My soul has nought but fire and ice
And my body earth and wood:
Pray we all the most High King
Who is the Lord of our last doom,
That He should give us just one thing
That we may do His will.
I loved them. But then I'm a sucker for almost anything lyrically medieval. At one of the last Prima Vox rehearsals before I left for Paris, I said that I couldn't get the words out of my head, and had even kind of a little melody forming around them and that I'd write us a song to sing at the concert on December 19th. And they laughed, certain that I'd be too busy with fashion, art, inspiration, l'amour, PARIS to bother with Prima Vox.
They were wrong. The song would become the soundtrack and symbol of my Paris Trip #2. In a creative fire, I tore through sheets of staff paper. I burned through my pencil eraser and had to resort to buying one of those souvenir erasers in a postcard shop. I annoyed waiters who had to wait for me to move my music papers out of the way so they could deliver my French onion soup and hot chocolate. I begged the use of a piano (in my abysmal French, no less) from a very reserved gentleman in a French music store. At first, he stayed very reservedly and very Frenchly in his office, giving me privacy. After two hours, he was leaning very unreservedly against the doorway of his office, eyes closed and smiling.
I lit plenty of candles in plenty of ancient churches to keep that creative fire stoked.
And I finished it. The girls and I sang through it a few times so I could get the harmonies right and get ideas for harp accompaniment. Friday night was the first time we sang it all the way through with the harp.
And I put my head in my hands and cried. It was so beautiful, their voices and mine and my harp, all dichotomy and pleading and yearning. I could see and feel and smell Paris while we sang: sitting and talking with a friend, my heart breaking in front of that statue in the Louvre, watching the sun set over the Seine, smelling the incense in Notre Dame, standing on the tiny balcony of my top-floor hotel room and looking out over the moonlight rooftops of the Left Bank. And we agreed that we'd sing it at my To Drive the Cold Winter Away concert on 11/28, too, because one performance this year just wouldn't be enough.
I wondered later if it was vain to cry over the beauty of one's own art. But a kind Facebook friend calmed my worries with this: "No, by the time you've written it and moved on, then it seems to me the experience of listening would be the experience itself and beyond the ego." Thank you.
The whole song is beyond me now — it's got a life of its own.
I can't wait for you to hear it.
And I put my head in my hands and cried. It was so beautiful, their voices and mine and my harp, all dichotomy and pleading and yearning. I could see and feel and smell Paris while we sang: sitting and talking with a friend, my heart breaking in front of that statue in the Louvre, watching the sun set over the Seine, smelling the incense in Notre Dame, standing on the tiny balcony of my top-floor hotel room and looking out over the moonlight rooftops of the Left Bank. And we agreed that we'd sing it at my To Drive the Cold Winter Away concert on 11/28, too, because one performance this year just wouldn't be enough.
I wondered later if it was vain to cry over the beauty of one's own art. But a kind Facebook friend calmed my worries with this: "No, by the time you've written it and moved on, then it seems to me the experience of listening would be the experience itself and beyond the ego." Thank you.
The whole song is beyond me now — it's got a life of its own.
I can't wait for you to hear it.
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