My friend and colleague, Alistair Smith has been an allay throughout the choirs’ project. He has blogged extensively about it, published on this site. At one concert (March 8th 2019) he moved into poetry in order to capture his responses. They are such good poems I reproduce them here, with his kind permission. Some have titles, as we presented new versions of tracks from our double EP ‘Landmass,’ recorded in summer 2018. Two are ‘open form’ and are examples of ‘being in the unknown, with the audience’.
HUSK
Rise and fall
in ancient organum
waves of breath
An Abbess intones
the colours of the overtones
toned over
Drawn out
and revealed from within
A sonic temple
Walls defined
by pure acoustic space
Cracked open
Animal instincts
break out
and riot against the sacred
Profanity exploding briefly
Before placation
and back
into the reverence of silence
BUD
Ideas
tight little buds
born of hidden seeds
are teased to open
stretching stems
emergent roots entwine
into an undergrowth
interlaced
holding each other
A dialogue of limbs
Becoming intricate
Weaving into a carpet
of uniformity
and settling into appearance
of organic coherence
PLOUGH
Sigh
Breath
and exhale
Expel!
Revel in the expelling
and the visceral
salivation of air expulsion
Wail
Between song and scream
“Human” & “Beast”
Tribal rotations
anchor
gathered in revolutions
of circular volitions
SOW
Yawning and unison
shaped mouths
sculpt a drone
into an envelope of tones
At altitude she soars,
swoons and glides
in effortless increments
ascending
Focusing an energy
up my spine
towards a higher mind
Rhythm becomes multiplied
and subdivides
Sweet intervals are held – sustained
Until only they remain
Holding and enfolding each other
in concertina folds
SEED
Born of silence
a sustain
becomes a tremble
becomes a line
A track to trace
in the palm
in the face
Its undulations
meanderings
its altitudes and attitudes
elevations and contours
Waves of meaning perhaps
sent on ripples from mouth
to ear
Orifices offering
Chalices proffering
ROOT
Sweepings & brushwork
Raspings & breath work
Granular oscillations
of sub-sonics
and infrasonic openings
Haunting humanity slides in
Harmonics highlight
add dimension and illuminate
Low frequencies return
and submerge
in additive synthesis
of raw humanness
OPEN FORM (2)
Song is embrace
A person speaks and personalities meet, allowing each other in welcome embrace.
And the embrace is “song”!
A success of sets, communing in diversity, join each other and try each other out; More than mere accommodation, they support and sustain in balanced differentiation of enhanced embrace.
Spurring and urging onwards, the whole emboldens’ the one. Each filament is fortified by the collective and fostered to thrive in the communal mass of encouraged embrace.
And the embrace is “song”!
OPEN FORM 3
Vocal codes
Sensuality of an inflection
a slight downturn
tiny slides between
Click
smack of the tongue
The voice – a cavity
beat the tattoo
on taught skin
Chamber muse
Roll off the tongue
tremble off the lick
stutter off its flick
Be ridiculous
Be sublime
Release the wild – tame the mild