nic paton
We find ourselves in a season of stillness, bewildered and dumbstruck in an unexpected shadow. At this time, some are entering Easter or Pesach, to contemplate the mysteries of life and death, of slavery and emancipation. Many are unhinged, suffering upheavals and shortages. Others are breathing out, letting go a world past its time.
On this Good Friday, 10th April 2020, I am launching an album of music that was first released in 2016, but whose real time is now: “Valley Of The Shadow – Rites Of Loss”. This will include a beautiful new video of “While I Thought (Mentre Pensavo)”.
This launch is for lovers of music, but equally for the victims and the vulnerable. So for the rest of April 2020, all funds raised from the sale of the album on download site Bandcamp will be given to 2 organisations:
- Specchio dei tempi – Mirror of the times based in Turin Italy, near the centre of that nations devastating epidemic.
- Home Of Compassion Ministries based in Delft, Cape Town, South Africa, an NGO (non-government organisation) working with the most desperate neighborhoods on the apartheid-designed Cape Flats, who despite their deprivations, have a well-formed campaign to feed 1000 people during this lockdown.
With this music, I want the listener to engage the full weight of their life. We must know and own our denial (Slow Dawn), do our bargaining (Cup Of Sorrow), feel our anger (Rite Of Fire), and sink into that abyss known by every mystic (Gone To Ground). Only then will we start to realise or accept the deeper, more abiding meaning of being alive, by embracing these losses (Adieu, above on this page), and finally the inevitability of our own demise, and thereby finding relief from its grip of fear.
So from Good Friday forward, please buy the album, share this with your network, and strengthen the connection with yourself and our world. With deep gratitude.