A clear warm afternoon, a dusty road, a verandah, a view. Summer in Australia. This month’s Composer’s Choice composition is called “Beloved”. I wrote it for our special Valentine’s Event. It’s about old friends, country comforts and the sound of crickets and frogs in the early evening as there are dogs jumping through the tussock grass aglow with the rose-gold light of sunset. For all our friends in the northern hemisphere this is a bath of sunlight for you. It’s full of pinks and ochres. It’s full of swelling orange tones and slow, very slow transitions of saffron converging with the crimsons. It’s also in the key of F as well as the Lydian scale – The heart zone – and all the instruments are tuned to 432 Hz. – Play it when you need to fill the space with this particular ancient prescription of sound and vibrational form. Sonically yours 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
Song For A Green Man – by Stephen Fearnley
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-BertrandSong For A Green Man – by Stephen Fearnley
Playing The Heart Drum – by Stephen Fearnley
The music I’ve called “Heart Drum” came about as an exploration into my ancestors, namely the side of my family where I get the name Fearnley. The making of this music was primarily a journey into myself to connect with two people in particular – my lovely father Jim and his mum, my beloved grandmother, Theresa. Both these people were all heart. They simply LOVED, unconditionally. Deep, deep beauty – the honest heart, the unguarded innocent and the unwavering friend. By making this music, I connect with them and say hello. It’s an invocation as well as a gift of love I send them. It’s a bridge where we can both cross and meet halfway. I’ve always liked the idea of ancestors – that we can connect with them, ask for help, ask for advice, have a chat. But in western culture it’s seen as superstitious even though the pre-christian era European had a similar and intense relationship with their ancestors – much like the Chinese do today, an age-old sensibility and practice which simply hasn’t gone away… I also see ancestor connection as a way of sourcing information – activating pockets of memory within us that have come throughPlaying The Heart Drum – by Stephen Fearnley
Lotus Opening – by Stephen Fearnley
This month’s Composer’s Choice, “Lotus Opening”, is a meditation on a painting by Frank Wesley called “Krishna and Radha”. (see the full image below) It was painted by Frank for my 21st birthday in 1982. This is what I’ve said about it in other blogs: “This painting came about from long discussions with Frank about the origins of religious deities and the connection I saw between Pan and Krishna. The drawing alone took 3 months to complete. Another 3 months to paint. Frank Wesley was a prime influence on my creative and philosophical development. He taught me drawing, watercolour and calligraphy over the 6 years I’d visit him, once a week , after school. It was only after I left home, that he revealed that as a young man he was commissioned to make the funereal urn for Ghandi’s ashes.” This astonishing painting (more so if you know how difficult it is to paint watercolours!) resonates with me on so many levels: Krishna and Radha are dancing into being – the universe itself. To do so, they have to be synchronised- separate in their identities, unified in action. It reminds me of the love I have for my wife, CelesteLotus Opening – by Stephen Fearnley