I was Soundclouder of the Day earlier this month and wanted to post some music again after all the poetry. I wrote this song and recorded it over a year ago, but was never happy with it. I originally used lots of VST strings and had more of a bold choral thing going on at the end. Finally, I have re-done it, mostly by making it simpler. The harp is recorded badly (impossible to get a good sound!) so please excuse all the crackle and hiss. The high pitched sound at times are two wineglasses and a finger!

Come walk up with me to the heather
The braken’d halls, 
The curlew calls.
Where we’ll be together, 
That view to see.
Up high where the lark sings, 
That black star singing dot
Floats in the blue.
Over the moorland the lapwings laws
The brook that calls
The stonechat pulls 
The soul from me.
Come fly with me. 
Come cry with me. 
Live life, find love
And die with me.


Whole Heart

This is an unfinished song, but I doubt I will ever finish it, because I think it comes from a former age of HanJan.. so I thought I would put it up anyway and let it have some life of its own in the world. I wanted it to be bigger somehow. And more cool. And more intimate. And perhaps not so odd!! It needs other stuff there too I suspect. I guess I wrote it about that Hag type part of me that was waking me up in the middle of the night with fear and the part of me that knows the more love you give out the more you grow and how we are all connected somehow. (Anima Mundi - the belief that everything is connected by a world soul)

"If it is within us,
It cannot remain without us
Though we give it away,
We give it away to help it grow.
Anima, Anima Mundi.

Bolt breath wake in the night
Dream rise sigh
Ghost at my throat
Creeping dread lies.
Anima. Anima, I've come for you.
Anima Anima.
I take your confidence with nonchalance, indifference
As consequence this provenance a confluence of fear.

Be still and breathe. 
Remember who you are.
(Weird singy and saw noises!)

If it is within us it cannot remain without us.
Though we give it away, we can give it away to help it grow.



Anima Mundi (Unfinished)

A piano doodle I have played and loved for years, this one minute version was done last night to test out my new sustain pedal. Live mic on my real piano sounded terrible, however I tried! I am not sure if it has the merit of making it a longer piece and adding to - does it need a vocal/vocals, live mandolin (saw possibly) or anything else? I don't really know where to go with it.
It has been recorded for a very dear soul who has supported me a great deal in recent years, who I know liked the piano part a great deal.

Pinocchio Mourns His Strings

I am not sure where this has come from, or what to make of it, so putting it up VERY hesitantly. A colleague loaned me her celtic harp, so I recorded that first, testing it out really to see if I could ever justify buying one. I then wanted to write a long piece that went full circle, coming back to the harp, but it was too problematic and I have banged my head against this piece for a few weeks. I didn't think it would turn out like this. But yesterday I thought "Hey, I loved singing in Latin in choirs at school" and here we have it...Latin choir singing with live harp, accordion, ukelele, recorder... I sing all the parts (yes, even the voice that does it's best to be a manful tenor!).
The words are:
"Memento Mori (Remember that you will die)
Omnia Causa Fiunt (Everything happens for some reason)
Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proder it olim" (Be patient and tough - someday this pain will be useful to you)"
Hmm...


Memento Mori

A story song that takes it's inspiration from something my sister said, the gorgeous and brave clients I work with and the idea of transformation and metamorphosis of the human heart from abaondoment.

There was a boy
Given a paternal wound
His father had left him
He wound round the pain a cocoon
Carefully woven in sweet complicity
With all his mother needed
A pleasing child you see.
And through all his life
He struggled on in vain
To feel his wings stretched out
Without reaching into the pain.
His caterpillar body
From the wildness of life abstained.
Oh, sweet boy,
A butterfly you will be -
When you break that cocoon
And set yourself free.

(Piano, live harp and saw, vocals, cello, violin, bassoon, oboe, xylophone)


The Inheritance of the Caterpillar Boy

Perhaps a happier song for 2012. I wrote this many years ago now and stumbled across it recently. The voice of my younger self really seemed to resonate with this battered but smiling woman I have become, so I decided to record it. It has been lyrically re-worked a little and a third verse added. I cannot seem to record the vocals in a way that I am happy with...so I settled for the third vocal version in the end! 

Guitar, Ukulele, Accordion, Shaker. Piano, horns, clarinet and violin.

Snow Fall Flowered

A traditional "riddle" folk song I seem to have been singing in idle moments all my life, especially to my daughter in the bath. I can't remember who taught it to me now. I was stuck on a Ukulele song I have been working on and decided to put it aside for a few days and try something I hadn't written: more as a means of stepping away from lyric and melody writing for a bit. It is a little thrown together in the end and I am far from pleased with the recorder or mandolin parts.. but I don't want to work on it anymore! I hope it is enjoyable for what it is though.

Incidentally, cubase stared crashing as I finished and began saving different versions all over the place. I am not sure therefore which version is here or if the crackles I heard in my headphones will translate onto this MP3. I hope it is "clean"! :)

I Gave My Love A Cherry

I was delighted when Wes Martin gave me the opportunity of adding backing vocals and additional instrumentation to this beautiful acoustic song that he wrote. It felt like a real present! This is what he said about it:

"Riverbed symbolises the ancient, worn, life bringing veins of the landscape. It's an ides of a conversation, a journey with them. Something much bigger in significance and lengevity than us. About floating, finding, and understanding our place."

Riverbed (Wes Martin & HanJan)

Richochet

Your words tumble out of your mouth
With a ricochet
Whilst all the time you try so hard 
Not to stay
With the painful moment.
We circle each other a while.
Wild gesticulations, eyes everywhere 
But meeting mine. 

Your words and a land slide of story,
The tools you use to push past
The open heart, 
To all I know underneath them
That is gory,
And abandoned,
And utterly sad.

“Shhh, little girl”
I want to say.
Though in years you have advance on me.
But perhaps it was easier for me
To shed those tears
My own wounding made.

“Look, sweetheart!”
I want to say.
“There is a little girl stuck on a harsh rock, crying.
She needs you to take care of her.
She needs you to be still. 
She needs you to rock her gently,
Back to loving herself.”

And I know you will.

When the standoff with frightened wild horse-words has bolted, 
Run out of steam,
And come back through the open gate.
When you can both invite and respond to yourself.

And when you can trust
That I really do love the little girl I see in you.


8. Richochet

http://therapysandwichpoetry.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/23-moon-and-kestrel.html


When I am shattered
And have nothing left to give,
It is often time to retreat 
And to find the
Constant place of arms
Big enough to embrace:
The silent, supporting constancy 
That my sofa is.

Guiltily, at first
But with gradual quieting,
I watch pulpy mush.
Possibly even open mouthed
And deeply breathing,
Emptying care, pressing pause
To my brain, so all I feel
Would be a ripple line
EEG.

The kitchen clock
Hypnotises
And the mug
In my hand
My favourite toy
And comforter.

After an hour
Of questionable TV,
 I look up.
The May Month Moon
Is almost full.
And a Kestrel
Hangs like a fluttering
Question
Fan-tailed and
Coptering
Over the hedgerow.
He watches for vole snacks.
I move to my fridge
And look in.

If I hung like that
Over my life today
What part of me is morsel
Hiding in long grasses;
And what part of me
Capable of wild precision,
Patience,
And the beauty
Of remorseless slaughter?



23. Moon and Kestrel

This evening, Eleanor and I went to the local pub for a meal. Today's poem was written there and tickled me a great deal. Not my usual sort of style, but it was nice to write something light.

Bar Bull Fighters

In the pub, at the bar
Men gather to share strut stories,
Playing with pocketed loose change
Or leaning with elbow assertion
In front of the pumps.

Each waits for The Pause,
Rehearsing the tale to top
The last, only half hearing
The current yarn
In the jostling queue.

We sit and eat our meal.
Chewing hides
Delightful pleasure
In dropping my eaves,
Attending the task
Of my salad leaves.

“And like, we didn’ know the towne
But he like, went ‘This Way! That Way!’
An’ we ended up in the roughest part there.
In some crazy wild Irish Pub!”

A gauntlet thrown in the swig of beer,
That ends the story. No-one responds to content,
But the older man, without reassurance of forearms
On the bar begins:

“Have you ever kissed the Blarney Stone?”
Direct question demands muttered response.
Gratified to be alone in his boast, he elaborates:
“Well, you gotta let this chap hold on to yer ankles.
Massive drop. Upside down, you kiss the stone!
I got a certificate to prove it!”

And another reward follows the fable:
The booted woman proves attention,
Despite herself, interest asking:
“What’s it like?”
Now he has credit for the dramatic pause
And the delaying sup of pint:
“Ha! I nearly shat meeself!”

Even the men bow to the bullfighter
And they all laugh in chorus.
I chew my food quietly
In the table behind
And my wilting dressed salad
Smiles along with me.





28. Bar Bull Fighters

Day 28 of May Day Poetry:

Stressed

Step away from that word
And what does it mean?
Rendered obscene 
And useless by over application.
Infiltration of corporate speech,
Medicalised brain leeches, 
Lexicalised, brain bleached
And a fashionable label on a jammed jar.

Tonight the sea saw balance
Between resources and demands
Lays heavily spent on the right side, 
As it has these past few weeks, 
With a gradual quickening
Of foetal force that leads to
Remorseless thinking of the grand
To Do list, growing in laborious pain. 
My phone a modern thumb screw of 
Texting back the tennis ball
Over the net of petty requests and
Haranguing demands I cannot satisfy.
I will let someone down, 
As inevitably as my over-concern lets 
My own self down.

All nine of Yeats’ bean rows
Taunt as idealistic impossibility
And the hived honey bees
Would have me bat the air
And run for sting shade.

Somewhere in this, I lost my heart.
Or it got trampled by ignorant feet,
That needed ground too much to look down.
I know better than rest,
Is wholeheartedness. 
I know I left it here 
In a velvet box, 
Tied with hopeful spider silk.
But I am too tired yet
To take the needed breath
Stop looking, and so to find it.




29. Stressed

Thank you to Wes Martin for playing guitar so beautifully in the background of this one. 

Running out for Milk

The chestnuts have their candles on
And the Willow Warbler warms the hedge 
As I drive past.
Stopped to snap the sunset
God fire fingers light tails cast
From rain cloud.
The the hare again
Chose to lollipop the lane
In his time, to the gate.
Never so green
As this time of May late.
The Jay never quite so vivid
Or more parrot flare wild
In the woods. Coming home,
He had freedom and relief
Enough to dance in front of the car
Showing off his blue bars, moustache and
Intense eye fly flare.
"Ohh Babe!" my surprised mouth formed
And the rainbow too - I jest not -
Touched the streamed field where horses adjourned.
One of those evenings,
When running out of milk
Is the best accident you could have.

30. Running out for Milk

For the final day of the project, I found myself looking backwards. Behind the curtain of the past, to who I am.

From Whence She Came

To look back, behind the curtain
Before your heart beat a certain
Proof of 'when' you are,
Is the former marrow memories of
The forebears.

To feel the soft stab truth
In generational proof
Of 'who' you really are
Issues forth lush visitations
Of mind attic.

I dream of, and know my forebears
And find them within the borders
Of the places where they lived.
The Fowlers and the Wraggs
Ghosting memories flag
In seeing what was home.

Today, Spring Cottage, Winson
Where my father's heart beat crimson
Courting village scene with my mother.
I could almost hear my
grandfather's clock still
Ticking there.

(Dad, the swifts nest still in roof tiles.
At gardens end the spring still greets the Colne,
Runs its sedentary dappled path
Of ache swallow dipping lushness,
As of yesteryear).

And on, to Lower Slaughter
A  house that held three daughters
Ronald Fowler ensnared there.
He chose gentle Florence
Over bolder, older Ada.
The same clock chimed years
Near that stream.

(And Ada, Flo!  Children still dip toes
And paddle in the water, merriment of laughing
Faces as ducks sentinel like stalkers
And the mill wheel turns 
At Slaughter, as it ever did).

And home still knows my bones when shown
Knows where home has been, though unknown
Years past before me here.
In my marrow, soul seeding DNA
I was there.

31. From Whence She Came

I wrote this bio years ago now, but broadly its the same. The main difference is I have relocated in the country and now live with a professional musician and try and toot away at the Clarinet. I learned to read music, which has given me a boost of confidence. Anyway, the old Bio below:

Home recordings of original songs, using the instruments around and about the house, a computer, some new software and cables I trip over. The concertina was a recent addition and dulcimer, accordion, mandolin, piano, the saw and others feature. I'm a little instrument obsessed (I dream about them regularly and probably obsess about them like most women covet shoes) and love the fact that I finally have the facility to record - it's not just my own four walls that hear my musical venturing. A friend has let me borrow a Celtic harp and I've tentatively started a recording with that...so I hope to get quite a diverse range of twanging, plucking, wheezing and strumming up here over time. 

The consequence of an instrument obsession is that I have very few shoes. But that's probably a very good thing.

HanJan

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