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All Souls (1980)

by Hermione Harvestman

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1.
Evensong 28:04
2.
Purgatory 48:16

about

All Souls.

This consists of two lengthy meditations recorded in early November 1980, when I was fifty and nudging into an awareness of my own mortality, and the very real sense that human cultural & spiritual concepts of The Divine and The Eternal are defined by our dread of death .

All Souls is more properly known as the Commemoration of All Faithful Departed - those who now reside, according to the bizarre theology of the Catholic Church, in the mini-hell known as Purgatory. Personally I would say all departed are faithful, and unlike the horrors imagined by the Sadistic Roman Church, we may see Purgatory as a nurturing kindergarten where we can, at last, fully experience the innocence that has carried us through life - defining our joy, love, wonder, art, spirituality and culture - without distraction. At least that's how my dear old friend Sheelagh once described it to me - as a nursery to prepare us for the ineffable glories of eternity! Amen to that!

So this is me, getting old, smoothing things over as I begin to contemplate the simple fact that I am no longer immortal; this is me as I begin to flinch from the cruel looking glass in dread of what I might see looking back at me. Thus do I turn my craft to a more purposeful succour for my eventual dotage in preparation the fun and games of Purgatory. As the year darkens, how thin the veil between this world and the next; if I listen carefully enough, I fancy I may hear their laughter...

Hermione Harvestman, 2003.

credits

released November 2, 2013

All music Improvised in Real Time by Hermione Harvestmen. Digital transfer & editing : Hermione Harvestman 2003. Cover image & Design : Hermione Harvestman (Lady Chapel, Ely Cathedral, 1980).

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Hermione Harvestman UK

'I feel like Wainwright - we are both hermetic ramblers. He made his books for when he was no longer capable of rambling his beloved fells, and I made my music for when I'm no longer able to ramble the by-ways of Albion - but only to listen, and think "Was that really me? That solitary figure who stood in a landscape dreaming of ages past in dread fear of the future."

Hermione Harvestman
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