I tuned in to the radio
when I came in the house for afternoon tea and it took a while to
actually listen carefully. With 24 hour radio available it is all too
easy to hear much but listen poorly. Kate Mc Garrigle's song 'Procepina', written
in the last three months of her life and sung now by her family,
pulled me into focus.
Her daughter, Martha,
referred to the Greek legend of the goddess Persephone (as we spell
her in English), the embodiment of the seasons of agriculture in the
Mediterranean when the wheat was put into underground storage for the
summer months and then brought out for planting with the fall rains.
A yearly cycle of harvest, storage, replanting and growth through to
the next summer harvest. The same cycle over thousands of years since
agriculture was first invented in that part of the world. The two
embodiments of agriculture, Hera, and her daughter Persephone were in
this song. The focus was on Hera's plea for Persephone to return from
the underworld - “ Come home to Hera, come home to Mama”and what
was so touching was that she was plainly identifying with Persephone
being called home to mother as she herself was participated in the
process of dying to this world and already hearing the voice of the
next.
It is an amazing artistic
feat to be able to create through every stage of life, to find the
myths that we all feel deep under the skin. The Gods of the ancient
world still resonate within us. Some time ago Kate said to her
daughter “ I think I may be a goddess.” and maybe she meant it
literally or perhaps she was simply grasping a truth; that the Gods
are deeply us, their stories the transit of our own deep and eternal
selves.
Song writers work with
metaphor, with story, with eternal themes and they touch us with that
potent mix of story and music. This recipe of music and phrase, of
metaphor and legend has been with us for a very long time, so far
back that Homer would count as recent. To be human is to have brains
designed over long periods of time to work with music and poetry and
to respond far more powerfully than words alone, the prose
version, would elicit.