"Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning god, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body"
Walt Whitman
"Leaves of Grass"
___Life of the Progenitress___
[A tribute to the life and the memory of my mother,
Marybeth Windholz,
Feb 25, 1951 - Dec 25, 2007.]
Completed 20080213 by The Nemo-Dog
All work composed and performed and produced and all that stuff by Preston Gelberwolf
EXCEPT!
"Invictus" music composed and performed by Preston Gelberwolf and Phil Lind
"Invictus" poem composed by William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903
"Community and Evolution" is just a bunch of loops and samples.
Do I get credit for that?
You be the judge.
I trust you.
This album is free for download.
A physical copy can be purchased for the low, low price of Ten American Dollars, plus $2 for shipping within the United States, if I need to ship it to you.
Just contact me if you wish to make such a purchase.
All proceeds go to the Marybeth Windholz memorial fund at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and/or to the Pancreatic Cancer Society.
I can not begin to thank everyone enough, who helped care for my mother in her last of life, and who helped care for we who continue to carry the torch. Community is what we Are. That was part of the Gift she gave to us. It can never be forgotten.
The two live songs were recorded on 20071229, with my step brother (former step brother? How does that work?), Phil Lind.
We co-wrote the song "Invictus."
Video of the five songs performed on that date can be viewed and/or downloaded here: Videos:
Track 1 (Jaws of Fenriz) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7616980473214872548
On Sunday, Nov 25, 2007 (the Sunday after Thanksgiving), a group of very talented friends helped my sister and me to record a biographical interview with my mother. It was supposed to be in two parts, but she got too sick to do the second part. Fortunately, I cancelled my performance at the LA Pagan Day Festival, just in time to conduct this interview.
This piece was originally written to appear on her biography video. She requested something soft, with strings. Unfortunately, she never got to hear the piece, but I'm sure she would have approved.
This was only four days after her death. At the time, I could not think of any lyrics to write; I was too overwhelmed. But my uncle had found a passage from one of my favorite poems, in one of my mother's books. It reminded me so much of her struggle, and to some extent, the stubborn way in which she died, that it seemed appropriate. Also, she died on Dec 25, which in Roman Paganism was the feast of Sol Invictus.
I should probably note that I stole part of the vocal melody from a different Wyrdfolk artist's version of the song, "Carved in Stone." I tried to keep my version distinct.
This was about a week later, when the lyrics started flowing from my brain, and simply would not stop. I was shopping for furniture, knowing she would never get a chance to see it.
The bass harmonica is particularly germane, as it belonged to her father, who died in the summer of 2005. When it rains, it pours.
Death of the Progenitress
Where have I gone?
Where have I been?
Where am I going?
Who am I?
And more to the point: What am I?
This is unreal
This is a momentary lapse in the delusion of who we Are
This is cacophony
This is entropy
This is the natural order of the world
The sprinkling of a little light rain
In the desert in summer
This is what we are becoming
Empty
Cold
Void
But this is what we are Becoming
A flash of blinding light
To burn its image in the landscape
Light is our vision
In everything we touch
And everything we Are, or could ever dream to Be
Waning light wafts
From a cauldron as embers
Into the night sky, kissing napes of the stars
This is the zephyr
That captures our Essence
The perfume and flowers I would lay at your bed
The Reality and the Urgency of This Moment
I give back to you
What you gave out to me
And you give back to me
What I give unto you
And this is eternal
The exchange between us
A self-reinforcing cyclical system
The world outside is harsh
Sates our need for resistance
Hence we need not struggle with each other as well
So let us share love
And wordless understanding
For what use are words, when puffs of air dissipate?
This moment is real
Reality beckons
Invites our Self to the table and banquet
To life's greatest feast
Before all the congregation
Whose shadows now dance in the great conflagration
This grim impetus
To order our house
For time has its limits and shall not be bargained
Validation
Your words of kindness
Of which I felt unworthy
The last trickle of high conscious thought from your heart
I struggled to reject
And I never can repay
But perhaps love is wordless, or its words are face value?
I give to you
What you have given to me
Anger
In valiant struggle
A prize was then promised
And dashed away swiftly by vanishing shorelines
You fought so hard
And were slighted so sharply
How bleak is this farce, which would stultify life
There was a moment in time
A pinpoint of light
When I clung fast to notions of balancing scales
When I dreamt of a fairness
Imagined a justice
But the Great Dancing Mother cares not for my mores
My small dancing mother
In motions haphazard
Trod under the Great Mother, and so dances no more
We want for the Earth
We want for the Mother
The Great Dancing Mother knows nothing of us
Comfort for the Dying
She howls out in anguish
She howls in the darkness
She howls in the depths of the fibers of Soul
The unguents and tinctures
Oils and balms
To comfort her last life, but not to prolong
The Failure of Words
I held to your soul
I kept to your spirit
And walked hand in hand to the portals of life
How I tried to speak with you
To weigh you with queries
To share with you words that would comfort or settle
But in death as in life
My bond to you is wordless
And I sensed squandering of seconds too precious
Cessated my stream
Of superfluous gasses
And wordlessly held your weak frame in embrace
Reversal of roles
How often I've seen it
As hunter and prey in kaleidoscope mesh
Predator and prey
Caretaker and ward
Mother and son, idol and idolater
Drifting Out
I held your left hand
From warmth into coldness
To comfort you, walk with you, share your last moments
I felt the current
As I opened your chakra
And you flew into me as you passed to the dusk
A shock in your chakra
A burdensome burn
A sputter of engines, choked mechanical churn
How I knew at that moment
A stream had run empty
A wellspring no more to be tapped at its source
So unto the rebirth
Of the Unconquered Sun
You cast your life force, into all flowers bloom
Now I carry your spirit
Your burdens and blessings
I took when I drank from the well of your Wyrd
Community
What is left behind?
What great legacy?
You live in the spirit of community
A thousand hands extended
A hundred recoiled
We learn who our friends are in deepest of winter
Each hand interlocked
Enjoined to its fellows
We manifest strength with our outpour of love
Each gives as he will
Is not charged to tax further
Each act of volition, authentic communion
This plurality
This community
Each plays a unique role in shaping the whole
This family you fostered
They think of you often
This spirit transcends your mortality
We children who knew you
And the loss to succeed you
Equipped with commitment to bear under the tragic
And they give unto us
As we gave unto them
And we give to ourselves
In bonds of a family connected by caring
Artifacts
Artifacts you left behind
As if to supplant you
Or to show to the world the sum of your life?
How pale and how empty
How vague and how dreary
Sordid, lifeless objects which would carry your spirit?
What a bleak, lifeless vessel
On waters too cold
Seem more lifeless now that you breathe them no life
Soldiers without orders
Stand stiff at attention
How not unlike your form in the end of your days
And is this all you've become?
An object, a corpus
Fragmented mementos on an ancient battle field?
The vessel is empty
The ship has no crew
And its course is a secret retained only by stars
Yet still it remains
An artifact still extant
These fragments of a shadow of the ghost of your soul
So I pledge my vow
To carry them proudly
We siblings, together prove you were once here
I am their guardian
They are my ward
An orphan watching over orphans in his charge
Reversal of roles
Self-replicating system
A self-within-Self, in these objects you breathed life
Your five-pointed star
'gainst a discus of moonlight
I now keep as my charge, for it rests on my heart
Your broom in my corner
To sweep out the cobwebs
To purify grounds that were tainted by anguish
To sweep back the horde
Of malevolent specters
To satiate spirits who fed on your torment
Your prayer book and paradox
And your kitsch memorabilia
The comfort you took in fantastical plastic
And your basket of wicker
A vessel of history
So patiently holds all the dreams that you dreamt
Who you nurtured in slumber
But who later abandoned
As if ungrateful children, the likes you'd not know
Visitation
And I feared that your screams
Would haunt me in dreams
Would capture my thoughts in your night's visitations
But your visit was soft
Warm and tactile
And I sensed you were present in presence presented
I asked your permission
I could not understand you
You said you did not want to end the pain
And once more nonverbal
Senseless tyranny of sense
Shed the rational shelter I so often I hide in
And just feel your touch
This one precious moment
The echoes of dreams in the predusk miasma
The Gift of Love
Now I open this chest
Which harbors my heart
What else would I do? Would I shroud it in shadows?
How comely this Gift
That no-one would take it
But I offer it freely in remembrance of you
Love without words
Love without condition
This Principle draws from your corner of my heart
And so I take a little comfort
In lovers-in-passing
Whose gentle caresses so soon dissipate
And I take a great comfort
In our communal spirit
The sharing of friends, the creation of "We"
Other Gifts
Your mistrust (inverted)
Your cynical calculation
This part of my Self which I strive to repress
Your passion for passion
Stands outside of reason
Which I tap as the source for my art's composition
Your assertive assertions
Which I, too, assert
Your stubborn resistance of the process of dying
Resistance was futile
Yet resistance you gave
And so in this way, can it be said that you lost?
Your spirit of giving
As expression of love
Your most precious gift was your generosity
For which I still thank you
As I share it abroad
And give to the world as you've given to me
This is just a bunch of loops and samples. For her funeral, she requested that we play "Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night and "I Did it My Way" by Frank Sinatra. We honored this, as we have honored every other request she made. This piece mashes up the two songs, along with some ambient noise, and quotes from my mother's biography video and from the funeral party.
I feel that her parting words carried a great deal of dignity and profundity.
Another version of the piece, which is really quite different. In the first version, she was still alive. In this version, she had already flown into all-flowers-bloom.
Here is the blog I posted to inform the community of her passing.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
"That's all, folks!" Current mood: Ummm... yea. Festively plump.
A month ago or so, we videotaped an interview with my mother.
When we asked her what she most looks forward to, she said "My birthday."
Then she revised it to a closer goal, knowing that she would have to keep it close.
"Short-term goals," said she.
"Christmas," said she.
She was born on 2-25.
At 2:25AM on Christmas Day, she flew into all-flowers-bloom.
In a sense, she made both of her goals.
She always said that she was afraid to die alone.
At the moment of her death, she was surrounded by her husband, her two children, her brother, two of her sisters-in-law (sister-in-laws?), her mother, and even her two cats and big, dumb golden retriever.
This wealth of love is an empirically verifiable testament to the love she fostered in her life, particularly given that most of these people flew in from the midwest to be with her.
They laughed and talked and visited with her all the way to the very end.
I held her left hand with my left hand.
With my right hand, I attempted to hold open her sixth chakra.
I attempted to guide her, to walk with her a while, to learn from her, to share with her.
I attempted to commune with her.
When the time came, I felt her exit.
We all did.
We all walked with her all the way to the end.
My sister, her daughter, held her mother's hand until it was time to pass that hand off to her father's hand.
In exact accordance with her wishes, she was never alone for a moment.
She always said she was afraid to die in pain.
In her last hours of life, there was no pain.
Her morphine drip saw to that.
Whatever one may think of death wishes, I can honestly say that hers were honored.
So it is done.
I will update you on memorial services as soon as they are settled.
They will be in exact accordance with her wishes.
This, of course, includes a party to be held in her honor.
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