Seeing as today's album review (2112 by Rush) was prompted by the wonderful Birke, I thought I'd share with you a song that cropped up in a previous conversation. Commonly shortened to 'Cecilia Lind', I would rank it as one of my favourite pieces of music of all time. Whilst I am by no means a Swedish speaker, I understand the tale told here and, yeah, I get emotional. I've had to pretend I've been chopping onions a few times.
How it came into the ambit of my musical knowledge is quite lovely (in my opinion, at least). It was at Sweden Rock Festival, camping with the girls mentioned in my Queensryche review, and I imagine the subject of singer-songwriters came up. Who was Sweden's Bob Dylan, eh? The answer - a Dutch-born fellow named Cornelis Vreeswijk.
And there, with evening summer sun streaming through the pine trees, the two girls sang this song, haltingly at first, a capella. The expression 'time stood still' has become a cliche but in that moment I felt the most indescribable sensation of calmness and, without wishing to be too woo-woo, oneness with my environment. Transmutation of experience into deathless words - writing - will forever be inadequate at capturing that instance. That's magic, then, isn't it?
No comments:
Post a Comment