Like a whisper, kinda soothing, love the playing!

This was really sad. He went first, so she is left alone with the paintings to talk to. I do believe in some ways the lucky ones go first (though does the "uniform" imply he went because of war?). A talent for storytelling in song writing and lovely guitar. I'd love to hear it done on an acoustic.

DARK SONGS

Main vocals/Harmonies- Ria Madon
Guitar/Harmonies- Ria's father
Cello- Ria's sister

Fix You (Coldplay Cover)

Find Your Light
by Tammy Jann
©  2022

Why did you let others 
cast shadows in your mind
did you think your happiness
was theirs to define
you chose to wear their darkness
like a heavy winter coat
it doesn't fit, take it off
free yourself to search for hope


chorus
Wake up, Wake up
follow the stars in your eyes
Fly Away, Fly Away
like a bird up to the skies
don't let another day pass you by
find the strengh
to find your light


It takes time for you to climb
out from your own abyss
adjust your sight to help yourself
see the things that you've missed
The haze of yesterdays
are always steeped in gloom
 find your way to brighter days
when you let yourself bloom


bridge
Have courage
believe you can grow
the light that guides you
is your own

Tammy

FIND YOUR LIGHT

Down

Down 2022 Remastered

When I was very young I asked my mum what my dad did for a living. "He makes boxes" was her reply and left it at that. It would be some years later that I learned what kind of boxes. 

My dad was an undertaker. After serving in the RAF during WW2, he returned to complete his apprenticeship as a cabinet maker for a local family firm that dominated my home town’s high street with any number of outlets providing the community with almost all their needs: furniture, shoes, clothes, haberdashery, carpets, curtains and … funerals. It was the last three in this list that my dad was involved in — fitting carpets, hanging curtains and, crucially, as an undertaker, not only making coffins and putting dead people in them, but also donning a black suit and officiating at funerals, burials and cremations. When the founders of the family firm one by one died and left it in the hands of an alcoholic nephew (the original heir having been killed in a plane crash in the Swiss Alps in the 1960s), it collapsed and my dad was obliged to move full time into the funeral director business, no longer having a hand in making bespoke coffins. For a period in the late 1970s/early 1980s, I was frequently called upon to help my dad remove bodies from where they had breathed their last.

Do The Body Box Bop

A song to celebrate the many weird and wonderful characters I've met at acoustic sessions, both musicians and punters, although none so weird or wonderful as those who people this song.

Friday Night at the Rose & Crown

Perhaps one of the first Dylan songs I ever heard (besides "Blowin' in the Wind", of course). I could never understand how my elder brother could listen to this nasal-voiced singer over and over again. However, over the years, I became a convert myself and when I found myself doing the same thing, figured out why Dylan makes us do those things. But I can't explain it.
Anyway, this is me wingin' it. Hope you like.

OH SISTER (a Bob Dylan cover)

MASK
© Cyrus Dali Vesuvala

I hope that you will understand:
I have no need to win her heart-
I just have years of need to know,
Did she understand the part
Of me she saw so many years ago,
One April night, when time stood still?
She'd looked into an emptiness 
That only you have filled…

Embarrassed by old memories,
I search for shreds of dignity,
Some token that says she had seen
And recognized that it had been
An involuntary cry, whose cause
Was some unspoken sense of loss,
A momentary glimpse at pain
Behind a mask that would not slip again…

And maybe, when you hear this song 
Someday, you’ll come to understand
This was no waywardness along
My road, no loss of self-command:
Just purging of a fear to know 
What image I’d find in that cask:
I want you to know this, my love,
To you, I’ve never worn a mask:
You know you are, have always been,
Will always be my woman, first and last…



MASK

APPLEWEED
© Cyrus Dali Vesuvala


PART I: GARDEN IN THE SKY

Exploding supernova in a Western sky:
Mystic dark portent, or the evil eye?
Seems every hour another star in our galaxy dies:
Tell me, where did all the Appleweed take root
In our garden in the sky?

Like faceless marionettes in some grotesque display,
Contorted caricatures from some frightening play;
Sometimes, it seems that all our dreams of Passion’s endless spark 
Are lost in green, or torn in twain, we take
Small solace in the dark…

My heart cries: Lovely Lady, don’t lose heart,
Don’t lose your peace of mind.
Don’t let yourself be torn apart,
Don’t leave this love behind.
Sometimes, you feel that on your part
You gave too much too free;
Lovely Lady, if you must lose heart,
Then please, re-lose your heart to me…

  

PART II: TWO STRANGE WORLDS 


My love lives in two strange worlds: in one, I’m just a fool:
One world short of Eden, one beyond Ultima Thule
One world where it’s difficult to predict day and night:
Confused by alternating tidal waves 
Of hate and love and spite…

And, in one of those two strange worlds, reality can bend;
Here, every argument’s a means to justify an end-
Through nights of helpless waiting, there is nothing I can do:
We never know, when I lie down with you,
Which world we’ll wake up to…

My heart cries: Lovely Lady, don’t lose heart,
Don’t lose your peace of mind.
Don’t let yourself be torn apart,
Don’t leave this love behind.
Sometimes, you feel that on your part
You gave too much too free;
Lovely Lady, if you must lose heart,
Then please, re-lose your heart to me…

Exploding supernova in a Western sky:
Mystic dark portent, or the evil eye?
Seems every hour another star in our galaxy dies:
Tell me, where did all the Appleweed take root
In our garden in the sky?


APPLEWEED

FULL CIRCLE: REQUIEM FOR BENAZIR (WINDS OF CHANGE) 


NOW: 
No solace now to help them cope 
A loss so hard to bear 
A nation on the brink of hope 
Dragged down to such despair 

You went out in a flash of heat 
In a searing flash of light 
Work unfinished, incomplete 
Their song was killed tonight 

Just as the crowds began to gather 
With the setting of the dark 
They were singing praises to your father 
When the mad man found his mark… 

(BRIDGE) 

Two thousand miles away I looked 
On as the tragedy did unfold 
The final chapter in this book 
A story left untold 

Now as darkness starts to gather 
Around your children too 
This requiem to your father 
Now serves as your cenotaph too 


THEN: 
Benazir, your father’s in the ground- 
Benazir, you watched them put him down- 
Benazir, your father lied- he’d promised not to die, 
And Benazir, you’d sworn you wouldn’t cry… 

Benazir, your face has turned to stone- 
Benazir, you do not weep alone… 
Benazir, the winds of change that wiped your tears dry 
Now blew your father’s killers from the sky… 
Benazir… 
Benazir… 

FULL CIRCLE- REQUIEM FOR BENAZIR (WINDS OF CHANGE)

THEY SAY THERE’S AN ARROW
© Cyrus Dali Vesuvala

They say there’s an arrow
That seeks out the heart 
Of a man who profanes in the West-
We’ve been silent so long, 
But now, in guise of a song,
This man puts all of our patience to test…

And, if Tolerance is the name of the game,
Then, the end of your game is in sight;
What should be no surprise is:
If you make compromises,
You writers might as well tempt Righteous Might…	

For, the truth is, when some
Of the answers before,
Were not answers you wanted to hear,
You’ve pulled out your Bible
You have screamed  blood and libel!
(They’ve been silenced before, out of fear…)

Well, we do it too,
In the name of what’s true,
Silence dissent and the voice that sings of it-
You’ve gained from our war,
But now there’s losses in store:
There’s mud we too can sling on your prophets
And blood on your profits…

And, if Tolerance is the name of the game,
Then, the end of your game is in sight;
What should be no surprise is:
If you make compromises,
You writers might as well tempt Righteous Might…

They say there’s a narrow and dangerous path
That is tread by a man in the West…

THEY SAY THERE'S AN ARROW

FAREWELL TO JUNE, FAREWELL IN MARCH
© Cyrus Dali Vesuvala


The Colonel’s gone:
There’s an old lady all alone
And so forlorn;
Suddenly, with him not there
She’s past her prime:
Out of tune and out of breath
And out of time…


And her days drag on and on…
And her nights are, oh, so long...
She remembers days in 'Doon:
Stairwells and starch,
Farewells in March,
Farewell to June!
Farewell to June!
Farewell to June!


A lonely song:
She’d always said she would go first,
But now he’s gone
Leaving memories of days 
Of broken trust,
As her house turns to decay
And flesh to dust,


She talks to paintings in the hall…
She has no visitors at all…
The lucky ones go first, in uniform and starch,
Now, none too soon,
Farewell to June,
Farewell in March!
Farewell in March!
Farewell in March!

(Music)

She talks to paintings in the hall…
She has no visitors at all…
The lucky ones go first, in uniform and starch,
Now, none too soon,
Farewell to June,
Farewell in March!
Farewell in March!
Farewell in March!


FAREWELL TO JUNE, FAREWELL IN MARCH

Written by Sindhu Mathew.  
Composed, sung and produced by Vinod Varma

January through Saturday
Wrapped in shaped light
Come, tell me why you stay -
Snared-
Driven out of colored time

A droplet of framed thought
A Chiseled memory
A rezoned  warplane
With a battle scar for a name?
Come, tell me who you be!

Bring these now in your best Chalice
I'll watch it stir around and clear
As you love yourself, a little tighter-
little sober.
Come, tell Yourself Now, 
who you be-

Bring me your pollard
Your silently retired treasure
That friendless trait,
Your most valuable Scarlet letter.
Better yet

Unfasten  those tight masks
Drink a little bitter to better
Come, now back to our stories
Stay happy Saturday- 
stay January's a Charlie Foxtrot away!

Bring these now in your best Chalice
I'll watch it stir around and clear
As you love yourself, a little tighter-
little sober.
Come, tell Yourself Now, 
who you be-



WHO YOU BE (original)vinod varma

This song is the outcome of a collaboration back in 2009 with Billy Simons, a very talented young lyricist from the U.S.
 
Billy asked whether I'd be interested to write the music for these lyrics he had just written and perform the song.
 
I thought the lyric was extremely well written and ready for the music writer to take over, without having to make too many changes.
 
I hope I have been able to do some justice to Billy's very evocative lyric. 

LIVING IN A POSTWAR DREAM

Lyrics: Billy Simons (c) 2009 
Music and performance: (c) Cyrus Vesuvala 2009 

Verse-1: 

I dreamt that dream again last night 
The one in which I'm dead 
The scene is grainy black and white 
But the blood is crimson red 
See a cardinal on that snow white beach 
On that cold and blustery day 
And I watch with trepidation 
As he turns and flies away 

Verse- 2: 

His red tail flutters in the wind 
As he races 'cross the sky 
And as the scene fades out to black 
I open up my eyes 
Within this strange reality 
Precursor to the screams 
That cardinal is always there 
Embedded in my dreams 

Chorus: 

Living in a postwar dream 
Where the fighting never ends 
More terrifying 'cos I've lost sight 
Of what I must defend 
Living in a postwar dream 
A lifetime on the mend 
A lifetime on the mend 

Verse- 3: 

The beachfront's now deserted 
Those soldiers, long since gone 
Their orders cancelled years ago 
But my battle rages on 
I can still hear that moaning 
It's a young boy face-down and 
He convulses as he's drowning 
In a pool of blood and sand 

Verse-4: 

So, everyday I agonize 
About the here and now 
Wondering how I'll set the stage 
To take my final bow 
It doesn't matter much to me 
When and where the curtain falls 
I've waited all these years to hear 
That final bugle call 

Bridge: 

So, yearning for tomorrow 
As today slips through my hands 
I'm trapped within this hour glass 
Half buried in the sands 
At the beaches here at Normandy 
Which never looked so grand... 
Oh, the beaches here at Normandy 
Are grand... 
The beaches here at Normandy 
Are grand... 

LIVING IN A POSTWAR DREAM

This song is one of my personal favourites of Annie Lennox's .
This particular cover version was recorded  by me at home on 7th March 2020.

CYRUS DALI VESUVALA
Gurugram
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
WHY (Annie Lennox)
Cover version  by Cyrus Dali Vesuvala

….Why?

How many times 
Do I have to try to tell you
That I'm sorry 
For the things I've done

But when I start to try to tell you 
That's when you have to tell me
Hey... this kind of trouble's 
Only just begun

I tell myself too many times
Why don't you ever learn 
To keep your big mouth shut

That's why it hurts so bad to hear the words
That keep on falling from your mouth
Falling from your mouth
Falling from your mouth

Tell me why…… why

I may be mad I may be blind 
I may be viciously unkind
But I can still read 
What you're thinking

And I've heard is said too many times
That you'd be better off besides...
Why can't you see 
This boat is sinking… (this boat is sinking…)


Let's go down to the water's edge
And we can cast away those doubts
Some things are better left unsaid
But they still turn me inside out

Turning inside out… turning inside out

Tell me why?
Tell me why?

This is the book I never read
These are the words I never said
This is the path I'll never tread
These are the dreams I'll dream instead

This is the joy that's seldom spread
These are the tears...the tears we shed
This is the fear… this is the dread
These are the contents of my head

And these are the years that we have spent
And this is what they represent
And this is how I feel
Do you know how I feel?

'Cause i don't think you know how I feel…

I don't think you know what I feel
I don't think you know what I feel...

Why? (Annie Lennox Cover)

Kintsugi is the ancient and beautiful Japanese tradition of mending broken pottery using  gold or silver solder. 

When I first heard this song by Becky Thomas (Rebecca Milkwood)some years ago, I was completely blown away. The lyric and the overall atmosphere of that original recording were quite amazing.

Thought I'd record my own interpretation of that song today. …

CYRUS DALI VESUVALA
Gurugram
14th March 2020

KINTSUGI
Becky Thomas

You stood by the shoreline, feeling the undertow
I know you were smiling, thinking about where the currents go
You've been trying, you've been swimming against the flow
Seems like you're done fighting, seems like you're letting go

Funny how rope is a sentence when it's strung from the gallows
But it's a lifeline, a lifeline when you've drifted from the shallows

Well hold on, hold on and I will try to keep your head above the water
Hold on, hold on and I will keep you from going under, from going under

I've seen your fighting sprit, and I've seen you take it all on
Seen you crash into your limits, like a bird dashed against the rocks
Well precious things get broken sometimes, sometimes
But the scars that tell the story are the scars that you don't disguise

Funny how glass looks like diamonds when it shatters
Your heart, your heart looks like ribbons when it's in tatters

Hold on, hold on and I'll breathe life into you again
And your heart, your heart will fly like ribbons in the wind

And when the cracks in your soul are beginning to show
I will mend them with silver, I will mend them with gold

And when the cracks in your soul are beginning to show
I will mend them with silver, I will mend them with gold

And when the cracks in your soul are beginning to show
I will mend them with silver, I will mend them with gold

Kintsugi (Cover of song by Becky Thomas/ Rebecca Milkwood)

A singer-songwriter, with over four decades of songwriting experience, currently based in Gurugram, India 

FAREWELL TO JUNE, FAREWELL IN MARCH

Psyve

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