The Circle - Blackmore's Night

I've been here for a million years
through the joy, through the tears
But when I am gone this will go on and the circle starts again

I've watched the mountains rise from dust
saw the gold return to rust
I have cried when the oceans died and the circle starts again

I was here when the world began to turn
kissed the sun as it started to burn
The whispering at the reckoning said "The circle starts again"


Ritchie Blackmore is a funny bugger. The odds that Deep Purple's lead guitarist -- one out of what, 23? -- would turn to renaissance-inspired folk music feel rather high. But that's what he did with his bonnie lass and now they are churning out albums that tend to be as mystical as they are magical. The Circle is in a league of its own. I've listened to that piece many times, but nothing is music-wise as special as when you find the right element for a song -- you find its true environment, the milieu in which it flourishes into something more than just mere tones and lyrics and gets a life of its own.

I managed to find The Circle's element yesterday.

It was sometime around five in the afternoon, i.e. a few hours after I spontaneously decided to revive this gathering of thoughts and adjective-barfing. I had spent my day in the company of the vile driving theory -- which I will avoid talking about today as it only makes me want to crawl into phaetus position in a corner -- and was feeling less than excellent. A day of sitting inside with written material and a computer does that to you, both the regress in mood and the faint, mildly throbbing headache. After finally completing one of the online tests -- I failed -- I decided that I needed something else to do for a while. Hence I dressed for a wintery walk to the water.

Most of you -- not that you are many, if any -- have seen me in real life. Few are the people that would call me posh, and my only true concern tends to be how my hair looks.

All of you would still laugh your shiny behinds off if you saw me in my forest garb.

I could not care less whether I looked proper or not though. It would be rather vain to do so, seeing as that no-one else is present save my family, and they look even worse. At least I try to adapt some uniform colour-scheme of brown and swampy green.

It was silent when I went out -- it's always silent here unless someone's riding a tractor. I did not feel like a longer walk, and I knew that the clearing where I once sat and decided my future is rather overgrown by now, so I decided to go down to the stream. One day when spring has come I will utilise it for rowing around in a boat with a silly grin on my lips, pretending there is no such thing as UCAS or final exams. At this time of year, the stream is frozen though.

While walking down I was silently singing Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key. I do actually sing now and then, but only when I am alone. That's the unexpected piece of honesty for the day.

Generally I just tend to sit next to the stream and look at the water's motion and the occasional bird flying over it. It's always had me thinking of Canada for some reason. But now when I got there, noticing the thickness of the ice, I decided that the bank was not sufficient.

I stepped out on the ice, and I am actually fairly paranoid about things like being alone down by a large mass of water where no-one would hear me if I fell in and screamingly froze to death, so I took it carefully. After a while I noticed that iit would hold though -- the stream did not even seem to recognize my presence. I was of the same importance as a fly's turd in a pile of manure, so why would the mighty, flowing water bother with swallowing me? The Horse of the Brook takes a vacation during winter.

I noticed that I stood in the middle of the stream, with some 20-30 meters to each bank. In one direction the snow was untouched and in the other the jet black ice shone through the white poweder where I had walked and disturbed its peace. A bird the size of a goose flew above me without making a sound.

This is where The Circle started playing. There, out on the ice that theoretically could swallow me as it damn well pleased, accompanied by only trees and deep-frozen fish under the ice, Candice Night started lecturing me on the eternal circle, and that when I am gone it will all go on.

I raised the volume a bit.

The cacaphony of sounds in my ears was a fitting soundtrack to the desolate scenery and I fely myself shrinking. Minimising to the size of a trout, a sparrow, and an ant. Feeling my position as a peer among the dominating species of the world diminishing until I was just another piece of the puzzle, another tiny part of the arc in the eternal wheel of time.

I raised the volume further. Normally my ears tend to start hurting at this point, but I did not notice or I did not care. I was immersed.

As the music grew louder the snow started to fall again after a hiatus since the preceding evening. At this point I was viewing myself frmo a third-person perspective: I could see myself standing on the ice, surrounded by nothing but the sickly symmetric and flat, snow-covered ice and with a frozen meadow on the Western bank and tall firs on the other. I could see myself, a tiny, miniscule molecular dot on the face of the universe, looking up towards the fervently falling flakes with wide-open eyes. I could see myself on some metaphysical level, as part of the bigger picture and my place in the pyramid of life. I could see myself dancing alone across the ice in large boots and an oversized coat, waving one hand in the sky to the beat of the drums and keeping the balance with the other as I skidded back and forth on frozen H2O.

I saw myself, a lonely figure on an empty painting becoming immersed with nature, if only for a few short moments.

I don't see myself very often.

And that's when I found not only The Circle's element, but to a tiny part my own.

/wellington.

2 kommentar(er).:

Meng said...

Your scenery descriptions were soothing. I have no idea how you did it.
I can see what you've written. I can see it in front of me like a scene from a movie, especially when you look down at yourself. I see it as fågelperspektiv, zooming out to reveal more and more of the surroundings. The snow is white and the trees are black, and the sky is a calm grey. It really is a beautiful picture. I really hope we could go to the forest sometime, it seems like such a nice place.

Alex said...

Very movie-like, and the forest seems beautiful, I agree with that!

Sounds like a wonderful moment =D Those are important to have every now and then, especially when there's so much else going on... When trying to learn and understand so many things right that eventually nothing makes sense and you can't see why you're doing it, at least it's good to be able to see yourself. Clears thing up a bit. Another perspective and all of that =) Nice post, glad to see your blog alive!

 

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