Perennial Intimacies
I touched the earth of your soul with gentleness,
as you touched mine
a bed of passion unfenced,
and together we sowed a myriad seeds
where bloom perennial intimacies of love.
©Paul Cannon
Paul,
pvcann.com
Tag Archives: passion
Perennial Intimacies
Filed under Five Lines, life, love, poetry, romance
That Voice
Sade, Mazzy Star, Stevie Nicks, Sarah Brightman, Carla Bruni, Hannah Reid, the list goes on, all with unmistakable mellifluous voice. Enya is supreme, that honeyed, mellow, smooth, hypnotic voice captivates, inspires and lifts the soul. She is unmistakable, her Celtic influences in looks, sound and word, are all striking.
Enya, Eithne Padraigin Ni Bhraonain (Enya Patricia Brennan) born of a large and musical family was known for her role in the group Clannad, and then in her solo work from the early 1980s where she burst upon the charts with a string of hits. She is intensely private, and has never done a concert tour as a solo artist and rarely performs on TV. She has a number of music industry awards behind her, and many chart successes. She can play several instruments and her vocal range is mezzo-soprano and instantly recognizable. Enya refers to her voice as an instrument.
The first time I heard Enya was in 1989 with her second album Watermark and the single Orinoco Flow, and I was hooked immediately. If I’m needing something peaceful yet not passive (those two should never be confused) I like to listen to her music, which I find nurtures my soul. So in that sense she is my soul food. I find that her voice transports me beyond the carcophany of the daily and into a melodic and contemplative space.
Some of my favourite Enya quotes:
“There is no formula to it. Writing every song is a little journey. The first note has to lift you.”
“The success of Watermark surprised me. I never thought of music as something commercial; it was something very personal to me.”
Enya never sought commercial success and refuses to live as a star or to court fame. Her commitment is to her passion to write and to create music. I think it’s obvious really that her success has come from focussing on the heart of her passion. And her music has attracted people even before they knew who she was, so that it wasn’t originally personality based, her success was firmly based in the music itself. That itself is a gift. If we take her as an example, then to live out of the heart brings our creativity and passion to life in powerful ways.
Paul,
pvcann.com
Filed under creativity, mindfulness, music, quote
Retrospective On Liberty
Eugene Delacroix (1798 – 1863) “Liberty Leading The People” and my favourite Delacroix painting.
The louvre will host a retrospective of his most famous and also his scandalous works in July this year. It is billed as a once in a generation tribute to Delacroix, consisting of 180 works. Alexandre Dumas wrote that: “The genius of Delacxroix is not debatable, it is not demonstrable, it is something one feels.” Delacroix was acknowledged in his lifetime as the leading painter of the Romantic school, but not one who was idealistic, instead he was noted as being passionate about passion. Clearly his paintings are from the heart.
This painting is significant in France because it depicts the the 1830 revolution against Charles X. Liberty leads the people under the Tricolour – liberty, equality, and fraternity, over the dead bodies of struggle. Liberty is a type, a depiction of liberty goddesses. Liberty became a symbol of France and the Republic known as Marianne. Liberty has a long history and was early represented by the Roman goddess Libertas. Ever since there have been various representations, none so grand as the gift of France to the US which we all know as the Statue of Liberty. Latvia has the Freedom Monument in Riga, which is quite impressive to view.
The most poignant for me was the short lived Goddess of Democracy errected by the Democracy Movement during the protest in Tiananmen Square, the hastily constructed statue re-ignited the focus of the waning passion of the movement, only to be crushed by the Peoples Liberation Army (an oxy moron if ever there was one), as the protesters were dispersed, the statue was destroyed, but working from footage of the protest replicas appeared in – Hong Kong, Taiwan, Canada, and several in the US.
The statues, the painting, show how symbols can work to unite, galvanise, enthuse and encourage peopel to a cause. Delacroix shows how the principle of liberty is noble while the destruction of the Goddess of Democracy shows how little liberty is valued by those who hold power. This of course, was the irony of the first French Republic which degenerated into infighting, murder, and the macabre spectacle of the overworked guilotine. True liberty is hard won, and even harder to keep.
What I like most about the painting is the sense that liberty, equality and fraternity are important, and history shows we are drawn to these values to the point that we will gather and fight for them even if we have little chance of winning. The Goddess of Liberty, in whichever form she appears, is a torch, a beacon of hope to rally around. But I don’t see one at the moment! Perhaps this time around we won’t have a singular unifying symbol, but rather, many symbols.
In a more personal sense it raises the question as to what matters most in our lives. In daily practical application will I practice these values on public transport and in public spaces, at home, and in my work? Will I speak justice into the public space? Will I hold more than just my liberty as precious? Will I stand with others? If the WordPress community is any example, then my hope is well founded that I/we can hold and live those values.
Paul,
pvcann.com
Filed under art, community, history, life, mindfulness, Mythology, Philosophy/Theology, politics, quote
Bestow Love
Ramana Maharshi (1879 – 1950) was a Hindu sage, in fact a Jivanmukta, a liberated sage. Maharshi once said: “Unless one is happy, one cannot bestow happiness on others.”
Maharshi is saying, obviously, that we can only give what we have within us. So if we carry anger, we share anger, if joy then joy, if hate then we share hate, but if love then love, and so on. We can’t give what we don’t have. Love doesn’t come from hate.
To be proactive, Rumi urges us to: “… bestow your love even on your enemies, if you touch their hearts what do you think will happen?” A purpose Jesus taught with his famous instruction to “Love one another”, including our enemies.
Rumi begs the question, what will happen if we do love our enemies? It’s simply rhetorical, the answer is clear, they will, over time, learn to love. I can see that example in so many people I have had the privilege of meeting and befriending, but also in those who have become known for their acts of selfless love – Martin Luther King Jnr., Mother Theresa, Rosa Parks, Ghandi, Malala, Maximillian Kolbe, Oscar Schindler, Bernadette Devlin, Mandella, Fred Hollows, or this guy:- Doc Hendley, who by his own description is but a humble bartender who had a vision to do something about water.
Hendley isn’t a sports star, or rock star, or movie star, just an ordinary guy bestowing clean water on those in dire need. While in reality he is also bestowing his love and compassion. He got angry hearing about the water crisis in the world, but he translated that anger into positive action (rather than reaction) and fifteen years on there’s a process for helping to provide clean water in the Sudan.
Doc Hendley is a great example to us, that we too, humble as we are, can bestow our love, our happiness, our joy, compassion … on others in meaningful ways. Where I live a local girl, Bella Burgmeister has become an author, motivational speaker, and project initiator, not bad for someone who is eleven. Bella has written on the impact of global warming in her book “Bella’s challenge” and she has iniated a project in our community by convincing city council to invest in thirty lockers for homeless people, a fantastic project. Bella has bestowed her passion and energy and love on our community for the benefit of all.
We can all do something, we can all bestow our love in some way, great or small.
Heartless is my world my wallet is cold, empty warm is my embrace © Paul Cannon
Paul,
pvcann.com
Filed under history, life, meditation, mindfulness, poetry, quote, Spirituality
Ascend
The halfway point as we ascend Kasprovy Wierch in the Tatra Mountains, in southern Poland. I hate heights, but I really wanted to experience both the cable car and the mountain, so I did, it was fabulous and well worth the journey up. The view was spectacular and the feeling was one of exhilaration. Passion trumps fear every time.
Disobey
Disobey is my middle name. I wasn’t born to follow inane laws and trifling regualtions. I was born for love, passion, and creativity. I hated the institution of school, yet I really loved learning. So I bunked off, or as we say here, I wagged most of my upper school. Mental health days too were importnat in my early work life. I wasn’t keen on the institution of the church either (which is deeply ironic), but I subverted that at every turn and still do when opportunity arises to be creative with it. I couldn’t tolerate School Army Cadets, I couldn’t take it seriously and they were glad when I left. I did love Scouts, but hated the constrained process, I lasted the longest there and learned a lot, but in the end I left because I really couldn’t sing national anthems or dib, dib as we were supposed to say. My mother was always horrified that I would break rules in general ( I still do) like parking the wrong way round or worse, much worse (a tale for another time). Street racing in Perth in 70s, such fun! Life is not monochromatic, it is not cookie cutter sameness, it is not doormat living, or institutional slavery. Life is authenticity, honouring the inner being, the inner child too, and our creative bent. Just be, and if that means disobeying from time to time, then do, it’s good for the soul.
Paul
pvcann.com
Filed under life
Homage
A few years ago, on our way home from holidays, we decided to (I decided to, Lyn indulged me) drop in at the Dwellingup train museum. As it happened we’d timed it just as one of the stem trains had come in from a tourist run and I was able to take several photos of the loco coming in, reversing, the fireman cleaning out the fire box, and the marshalling of the coaches. It was a great time. For me it was paying homage to a two things: an age of steam that was crucial to the development of the world (and no longer possible given the polution and carbon hungry nature of steam); and my childhood spent catching steam trains. While pollution is bad for the universe, I sill miss the smell of burning coal, the hiss of steam, the whoosh of pistons, and the clanking of steel wheels on rail. It was like they say, a steel horse. it was as if it were alive, pulsating and vibrating, thrumming and moving, a living, breathing beast.
As a child growing up in Nottinghamshire, I was fortunate in my love of trains to live near a rail line and to see steam trains daily. My father took me across Nottinghamshire to indulge me in transpotting (taking down the numbers of the trains coming past and looking out for well-known or famous locos. On my way to school I had to pass by a major goods marshalling yard, and it was fun to observe the manoeuvres of locos and wagons. As a child coming to Australia I discovered that steam was just as much a part of the rail system here, even though it was slowly being phased out for diesel.
My passion segued to rail modelling. So in many ways I pay homage to steam trains, and I miss them because they were such a part of my life, the sounds, smells, feelings and visual are part of me. I do enjoy diesel and electric too, but it just isn’t the same.
pvcann.com
Filed under life
parallax 