Meanings: “Inward Journey” Recital, Pt. 4
This is going to be my last “behind the scenes” blog post for my recital “Inward Journey”. This post is the “tour pamphlet” for this journey, the “artist statement” for this gallery exhibition, the skeleton key to the meaning of the recital. I hope the recital will tell its story on its own, and there are already a number of explanatory materials included--my opening remarks, the program notes, etc. But for anyone who may be interested in a blow-by-blow exposition of the meanings intended by the songs in this admittedly rather esoteric narrative.
The evening tells the story of an “inward journey”--the journey of spiritual awakening that is possible for those with the courage to detach, in small or large measure, from the expectations and assumptions of the external society.
The first song, “Bóithre Bána” is all about the longing for the open road, and for the little places they can take us that time has forgotten. This theme is directly and intensely personal to me. Road trips, especially on the expansive wilderness highways of Alaska, are one of my most heartfelt pleasures. I spent some of the most idyllic years of my life living in a remote truckstop on one of the longest, emptiest stretches of road in America, the Dalton Highway. When I sing the lines, “these are the roads I miss/ the long roads meandering as they please/ it is down their miles my mind strays/ far from the city din”...I am stating a sentiment that could not be more literally true of myself. For the recital’s protagonist, this is the initial call of discontent with the hustle and bustle of daily existence.
The next song also encapsulates a longing that is very autobiographical--though, as with the previous song, I could hardly have known this theme was in there when I went searching for some Irish songs and happened to stumble on this trilogy for baritone. The fact that they fit me so perfectly is one of those instances of serendipitous coincidence that are so satisfying in life. This second song is called “Return from Antarctica.” It’s about a man who has either voyaged or perhaps lived in Antarctica, who misses its expanses with every fiber of his being. I worked in a very remote and empty area of the Arctic, living there through both summer and winter seasons. The quiet, vast, majestic expanses of a truly remote wilderness--especially a harsh wintry one--are well known to me, and lines in this song like “He gave his heart to that stinging brightness/ to that uncluttered country” couldn’t be more true of myself. To the narrative’s protagonist this is a furtherance & amplification of his discontent with domestic & mundane life.
The final song of the first cycle tells the story of an unusual, perhaps traumatic encounter with nature: the protagonist finds a nest of wrens, the fledglings fly up then land around his neck, forming “A Necklace of Wrens” (“An Muince Dreoilíní”). “That was when the craft came which demands respect: their talons left on me scars not healed yet” (“B’in an lá ar thuirling caird a elliónn ó mós/ Is d’fhag a n-ingne forba orm near laiseadh fós”). In my estimation, the “craft which demands respect” is poetry or artistry in general. This song tells the story of the experience which marked the protagonist out as a poet or artist. Within the context of our recital, it indicates our protagonist being finally marked out for his special journey & deciding to abandon mundane life.
The next four songs treat the theme of nature-identification. Although nature may seem to be an outward rather than an inward preoccupation, those who have undertaken psychedelic trips or other kinds of spiritual disciplines will know that truly intense encounters with nature can echo deeply inside us, reconfiguring our insides just as much as our view on the external world. In particular, I noticed that the middle two songs “Song from a Cloud” and “Planets” are not so much about viewing or noticing clouds & planets as they are about what it is like *to be* a cloud or planet. Thus, this second cycle relates a story of CONSCIOUSNESS EXPANSION: our hero sheds his ego & body identification and finds himself experiencing life quite literally from the perspective of a cloud or planet. The concerns of daily material life grow more and more remote.
The final cycle, with poetry by Doris Lessing, is perhaps the most abstract and difficult to interpret. Here are the rough outlines of its meanings to me:
The first song (Misshapen moon) represents that our hero is now having a more challenging encounter with the nature forces. Rapture has given way to terror. Again, this is not unfamiliar territory to the psychonautically inclined.
Having tasted the terror that can come in such journeys, our hero is wishful to return back to normal (to “get off the bus”), thus, at the beginning of the next song, he wishes to feel “under my hand/ warm landscapes”--meaning to be back on terra firma. Hopefully he calls out, “now we reach it? Now? Now?” but he is mistaken. His time of returning has not yet come.
He must first go through the real meat of the trial. The middle movement of the cycle expresses a journey to the most remote & alien regions of the psyche, represented metaphorically as a journey to the bottom of the ocean. As he sinks to the quiet, undisturbed depths, terror gives way to equanimity and peace. At the ocean bottom, he interests himself in the slowly-gliding fish and the hopping sea-lice. Only here, at the furthest remove from his concerns and his ego-identification, “armed with the indifference of sea-deep sleep,” can he gain the enlightened perspective he seeks. And only after reaching this point is he eligible to return to landfall.
The fourth song reprises the second, but the protagonist’s landfall is a success rather than a failure. The line “give me back my world,” is replaced with “you have given me back my world.” Where before he has wished to feel “under my hand/ flesh of flowers,” here he asserts “I am...the flowers in flesh”--in other words, he has realized what he was formerly missing: the solid ground upon which he wishes to stand is only inside himself.
The final song of this cycle is a melancholic, haunted elegy for the wonders of the journey that has now been left behind. To me, the lines, “Love I could turn to you and say/ make up the bed,” indicate the return of our hero to his normal domestic life.
The final song, “Kullan murunen” sums up the simple, sweet moral of the story: “when I change into gold, I avoid the trouble of rusting”--in other words, our hero’s experience has transformed his essence from something mundane to something precious and indestructible.
So there you have it, my recital Cliff Notes! I hope you enjoyed reading and I hope you will enjoy listening tomorrow night. The recital is tomorrow, Saturday 10/10/20, at 8pm. More info here: http://bostoncourtpasadena.org/events/emerging-artists-justin-birchell/ .