This month’s Composer’s Choice is…
A pentatonic journey through the seasons and back again. A cyclic soundscape invoking nature spirits. Atmospheric changes: light through mist, light through forest canopies, creatures echo and drums unfold. Drums are the sounds that humans make. I see an ancient pathway taking us through a series of brilliant ecosystems: water, sky, rainforest, plain, craggy cliffs and rivers.
We all have a very deep memory inside our cells that’s still connected to nature. Its a universal thing and “Song For A Green Man” was made to invoke this connection.
You will find the green man everywhere throughout Europe. Faces of a man, sometimes scary-funny, sometimes benign and bi-gendered, found carved all over churches and graves and grottoes and rocks and trees, anywhere a strong message can be sent to remind the observer, a mirror to ourselves via art, that we are the green man – that we are born from nature and that we are directly tied to the fate and fabric of the world.
Some folk think the Green Man represents a male counterpart to Gaia – a figure which has appeared throughout history in almost all cultures. In the 16th century church at St-Bertrand de Comminges there is carving of a winged Earth Mother giving birth to a smiling Green Man…who of course is us.
My partner, Celeste Coucke, first alerted me to the green man with her sculpture of the same name: Made in stoneware with green oxide, this beautiful head appeared in the garden just the other morning. I was thus inspired to write the music for this month’s Composer’s Choice.
The ceramic bust has a detail that I have to share: the bottom of the neck is beveled inwards, making a shadow line, creating an illusion that the head is ever so lightly levitating off the base.
Likewise, I hope Song for Green Man gives you a similar sensation.
Steve
Stephen Fearnley is an award-winning filmmaker, artist and composer. He composes transformational soundscapes for the meditation journeys guided by Naomi Carling and facilitated by Naomi Janzen for One Mind Live – a unique worldwide online group meditation community. To sample One Mind Live, go HERE
“Composer’s Choice” is a monthly bonus offered to One Mind Live members. For information on how to give membership a try and get instant access to the entire archive of Stephen’s amazing, original compositions, go to www.onemindlive.com/try-it-now