to Edinburgh. So many awesome songs . This blessing brings me stillness and tears when I sing it .
And the Heartwood song too .
So yes I agree with you
Oh this is just so beautiful Beth. Thank you thank you.
Thank you for introducing me to the Lost Word Blessing. It's beautiful and I know someone, right now, who could benefit from it.
Blessings grace to you both
Thank you. That is an awesome project. There are beautifully illustrated books also
I love this one too. Blown away when I first heard it.
Oh! This took my breath away!
I think you can get a new tattoo that somehow seems to have always been a part of you, and the same goes for songs; you can hear something for the first time and need it like it was your own substance. A few of those songs for me are Newcastle by Lankum, Watching you Without Me by Kate Bush, Mercy Street by Peter Gabriel, Only Skin by Joanna Newsom.
I also feel myself transported by a good Irish reel—I know they are meant for dancing but when I hear them all I can see and feel is the land, the birds and rivers and fields—even though it's a land I've not yet met. Music, language, poetry and land—all family to each other.
I'll also just drop here my heartfelt gratitude for heavy music. When I was just quitting smoking, 20 or more years ago now, I got into yoga so I could forge a new relationship with my breath. I lived in a 600 sq.ft. cabin with my partner who was simultaneously deep diving into obscure Southern sludge metal—low, droney, riffy, distorted, desperate music full of rage and sorrow with griefy screaming vocals. In yoga classes I would brace against the soothing music—nothing in me felt like that. At home, my whole being would soften in the resonant container of this heavy, distraught music.
I adore Joanna Newsom, Jo. I have a “bless our house and its heart so savage” cross stitch!
she is unparalleled!
Wow, cool to think of a song as always having been part of you. Heavy music, even music considered light by most, is what I brace against. I can imagine what you describe though. May have experienced some of that as a teenager. I once had a therapist who sent me a heartfelt song she thought I'd like. Couldn't get thru even the first verse.
These songs and artists are so dear to me, I felt like I was reading something I had written myself!
I love this!
Yes! Mercy Street is one of those for me too.
The weird comfort of “ desperate music full of rage and sorrow with griefy screaming vocals”— thank you for bringing that up! I was never drawn to raging punk but it was a coworker’s shared tunes filling the dead space at a bleak desk job c.1987 that I found myself leaning against it, as you say, unexpectedly grateful for its honesty.
Playlist for my husband's eightieth this year, not our parents' playlist. 8 of us, not normally singers. sang during drinks, during dinner, after dessert, the last around a piano.I had printed out lyrics, not having Padraig's 6 hour memory. The first chord of each song from Spotify speaker made us all grin, or dance, and jump in, young and old. Let it Be, Ain't No Sunshine When You're gone, Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay, Here Comes the Sun, Angel from Montgomery, There's a Hole in Daddy's Arm (Sam Stone) , What's going on, The Harder They Come, Three Little Birds on my window, No Woman No Cry, Fields of Gold, Nick of Time, Have I told you Lately that I love You, At last. Redemption Song, That's What Friends are For, Living on a Prayer, Love and Happiness,Lean on Me.
Decades of friendship and parenting. family trips, protests, shared again. Can't wait to hear yours!
How I love this list of songs, my generation, and the image of you all singing and dancing together. The list of life events is beautiful, too, friendship and parenting, family trips, protests. A full life with an excellent sound track.
I am 79 years old. Wish I’d been a fly on the wall listening to your family do all of these for your husband. These songs are among my absolute favorites. The image of all of you singing throughout an evening is wonderful. Thanks so much for sharing your playlist.
I love this beautiful list!
I spent my 20s in the 60s so the music of my life was then and now the kind of music made by the likes of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez..."Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" "Blowin in the Wind," "The Times They are a Changing."
Thank you, Pádraig, and happy Sunday, everyone! So much music lives in me, a multitude of melodies by friends who don’t have vast platforms but have nonetheless lit my heart. But, since you mentioned Joan Armatrading, I gotta say. One of the best shows I’ve ever seen. I saw her as a teenager at Red Rocks. I had my hands flat on the stage, the amphitheater embracing the night with its ancient eternal magic, and I was so completely stunned, so thoroughly transported, that when I finally turned around after the show, every last person had gone. The seats were empty, my friends were waiting for me at the car, and I was standing there alone with her songs still ringing. Replaying each note. That had not happened before nor since. That is the transformative power of music. That the whole world can disappear and leave you changed. I haven't had the chance to listen to your conversation with Adrian Matejka yet. Will be listening this week, and until then, I will be enjoying the lovely anticipation for what is sure to be another engrossing and illuminating episode.
Beautiful Lisa. I, too, have wonderful memories of the music of Joan Armatrading. Though I never saw her live. Your experience at Red Rocks echoes mine, seeing Mavis Staples. I was literally awe struck and said to a friend, afterwards, that I felt like i had been to church. Good church, that is. :)
I’ve been to Red Rocks and I love Mavis Staples. Don’t know if I would be able to handle both of those at the same time! So jealous though.
Whoa, I can imagine that was transcendental, Phillip!
A YouTube playlist as introduction. That first song Willow - devastating in the best way.
“Thunder
Don't go under the sheets
Lightening
Under a tree
In the rain and snow
I'll be your fire inside
Come running to me
When things get out of hand
Running to me
When it's more than you can stand
I said I'm strong
Straight
Willing
To be a
Shelter
In a storm
Your willow oh willow
When the sun is out”. https://youtu.be/x3hLrzJLzbA?is=zyeGG2DoTI8F4ixm
"I had my hands flat on the stage" -- I love this. I can see it! And apparently I need to check out this incredible musician. Thank you also for naming the less well known music that lives in us, too.
... my response to this invitation changes with time ... the song that calls to me in these days is "It is well with my soul," a gospel standard I first encountered in an African American an church in Charlottesville as we -- white and black and everything in between -- gathered after August 11-12, 2017 (neo-Nazis marching ... "good people on both sides"). We sang in response and in community. Though I am not always aligned with the Christian message, I find comfort in this music that has offered hope and solace for many generations of oppressed peoples in the US. How can I -- can we -- keep from singing?
Laurie, How can I -- can we -- keep from singing lives in my head as an old Quaker tune that a quiet and devoted guy from my church shared during a Music Sunday service one year. His deep spirituality mingled with the music quelled something in me. The has the mind of a skeptic, so it was especially poignant to hear his song.
I went to Charlottesville in 2021. My ragtag tour guide took me to the sculpture at U. VA that included the names of students and the architects of the university, including Black slaves who worked there. So powerful.
The enslaved workers at UVA Memorial is an extraordinary piece of public art …. I’m glad you got to be with it when you visited.
Yes. Old Quaker hymn.🙏
I find myself obsessed with watching the unlikeliest of singers — a school janitor, an elderly man, a diffident schoolgirl — give breakout performances on shows like "America's Got Talent." Like the man you described with fingers outstretched as he sang beside you, they channel the power of the songs they are singing in a way that's so raw that it brings many of them to tears — and me right along with them.
I never watched this show until I was visiting my Dad in Ohio. We were both crying the whole time! And it was just one of the early auditions episodes. The girl who was blind playing the guitar was the one that put me right over the edge.
YES! There are so many talented people off the radar and traffic cams that are equal in power, skill and beauty.
My heart goes out to the beautiful voice of Sinead Oconnor
In the midst of my untethered time between jobs this month, my little sister and I took a road trip. She compiled a playlist for the occasion. It was glorious. She did the driving, and I did the dancing from the passenger's seat. Depeche Mode, Erasure, the Pet Shop Boys, Nine Inch Nails, Tori Amos and more. All the music of our early years. And we still knew all the words.
Am taking a road trip with my childhood friend in September. You’ve inspired me; I will be making a playlist!
Excellent!
Such a beautiful connection.
I know it’s probably almost cliche but it’s the Beatles for me. So many songs that say so much and so well sonically produced. I can’t even begin to say I have a favorite song as that changes based on my mood. That’s what makes them special, so many solid choices….
Memories! Lately, on The Long and Winding Road to the end of Long Island, I think about Paul McCartney writing it for his love Linda Eastman.
My heart goes out to the beautiful voice of Sinead Oconnor
Oh my yes. Such a painful life. Thank you for mentioning her.
So many songs come to mind, but today it's old blues/Southern blues and Bonnie Raitt singing, Guilty and Everybody's Cryin' Mercy.
Their music doesn’t live in me, I live in their music. Lately its John Prine.
Ohhhhh John Prine. His lyrics and arrangements are powerful. What is your favorite?
My John Prine fave is the one that goes, “this world will make you crazy, crazy as a loon”.
🎶It’s a big old goofy world so blow up your TV, throw away your paper 🎶
Oh goodness. Who could pick a Prine favorite?!?! Way too many great ones.
What is the music that lives in me? Dixieland Jazz, the band practicing in our living room, my dad on the banjo, as my mother tucked us into bed. As if we could sleep... Well-known classical music phrases: Beethovan's Fur Elise, Gynt's In the Hall of the Mountain King, Bach's Ode to Joy, learned when I was taking piano lessons as a pre-teen. Scott Joplin's rags, which my sister learned while she took lessons, and I taught myself years later. My brother's trumpet and piano tunes. My family's jam sessions at holidays and birthdays. I chose to listen, to sing quietly, as by that time my sister played with my father on gigs, both of them banjoists. Celtic tunes from local bands and those I've heard in England, Scotland, Ireland during times I lived or visited there. James Taylor, The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell; soundtracks to movies- Once, especially now. Searching this week in the attic for something else, I found one of the only cards my father wrote to me. The front has drawings of three instruments and a quote from Nietzsche: Without Music, Life would be a Mistake." My father wrote inside: "I saw this card and thought of you." How well he knew me, how wonderful it was that he and my mother prioritized music in our lives. Thank you, Padraig, for having me reflect on what has been and continues to be such a joy!
Rufus Wainwright. Just the beautiful wonkiness of it all. He gets it. I get it. It's a home for sure. Probably a lot of other people get it too! There's a whole story to how I discovered him, too, related to dance. Big fave of mine is his Sonnet 43, another Shakespeare set to music.
Me too! I was just singing Barcelona to myself yesterday 😍
Oh wow, I don't know if I ever really listened to that one before. That's really nice!
Oh yes! I get it too. The gorgeous wonkiness
Thank you Padraig for this prompt. I can't begin to share all the pathways it has taken me down. My husband and I met playing flute piano duets (Bach, Vivaldi, Hadyn, Telleman etc) After he died I followed a dream I had had for over 40 years, since hearing Jean-Michel Veillon play the Irish flute with the band from Brittany, Kornog. I had an Irish flute made at the end of the pandemic and have spent the last four years learning to play it. The flute has opened so many musical doors...music camps, music ensembles, the whole world of traditional Celtic and French Canadian music. Every once in a while I hear myself create a sound that I was drawn to all those years ago. It fills me with joy and gratitude. But I have a soundtrack for many different aspects of my life...joy (Celebration, Kool and the Gang ... Vent du Nord...and a million others) doing the dishes (Pointer Sisters) grief (Keep Me in Your Heart, Warren Zevon) longing (again...a million songs...but Get Here, Livingston Taylor) tenderness (Bach's Sheep May Safely Graze) dancing (September, Earth Wind and Fire) and on and on. The play list stories reminded me that I spent hours (over thirty years ago) making a taped play list for the labor of my first child. Funny thing...I didn't listen to one minute!
“Celebration” is a huge part of my childhood soundtrack for joy, too!