During a very busy springtime, it has-as often before – been good to hide in the music in order to survive the enourmus amount of things which had to be done….. but but but sometimes the music disappears, and the you are really lost!

I’ve just been through such a period – way to many charges to do, and suddenly I found out, that my facinations of my very beloved songs and musicians slowly disappeared – not that I now don’t like them, but they didn’t help me to gain my strength as they did before!

Yesterday I was sitting in my car listening to a song from Lars Lilholt, and suddenly I realized, that this is the reason why I’ve been a little moody this spring! I once again had to face the truth, that without the music, you are really nothing.

The song, which was sent as a springtime-greeting from Lars Lilholt earlier in this year AND which is going to be used as a good-bye song during all this summer’s shows, is a new text to a Danish traditional ” I skovens dybe stille ro” – In the deep silence of the forest – which is a very beatiful melody.  The song has no official title yet, but it could be something like “When I got lost I turned towards the place where the music was”  – Når jeg for vild så gik jeg mod, det sted hvor musikken lød.

I often left off, when it counted the most  
but though I realized:
that where my teardrops they fell
right between hope and hue and cry -
it was right there my heart  really beat
and all the meaning of that
When I got lost I turned towards
the place where the music was

I seeked up I seeked down
and I found my deepest flaw.
I took it in and I brought it by,
though I gave it too much of myself.

I searched for the deepest quitness
behind noise and dyspnoea -
When I got lost I turned towards
the place where the music was!

There is really not much to say about this song – It tells my way of reaction  in a proper way ….. or Larses story – which clearly is the same. The music as the guardian and guidance angel – the music which helps you when you are really down, makes you feel yet happier when you’re “up”, which makes you think, makes you feel – without the music we are nothing!

This came to me yesterday aftenoon, when I was driving home for weekend – just another day when I had got lost, but so much that I felt caught by the hopelessness because I couldn’t hear the music ….. then came Larses song to me, and I realized the music was right there in front of my nose …… and then I felt like my guardian angel again had discovered me in the big grey dakness of everyday life …… so I’ll just thank Lars Lilhot deeply for the beatiful song, that led me back on the road with the heart!

And now I really look forward to this evening, where I’m going to enjoy the most wonderful concert with Lars Lilholt band – and especially to this song.

After 10 hours in the sun your skin feels exactly as if you’d spend an hour at the westcoast – and that was exactly what got me to think and to miss the coast – I really hope I’ll get the possibility to go there in this Easter vacation. The coast, the area, where you really are set free, the place of hope, dreams, myths, legends, connections and farewell – the place where everything is possible.

There are a lot of songs connected to the sea, and I love a lot of them, but this evening I got to think of two songs. The one is from Lars Lilholt band – they are very present in my mind, because yesterday I got tickets to one of the first concerts with the band – a rehersalsession – that’s really great. The song is called “the seal woman” or “The selkie woman”

The other song is a brandnew song from Andrew Huggan called “The selkie’s song”  – a very nice song, which hit me right in the heart because both melody and text hit  the feelings I have when I sit out there on the outer groyne and get the wind and spindrift in the head and look at Scotland and dreaming me away - my head is being emptied of every day, week, month heavy thoughts – that is where you come to feel free and able to do everything – it’s just there, you get recharged and get plenty of energy and courage for taking new decisions in life - AND  here your imagination, dreams and creativity grows – that is the epitome of everything beautiful and nice and bright, and at the same time it is brutal and dangerous … .. I really believe it is the  most beautiful place of the world. 

Andrew Huggan sings about how he as a child got aware of the selkie’s song – and it is with him wherever he goes. You can almost hear the waves in his song, and see the selkies at the shore.  Andrew Huggan describes how he has traveled around in Scotland and heard the seals singing, as they always do at Dornoch Firth, which is a small place, located on the north side of Invernessfiord – at the eastern shore of Scotland … .. So is there anything to say to that caught by such a song – the song of the seal sent from  Scotland and across the water to the edge of my little paradise – the shores of “Vesterhavet”.

 Listen to the song here: http://www.reverbnation.com/tunepak/1356918

The Seal woman by Lars Lilholt is taken from the myth of seals who can take human forms and go on shore – a very beautiful story … .. about a young fisherman, who falls in love with a beautiful woman one night. She is a sealwoman – and he builds a house for them away from the water. They got lots of kids and live happily till one day he goes fishing when it is stormy. The wife tries to avoid him going, but he will not listen and his ship sinks. His seal-woman rescues him, but dies herself, and he gets crazy because of love and emptiness.

It should be clear that both songs (again) show some  common roots between the Danish and Scottish cultures. Though it is said that the myths about the selkie primarily are found in the faroese, Icelandic, Irish and Scottish cultures – but as shown here also the Danish. It is clear in the language too, selkie or selch is the scottish word for seal – the old English is seolh and the Danish sæl or sael.

Again we’ve got a lot in common – as if I haven’t said that before – and each time I find new common things, I once again get confirmed in my love – to the sea – to Denmark, Scotland, the Nordic culture, all my roots – and I find the whisper from that old common history in every wave in the sea and in every windy wet breeze I get in my face each time I stand at the shore of my paradise ……and even when I sit in the middle of the heathland of Jutland   – amazing what music can do

Sunset on Kongenshus - picture borrowed from Gitte

Now your words are not of sentiment, shallow or untrue, but wells of living water and from their clear deep sides we drew the songs, the tin, the horses this country’s great and ancient wilds. Your faith in God and man and nature and the keenness of your guile

So have you stood in Thyborøn at the time the sun goes down or on the memorylane in Kongenhus  – That’s when music fills your evenings!
It’s all so different now, this world, when you are the summer walker and the fisher of the pearls.

So as we close another chapter that we label Archive Gold
Still  Karup Å flows each morning and the dew falls from the sloe.
But today we were walking through a land that we have lost
While the rest sit at websites with no access to the coast

And it’s up by the Dune from Tønder til Thorsminde, and the long windy shores of the West coast. Its the Fiord and the heathland, by Kongenshus and Karup, ’cause the road reaches far now the summer is here

Borrowed and rewritten from Runrig:The Summer walkers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ6cQuy39ZM

People might ask, why I destroy this beutiful song by putting Danish places in the text and mixing it up – and it’s correct, for at Scotsman I’m sure I’ve destroyed the song, but it is just a try to describe the same love for my home area and the feelings I get, when I am walking or driving on my beloved areas – places which mean a lot to me and make me feel free and light.

Everytime I need to clear my thoughts, I’ve two places I prefer to visit – the one is the west coast of Jutland – I really love to feel the wind and the foam of water and salt in my face, watching that big and wild sea, which brings hope, ideas, stories, and mamories and surely makes you feel alive. The other place – the one I visited yesterday – it,s just about a mile from where I live – it’s the heathland and the memory park for all those people who started growing the heathland! This place inspires me and makes me feel peace, I can open that Golden Archive with all the stories, with our roots, with the land that doesn’t exist anymore – and everytime it is a beautiful experience

Yesterday evening I was there with Line, Malthe and Gitte. It was just at the sunset  when we got there. It was the big open land, the blue sky and the red and orange sun – really beautiful. We walked down the memory lane where the big stones are placed in a long long row. Every stone is to remember a parish from which people went to the area to grow the heathland – those stones hide a  treasure of stories about the destiny of a lot of people and your imagination and fantasy really get challenged.

When we went in the valley – the only one in miles on the big desert of heatland – the sun disappeared and we went in the dust among this big ocean of history till we reached the big circle of stones where all the momentous people are to be remembered. We rested for a while talking about the big Danishpoets of the heathland and about the music which is to be played her in the summer before we turned back towards the car. Now it had got dark and above us was the big clear sky filled with sparkling stars – there was a silent mist over the big area of heath.

When I’ve been for such a walk I feel peacefull and satisfied – to me it is meditation, refreshness and peacefull at the same time – I feel connected to my roots and feel really at home.

After uch an experiene, I can drive back, open my computer, surf the web-sites, write my blog and again connect to the modern digital world and with renewed power be an – almost – ordinary citizen of the modern world with all its blessings and sorrows

Malthe on Kongenshus

All these thoughts made my new quest easy and her quest came as sent from the heaven! I had to write about a song. It is a Danish version of  John Sebastian’s What a day for a daydream.

The Danish version played by one of my favourite bands – Lars Lilholtband can be heard here – bad saound, but it gives an impression of the music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWVG4WDSDQ0

It makes no sense to present the Danish text here, but it is very much like the original:

What a day for a daydream
What a day for a daydreamin’ boy
And I’m lost in a daydream
Dreamin ’bout my bundle of joy

And even if time ain’t really on my side
It’s one of those days for takin’ a walk outside
I’m blowin’ the day to take a walk in the sun
And fall on my face on somebody’s new mowed lawn

I’ve been havin’ a sweet dream
I been dreamin’ since I woke up today
It’s starrin’ me and my sweet dream
Cause she’s the one that makes me feel this way

And even if time has passed me by a lot
I couldn’t care less about the dues you say I got
Tomorrow I’ll pay the dues for droppin’ my load
A pie in the face for bein’ asleep before dawn

And you can be sure that if you’re feelin’ right
A daydream will last along into the night
Tomorrow at breakfast you may pick up your ears
Or you may be daydreamin for a thousand years

What a day for a daydream
Custom made for a daydreamin’ boy
And now I’m lost in a daydream
Dreamin ’bout my bundle of joy

Funny enough when I hear the song, I get a picture in my head of a young Lars – roughly outlined as they did in in a theater concert about Lars Lilholt and his music at Aalborg theater. The song was called “I’m chuckling” it is about his youth and the first sexual experinces and shows a young happy guy who is fooling around  – but it could also be Lars as we know him today, who is going to dig the garden for his wife, but who again and again is distracted by the big voice of the river “Gudenåe”, the whispering in the trees, the sound of the birds  and so on – all in all the song makes a lot of pictures in my head.

Lars sings about the nice weather …. and yes sometimes the weather is just fine – but HELLO this is freaking rainy Denmark we are talking about, and if it isn’t rainy it is at least grey and windy most of the time – but it is when everything is grey that you need the daydreams most – so I would change the song to someting like: “I’m just looking into the grey nothing! ….. and when I’m dreaming everything will be blue, because it is there everything happens.

I write a lot about my every day and about music – which is what I am addicted the most to. I’ll try to write with humour and play with the words, so I hope my readers will enjoy.