music

I’m swept away in this moment
I feel your heartbeat next to mine
My hands are tremblings
It’s overwhelming

A whisper breaks through the silence
A vow to test the breathe of time
Until forever
I’ll be forever
Yours

Not just tonight
I’m by your side
For all your life

Till death comes between us
And the heavens steal you away
I’ll stay yours forever
Don’t you worry
Don’t be afraid

The heart can shift like a shadow
The deepest passion start to wane
Stay ever tender
Never surrender
Come waltz with me through the twilight
And we will dance as seasons pass
We move together
I’ll be forever
Yours

So hold me tight
Say you’ll be mine
For all your life

Till death comes between us
And the heavens steal you away
I’ll stay yours forever
Don’t you worry
Don’t be afraid

Come what may

So what we have is this moment
But moments come and go so fast
Until forever
I’ll be forever
Yours

There is no other
I am forever
Yours

Here’s another song. Johnny Cash used to sing it. This is the Tom Jones version.

I seem to be on a bit of a roll at the moment. It won’t last. There’ll be time to catch up, I’m afraid.

There ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down
Ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down
When I hear that trumpet sound I’m gonna get up out of the ground
Ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down
Go down yonder Gabriel, put your feet on the land and see
Oh, Gabriel don’t you blow your trumpet ’til you hear it from me
I looked way over yonder and what do you think I see?
I see a band of angels and they’re coming after me
Then I looked way down the river saw the people dressed in white
I knew it was God’s people ’cause I saw them doing right
Ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down
Ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down
When I hear that trumpet sound I’m gonna get up out of the ground
Ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down
I’m going down to the river Jordan and I’m gonna bury my knees in the sand
Holler “Ah, Hosanna” ’til I reach the promised land
Then I looked way over yonder and what do you think I see?
I see a band of angels and they’re coming after me
So meet me King Jesus, meet me, wont’ you meet me in the middle of the air
If these wings should carry me, I won’t need another pair
Ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down
Ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down
When I hear that trumpet sound I’m gonna get up out of the ground
Ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down
Ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down

Well, meet me mother and father, meet me down the river road
And momma you know that I’ll be there when I check in my load
Ain’t no grave can hold my body down
There ain’t no grave can hold my body down
There ain’t no grave can hold my body down

If you didn’t catch the BBC Radio 4 programme Soul Music last week, you can still hear it on Listen Again. It’s worth it.

Soul Music is a long-running series which just seems to get better and better. The format is simple: snippets of interviews with all sorts of people interwoven with the chosen piece of music. You hear it afresh.

The programme on Mozart’s clarinet quintet was outstanding. It was discussed by, mostly, clarinettists. One talked of how he had played it at two weddings and a funeral – and he wondered if there was another piece of music that could work for both.

The valedictory tone of the piece emerged as a common thread. One man described how his mother listened to it as she lay dying – it was the very last thing she heard. Another said it makes him feel as if a relative is about to die – the moment is very serene; the music celebrates the life about to end, and is terribly sad at the same time. The effect is similar on clarinettist Jack Brymer. After playing it he says he feels very complete, as if someone very old and wise has died and you feel very sad that they’ve gone but glad that you knew them.

Another man describes the extraordinary effect it had on him when he was in a coma – much to the amazement of his doctors. It seems that we remain conscious of music when we’re conscious of nothing else. To him, the clarinet quintet sounded like the voice of a woman singing an Indian raag.

Half an hour well spent – you won’t regret it. Funny, isn’t it, how people (rather exhibitionistically, perhaps) delight in choosing their funeral music, but you very rarely hear anyone specify what they want to hear as they lie dying. We should.

Click for the BBC iPlayer here.

Thought for the day delivered by the Rev Dr Giles Fraser on the R4 Today programme this morning was also terrific. It began:

One of the great privileges of being a priest is that I often get the opportunity to be with people when they die. It frequently astonishes me that, despite the ubiquity of death, this is something a great many people have never actually seen. Little wonder we’re so frightened of death. It used to be something public, but now it’s pushed out of life. Whereas we used to die at home surrounded by friends and family, we now die in hospitals, often alone and hidden behind expensive technology.

Read the rest here.

Here’s a seasonal number (with apologies to US  and Scotch readers, to whom cricket probably makes no sort of sense at all). This is the song that DJ John Peel agreed with his producer, John Walters, would be played on the radio when he died. It didn’t happen. Walters died three years before (Peel played the song for him), but no one living was immediately aware of the request when Peel died. Andy Kershaw made up for the oversight in his Radio 3 tribute to Peel; he played it at the end. Lovely melancholy, elegiac brass band sounds to relish here.

Its mood resonates with these well-known lines of the enthusiastic opium eater Francis Thompson:

For the field is full of shades as I near a shadowy coast,

And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost,

And I look through my tears on a soundless-clapping host

As the run stealers flicker to and fro,

To and fro:

O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago !

When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease

When the day is done, and the ball has spun, in the umpire’s pocket away
And all remains, in the groundsman’s pains for the rest of time and a day
There’ll be one mad dog and his master, pushing for four with the spin
On a dusty pitch, with two pounds six of willow wood in the sun

When an old cricketer leaves the crease, you never know whether he’s gone
If sometimes you’re catching a fleeting glimpse of a twelfth man at silly mid-on
And it could be Geoff, and it could be John, with a new ball sting in his tail
And it could be me, and it could be thee, and it could be the sting in the ale
Sting in the ale.

When an old cricketer leaves the crease, well you never know whether he’s gone
If sometimes you’re catching a fleeting glimpse of a twelfth man at silly mid-on
And it could be Geoff and it could be John, with a new ball sting in his tail
And it could be me and it could be thee, and it could be the sting in the ale
The sting in the ale.

When the moment comes and the gathering stands and the clock turns back to reflect
On the years of grace as those footsteps trace for the last time out of the act
Well this way of life’s recollection, the hallowed strip in the haze
The fabled men and the noonday sun are much more than just yarns of their days.

When an old cricketer leaves the crease, well you never know whether he’s gone
If sometimes you’re catching a fleeting glimpse of a twelfth man at silly mid-on
And it could be Geoff and it could be John with a new ball sting in his tail
And it could be me and it could be thee and it could be the sting in the ale
The sting in the ale.

When an old cricketer leaves the crease, well you never know whether he’s gone
If sometimes you’re catching a fleeting glimpse of a twelfth man at silly mid-on
And it could be me and it could be thee.

Geoff is Boycott (you guessed?). John is John Snow, the fast bowler.

Over at My Last Song Paul Hensby is looking for Goth and Country songs fit for a funeral. I’m in no position to help him out. I like my wireless to utter spoken, not sung, words. I had to confess to Paul that I can’t actually think of a single song I want played at my funeral. Having thought some more, since, I suppose I wouldn’t mind Sailing By, the music which precedes the last shipping forecast of the day. But it’s the words of the forecast I listen out for. They are imbued with poetic meaning well beyond my grasp: Dogger. Wind northerly or northeasterly, veering easterly 3 or 4, occasionally 5; sea slight, occasionally moderate; weather rain or showers; visibility moderate or good, occasionally poor.

Country music has been called white man’s blues, so there ought to be lots fit for obsequies, especially those of a lachrymose cast. As to Goth music, I stand clueless. Given the prevailing mind-weather of Goths, I’d hazard all of it, probably.

If you can help Paul out, do contact him.

And enjoy Willie Nelson, above. Great words:

In the twilight glow I seen her
Blue eyes crying in the rain
When we kissed goodbye and parted
I knew we’d never meet again
Love is like a dying ember
And only memories remain
And through the ages I’ll remember
Blue eyes crying in the rain
Someday when we meet up yonder
We’ll stroll hand in hand again
In the land that knows no parting
Blue eyes crying in the rain