It’s been 18 years since I left Sydney to live on a mountain, set up a studio with my partner and raise a baby girl. We had no idea how we were going to make it all financially work-out, splitting away from the city to a rural area with low employment but somehow everything always just fell into place. At the time some of our friends said don’t sell your house and leave Sydney , you will never be able to get back into the market ! Of course on the inside Celeste and I said Yay ! Who’d ever want to return ? For us it was a no-brainer. Trade-in a small old semi-house for a mountain top vista ? About half of my place is covered with original rain forest. Its rare and untouched. Normally one associates rain forest with hot climates but this is cool and temperate, full of tree ferns and lichen and chocolate coloured wallabies and wombats. Wisely this rainforest, to protect itself, creates boundaries of harsh prickly plants and stinging nettles to stop intruders. We have also ensured with a lot of fencing that cows and other heavy hooves cant get in – encouragingForest Walk – by Stephen Fearnley
Northern Lands – by Stephen Fearnley
This composition is the second in my ‘Mountain Series’ – part 2 of last year’s Composer’s Choice ‘Shambhala’. I have had reoccurring dreams of living as a Tibetan monk since I was a small child. In these dreams nothing much happens – just everyday life in a monastery – but its consistent and vivid every time. And yes I do think this is past life recollection. I don’t come away from these dreams with any great conscious insight but I do take away a lasting feeling of peace and happiness. It always feels like Ive been “topped-up” with peace. I have composed Northern Lands fresh from one of these Tibetan dreams. I have included a header image by Bireswar Sen. Sen was a master miniature watercolorist, influenced by Nicholas Roerich (as mentioned in my Shambhala blog) and the teacher of my teacher Frank Wesley. All of these artists painted the Himalaya for its deep religious and spiritual associations. Then there’s Krista Rodin who mentions in her book “Mantra and Metaphor in Nepali & Indian Himalayan Communities” the deep connection between the mountains and the beginnings of language and associated vibratory tones developed in Hindu and Buddhist mantras from the region:Northern Lands – by Stephen Fearnley
Renewal – by Stephen Fearnley
“Renewal” is a happy piece of music. I think it’s because after weeks and weeks the rain has stopped. Where I live has a specific microclimate where the Highlands meets the coastal air currents and voila! Fog is born. Fourteen days of fog on my mountain. White-out and humid and everything sticky. Today the sun is here and the sheets can dry on the line. Simple joy. And then there is Ovid! I discovered Ovid, not via the classics or Shakespeare (I was never taught in school what a legacy The Bard owed to him) but via Ted Hughes’ book Tales From Ovid. For a view into the ancient world, this is a great window as Hughes, poet laureate, has re-woven Ovid’s stories, retold, renewed for a new generation. This is one of my favourite Ovid quotes: “As wave is driven by wave And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead, So time flies on and follows, flies, and follows, Always, for ever and new. What was before Is left behind; what never was is now; And every passing moment is renewed.” ― Ovid, Metamorphoses Stephen Fearnley is an award-winning filmmaker, artist and composer. He composes transformational soundscapes forRenewal – by Stephen Fearnley
Spring and the Musical Body – by Stephen Fearnley
In Christian Schubart’s “Ideas for an Aesthetics of Tonkunst” ( Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst -1806) he lists all the musical keys and tells of its virtues and emotional values. But what on earth is tonkunst? An old German word mainly out of use meaning the art of tone. I have no idea how this method or art was developed. Maybe it a was synesthetic thing, maybe it came handed down from one musical teacher to another. But it is in keeping with today’s scientific investigations into how music and keys effect us. This Scientific America article explores yet another interesting take on how music evolved and why it moves us: “ …new research by Logeswaran and Bhattacharya adds yet more fuel to the expectation that music has been culturally selected to sound like an emotionally expressive human. While it is not easy for us to see the human ingredients in the modulations of pitch, intensity, tempo and rhythm that make music, perhaps it is obvious to our auditory homunculus.” (Mark Changizi on September 15, 2009) Music is a hologram of the human body…made by humans. It’s an invisible vibrational space we create around us and into us viaSpring and the Musical Body – by Stephen Fearnley