The Fado Suite
 
 
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.
 
**

 I cannot remember if
there was a candle
on the clothed table
set for one.
 
I do remember the vinho verde
chilling in a teakwood bucket,
poured solemnly between 
sets of fado, smoldering and
mournful
 
tearful singer, wet cheeks lit
by dying candlelight.
 
I remember.
 
**
 
Listening to Amalia with the windows
wide open,
saudade piercing the autumn
evening gloom.
 
My new Portuguese guitar
yearns for me to learn, to teach
old fingers new licks, so I dream
 
I am wandering the calcadas in Lisbon
inventing my own heteronyms, humming
melodies born under different names.
 
I greet Fernando Pessoa,
“Bom dia, Senhor. I saw you sitting
outside the Brasileira today but
you were not actually there
nor anywhere else.”
 
“That is how I prefer it,”
they replied without inflection
then vanished scientifically
in the color-swarm of Chiado hordes…
 
I awake to Amalia singing
life’s last song,
to the gray-soaked murk and
swirling fog.
 
The music pours through
my opened heart.
 
My weeping eyes listen
to the distant, wild ocean wind.

(c) Eric Walter 2022

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
Dar al Islam
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.

I learned this ancient Sanskrit chant from my friend, master sitarist and singer, Pandit Deobrat Mishra of Varanasi, India. Not long after Nikki was diagnosed with cancer, I took a workshop on naad yoga with Debu and learned several beautiful chants. Chanting has since been an important facet of my grief-work and my attempt to heal. I am grateful to Debu and to my yoga teacher, Maddie Adams, for instilling in me a love for this practice.

The Indalo Wind interpretation of this sacred mantra features Native American flute, and shruti, a traditional Indian instrument that produces a drone using a system of bellows (similar to a harmonium, but without the keyboard). It was recorded in December 2020.