Fields of gold

Sometimes feel there is nothing stronger than soulful music that comforts a man in troubled times . And there is nothing quite as much wonderful a person can leave behind than music that alleviates the pain and suffering of millions across cultures and creed.Reminds me of a scene that particulary touched me, in its wisdom and emotion, from my all time favorite movie 'shawshank redemption' . Andy (Tim robbins) locks the warden's room on the inside, gets some Mozart records and plays an aria of 'marriage of Figaro" over the prison loud-speaker system .He sits there , legs over the table, relishing the music unmindful of the consequences, obliging only by turning up the volume when the warden orders him to shut it down. The whole prison comes to a standstill as everyone, prisoner or guard, looks up at the speakers, mesmerized by the music. "I don't know what those ladies were singing. It was so beautiful, so deep, it couldn't be expressed in words. Made the walls dissolve. Every last man felt free" a fellow prisoner remarks . Andy is put in an isolation chamber for a month as a result of his misadventure. And later when Red (Morgan Freeman) asks him if it was worth doing it ,

Andy: I had Mr. Mozart to keep me company...(He points and taps his head) It was in here. (And he gestures over his heart) And in here. That's the beauty of music. They can't get that from you. Haven't you ever felt that way about music?...Here's where it makes the most sense. You need it so we don't forget...that there are places in the world that aren't made out of stone, that there's, there's somethin' inside that they can't get to, that they can't touch. It's yours.

Red: What are you talkin' about?

Andy: Hope.

Well , music, love and hope might quite well be the three entities that can find a man and a man finds inturn even in his darkest disposition . And to bequeth any of those to the world, I believe, is truly the most endearing thing a person can do. Came across this beautiful rendition of sting's original 'Fields of Gold' by Eva cassidy. The video belonging to 'Brokeback mountain' ,the well-known and very-sensitive gay love story of last year.The song is part of the album 'songbird' released in 1998, two years after Eva's death from cancer at the age of 33 .It touched me no end ,the voice and emotions of a person no more, so selflessly comforting than many a person alive in their own terms.



In his arms she fell as her hair came down
Among the fields of gold...

Will you stay with me will you be my love
Among the fields of barley..
Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the fields of barley
See the children run as the sun goes down
As you lie in fields of gold..

You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Among the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in fields of gold..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocwLOQcGaow

Memoirs from a lonely world


The night whisks away , contritely, unable to sustain the glory of the unforbearing sun.I wake up in the middle of an hour i fail to fathom, in a beautiful prison called sioux falls.The relentless ringing of a lone church-bell beckoning the day entails reality of the present . I drag myself out of the comforter , in deep discontent at having missed the finale of a fabulous reverie, my only uninhibited recourse in an otherwise beleaguered existence. Moving slowly, without purpose , unable to come to terms with the abrupt transcience to an unforgiving world,i look through the emptiness,within and around me. The sight of the laptop lying in the corner enamours me with the warmth of hope, on yet another cold monday morning. I stand motionless, staring at the powerful animal, stuck in a moment of predicament, in a long drawn altercation between the heart and the brain .I give in, with empathy for the meeker . My eyes gaze wide open in anxiety , the disconcerting brightness of the screen in the wee hours of the morning notwithstanding , for that special name in an aggregation of assorted mails. And then it hits me like a chill breeze on a cold winter night, my heart begins to sink , one more time, as the sun rises in pride to announce the dawn of a new day, a new world order - my insecure heart has no choice but to surrender and live by. To do some justice to waking the poor machine, I play the first playlist that grabs my attention . And almost as a lack of a choice, I hit the bath.

Of mortal fears and an eternal imagination

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

-- Keats

One among my favorite sonnets of keats, the above masterpiece is a beautiful expression of the gravest fear of man - death.More than the apprehension of the inevitable, it conceives his deep angst at being incapacitated of relinquishing his inordinate desires.The opening lines, or in poetic parlance, the octave, is a metaphorical illustration of his fears of leaving his literary works unfulfilled . Keats, always impressive at romanticising thoughts, sublimely bemoans the potential loss of lady-love . Words, albeit sublime, convey profound feelings of separation and longing for the woman he loved (and lost) - 'the fair creature of an hour'.The last few lines would definitely touch a chord in any poetry lover's heart.It perfectly encompasses the obscurity of wordly love and fame in the larger scheme of reality! This poem was penned down when keats was 23. And almost like a biblical appreciation, keats ceased to be when he was 25 .