"Escalante"

This is probably my favorite song from "Ruin Sky." At the time I was recording this album, I had become enchanted with the canyons of the Escalante River in Utah, and this song was my musical homage to that place. I recorded the rhythm guitar track first and then added a second guitar line as a bass substitute. Next came the flute part which consisted of both backing and lead sections. I found a keyboard sound I liked to add texture and depth, and then decided to try a solo on acoustic guitar. Engineer, Blair Ashby, did an great job of recording my old Yamaha steel-string and we were really pleased with the result. My producer, Doug Goodwin, said it reminded him of the acoustic solos played by Peter White on Al Stewart songs. The water sound was carefully chosen from a public-domain sound effects library. The song brings back strong memories of many glorious canyon days.

Fado
(a found poem)
 
 A cry for hope.
 
Tenderness?
Sure, but so little.
 
Just because a swallow dies, spring does not end.
 
The soul gets tired.
 
The fingers take orders from the heart.
 
We leave our bodies when we sing.
 
The alchemy of sound and poem,
it’s inside us from birth.
 
**

Memory?
 
I cannot remember if
there was a candle
on the clothed table
set for one.
 
I do recall the vinho verde
chilling in a teakwood bucket,
poured quietly between 
sets of fado, smoldering,
mournful--
 
tearful singer, wet cheeks lit
by dying candlelight.
 
I remember.

 
**
 
Into the Vapor and Din
 
Listening to Amalia with windows
wide open,
saudade in winter
evening gloom.
 
My new guitarra portuguesa
yearns for me to learn, to teach
old fingers new licks, and I dream
 
I am wandering calcadas in Lisboa
inventing my own heteronyms, concocting
poems with vastly different pens.
 
I greet Fernando Pessoa,
“Bom dia, Senhor. I saw you sitting
outside A Brasileira today but
you were not actually there
nor anywhere else.”
 
“That is how I prefer it,”
he replied without inflection
then vanished precisely
into the vapor and din.
 
I awaken to Amalia singing
life’s last song,
to gray-soaked murk and
swirling fog.
 
The music pours through
my confused heart.
 
My weeping eyes listen
to the distant wild
ocean wind.


(c) Eric Walter 2022

Days
 
I wake up
Disappointed that I’m still alive
But I get up and brush my teeth
Shower sometimes
Light a candle and weep
For a while at her altar,
 
Make tea and meditate
Go about my solemn day
Trying to fathom the pain
Loneliness and fear
Trying to see a future beyond
The gloomy uncertainty
That makes me wish again for sleep
From which I’ll awaken
Disappointed that I’m still alive.

 
I am scared to go to sleep. Not because of the nightmares and claustrophobic dreams, but because it is even scarier to wake up and remember it all anew.


I walked up to Council Crest today. It was good to get out. It was so hard coming home. I am not sure what home is anymore.


I feel like I can’t do this anymore. I’m so tired. I’m so angry. I am so overwhelmed. I don't know what to do or where to go. I want only to forget.


On rare days, I trick myself into believing that I will survive this. Today was not one of those days.


It has been eight months. There are times when it feels like eight seconds, times when it feels like eight years.


The Chagall windows at the Art Institute of Chicago are stunningly beautiful. We fell in love with them when we first saw them three years ago. Today I broke down and wept openly and audibly in front of them. The kind museum guard asked me if I was okay. I nodded. That was a lie.


It should have been me
You were stronger than me
You were braver than me
You were smarter than me
You were better than me
It should have been me
One day it will be me and
You will welcome me with open arms
I look forward to that


I’m lost
I’m broken
I’m failing
I’m falling
Apart


Pretty sky this evening
Four hummingbirds at one feeder
At the same time,
And a mosquito

Equinox
 
mackerel sky and
another dose of morphine
nights getting longer
 
 
Angel
 
Blue evening weeps outside
Tearful melancholy
Gone angel on my mind
 
 
Blue Moon
 
One more empty night
Lone candle at her altar
A cold silent moon
 
 
Wind
 
River music and raven song
Sagebrush daydreams
The wind doesn’t care if I wail


Flower
 
Deep well of sorrow
Tries to pull me down then
I remember a flower

Calm
 
I feel a strange calm picturing
My own bleaching bones
Glistening
Undisturbed
Beneath the immensity,
The indifferent desert sky.
I will be with her again.

Exiled
 
I can be happy for others, but not for myself. I should be exiled to the desert. A shack in the canyonlands, a horse, a place for a garden. Days of ancient ruins and solitude. Nights of weeping, blue stars and icy planets. A cold spring not too far away, not too close. Effort is necessary but being tired is so exhausting. I want to leave off where I began, at the end.
 

This song is played on a double flute (drone flute) made by Odell Borg.
The waterfalls seen in the video are located in Skamania County, Washington, USA.
Dedicated to my beautiful Nikki.

So named by painter Georgia O'Keeffe, the "white place" (La Plaza Blanca) is a geologically unique and stunningly picturesque area near the Rio Chama in northern New Mexico (USA). It was a favored painting location for O'Keeffe and is visible from her house in Abiquiu Pueblo. Nikki and I spent a beautiful morning there during our visit to New Mexico in November of 2019. Nikki had a vigor that had been absent since her diagnosis, and it seemed as if the chemotherapy through which she had been suffering was perhaps working. Little did either of us imagine that she had only ten weeks to live. This was the last hike we took together.

This song was the first track recorded during the "She Who Watches" sessions in December of 2020. It features guitar, Native American flute, mandolin, and accordion.

La Plaza Blanca
 
 
You could see it from
her house in Abiquiú
across the Rio Chama
Georgia’s skull-white
landscape muse
owned now by a mosque
that grants us heathens
and pilgrims of Other
respectful access
to this pallid sanctum
of tuneful wind
raven song ringing beyond
chalky hoodoos and
along milky ledges
pastel creek beds
that seem to run
more ways than
one.
 
Then silence
then song again
then wind
then none.
 
With Georgia’s ghost and
the hosts of Muhammed
we track a shadowy past
slipping through fences
of barbwire and bone
pondering strange exhibits
of black stones on this ashen canvas
stretching beyond time.
 
This sun-bleached forever
is quite hard to find
there are no signs
and the address in the local guide
is 1234 Fictitious Lane.