I recently read a great article by my friend and colleage at 12Listen, Mo Abdelbaki, about Halloween, Samhain, and the Day of the Dead: http://www.gaiamtv.com/article/samhain-and-day-dead
I may live in West Hollywood now (and for the last ten years,) home to the world famous Halloween Parade that keeps us residents locked in (hopefully, rather than locked out, although that has happened to me a few times!) to our neighborhoods... and it has given me some of my crazier Halloween moments. My favorite is when I performed as Marilyn Monroe at the Hard Rock Cafe in Hollywood for a fundraiser for the Humane Society... It was a combination of some of my favorite things! Marilyn Monroe! Hollywood! Halloween! Animals!
At the time, I was dating a really fun guy and after we played baseball with Jack O'Lanterns.... here I was, wearing 6" stripper stillettos and a skin tight pink Gentlemen Prefer Blondes dress, slipping around on pumpkin guts. Don't ask, it was awesome. :)
My Halloweens here in Hollywood tend to be full of zany behavior and wild parties, but honestly, I love best my Halloweens in the forests of Minnesota, where the coming winter creates a quickening, where you can heed the call of the ancients and the cry of the future infants, a whisper in the wind, "remember... remember..."
I wrote a classical art song for Mark Mallman's 7 Day Music Marathon a few years back about that exact thing:
That's my own studio demo- I'm playing piano AND singing- but with my sort of funky microphone so it doesn't capture the vocals like a professional studio with an audio engineer would- but I am still proud of this song! LOL.
Today's Halloween is a different story. It has always been my mother's birthday, but only in the past few years is it also the anniversary of the loss of a niece, and it is also the anniversary I celebrate with my life partner, Carlo. In other words, life and death have commingled for me in my own life and relationships, just as the living and dead commingle, at least in the experience of the ancients- and perhaps, if we are quiet enough, or reverent enough, for us as well.
Here are the lyrics for
"FANTASIE FOR A MARATHON MAN,"
The song (demo) above.
If you want the sheet music- well, chord charts- email me at erin.muir@gmail.com. :)
I'd love to hear some other singers perform it!!
FANTASIE FOR A MARATHON MAN
Here now we Stand
As Autumn Takes the land
And living is
hurried now, oh
Hush, Hush, Hush.
Hush, Hush, Hush.
Posing for pictures now,
Leaves swirling, I am sound
Of longing and Hope, oh,
Hush, Hush, Hush.
Hush, Hush, Hush.
Little One, oh why this sorrow,
For Cold shall flow tomorrow
The snow is coming, snow is coming
Hush, Hush, Hush.
Hush, Hush, Hush.
Let me take your hand,
You’ve
nothing left to do
Stars shall light the way to wonder
Carrying you through
To a Marathon,
A Marathon
Of Melancholy Winter Too.
I Shall Take Your Hand,
And
we shall sing by the fire
Poems and stories and thoughtful hours
Happily In Your Arms
through
The Marathon, A Marathon
The Marathon Of
MUSIC!
Sweet Music,
Inspire,
Inspiring
LOVE!
Sweet Love,
Returning,
returning to
Spring!
Sing now for the marathon man
Dropping notes as slow as we can
Gather them
From the night sky
Like stars
Falling to silent ground.
