Lewis And Clarke - Blasts Of Holy Birth
Release Date: 15 May 2007 (La Société Expéditionnaire)
If I had heard Lewis & Clarke's Blasts Of Holy Birth last month, it surely would have made my list of “Best Albums Of May 2007.” Usually, I’m not a big fan of long songs. This album is one of the exceptions. While the songs average about six minutes each (with an eight and ten minute song), my attention doesn’t wander as it normally would with songs of this length. It is a relaxing, soothing album.
Henry laid down on the floor on his back. This simple action was the beginning of a ritual. He focused his mind on his feet and imagined they were made of lead. He visualized they began sinking into the floor. As the weight began to drift to his ankles, he allowed his hands to also gain the added mass. His extremities felt as though they were below the thick carpet. Slowly his arms and legs became entrenched in the floor. For Henry, the hardest part of this exercise was releasing the tension from his shoulder and allowing them to submerge into his surroundings. It took a while to visualize the entire process, but eventually this entire body was completely relaxed and immersed into the blue carpet that covered his living room floor.
Now that his body was calm and at ease, he began comforting and freeing his mind. Henry did this by concentrating on his breathing. He would feel the air enter his body and think about the motion that breathing created. He envisioned the cells contracting and dispersing. The act of breathing, the natural way he stayed alive, was how each individual molecule traveled throughout his body. Even in total rest, his body was continually in motion.
Henry would not try to limit thoughts from entering his mind, but he would try to free himself from controlling his thoughts. He let the ideas in his mind take their own flight. He tried to release the worries about his job and thoughts about his girlfriend. He tried to clear his mind into a blank slate and then begin letting thoughts enter one at a time until he had achieved some wisdom. Not always attainable, the birth of some wisdom was the final goal.
This particular day, Henry was having trouble wiping clean his psyche. He had been listening to Blasts Of Holy Birth by Lewis & Clarke. The album was full of deep moods, set and layered by the natural sounds of cellos, drones, acoustic guitars, pianos, double bass, and light drums. The difficulty Henry was experiencing was the biggest hurdle in his meditative process. Once he had relaxed his body, his mind would still hold on to the energy of his daily life. This predicament made his mind reflect on the title track to the Lewis & Clarke album with the lyrics “Are we sick of settling/ Is it because we’re doomed/ There’s a nervous kind of energy/ That slowly fills the room.”
His mind began to wander a little, but still not completely uncontrolled. He thought about the next track on the album, “Comfort Inn.” It has an acoustic guitar full of tender, up-tempo picking. It resembles a placid version of an old folk blues tune. A dreamlike love song, the lyrics are about a woman who “is blasé, not a bit surprised/ She’s taken your heart away.” She is a woman who is drifting somewhere, exactly where is not known, but “You better catch her if you can.” “She will tell you stories of the singers in her day/ Before these fakers came and took it all away/ She will smile and her eyes will seem to say to you/ Remember when times were good.”
This song reminded Henry of a dream he had years ago about a faceless woman who embodied true love. He never saw the woman in the dream, but he felt her spirit. As she walked away, after they had made love, he asked her name and how he could find her. She replied that her name was Dharma and he could find her everywhere.
He could feel he was beginning to go into a free association, meditative mindset, but he still felt he was in control of his thoughts. Blasts Of Holy Birth still guided his observations, but the songs and lyrics were beginning to mesh together. The harps and banjos of songs were melding with the differing acoustic guitar textures. The lyrics were layering on top of each other now and taking on new meaning. Certain lines in “Crimson Carpets” such as “We’re not the ones with impossible dreams” expressed new images. “The radio’s broken/ She sings out the truth in the night/ You might see a horizon/ But the ending is never in sight/ The radio’s broken/ She’s singing the truth/ Sometimes you break it/ Before it breaks you” made him question whether the song “Before It Breaks You” was somehow tied to “Comfort Inn.” In turn, he wondered for a moment if the entire album was a serenade to a dream.
Henry was very close to releasing his mind from his thoughts. He centered on his breathing again. He thought about the movement of the tiny microorganisms that made up his body. He slowed down his breathing. The last thoughts he remembered having were more lyrics from Blasts Of Holy Birth. “But we don’t really know/ We think that we are wise/ Deaf and dumb and blind/ We think we have eyes.” With that, his mind wandered. He could not recall where it went next. Once he achieved freedom from his controlled thoughts, his mind would still wander back to Blasts Of Holy Birth, but how it got back to the album and what enlightenment he attained, he could not explain.
www.lewisandclarkemusic.com
www.myspace.com/lewisclarke
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