William Blake

The Tyger (William Blake poem set to music)

January 14, 2022 — Leave a comment

Well here I go making another cat video! It might be my way of dealing with the fact that I love cats but my beloved partner is allergic and so it’s best for us not to have one in our house.

I’ve always loved this William Blake poem and have tried a couple previous times to set it to music. This week I succeeded (in my estimation). Would be so fun to have Nathan (the aforementioned allergy sufferer) add a wall of guitars but his (non-music) work life has gotten busier so he doesn’t often have the time.

So I used this little hack he taught me – I recorded my acoustic guitar onto two separate tracks – one from a condenser microphone for the acoustic sound, and one from a line plugged into the guitar. I then added my recording software’s default electric amp sound to the guitar line track, which gave me an electric guitar sound to mix along with the acoustic sound. I tried to mark this visually by flipping the video of the “electric” guitar as that track came up higher in the mix. (Flipping also looked cool when I overlaid it with the bass video.)

The video also incorporates some public domain artworks of tigers, which I’ll list in order of their appearance below the words of the poem (below the video). I found all of the art on wikiart.org.

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And, when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

“Tiger’s Head” (Abbott Handerson Thayer, 1874)
“Tiger and Snake” (Eugene Delacroix, 1862)
“Tiger and Lion Hunting” (Peter Paul Rubens, 1615 or 1616)
“A Young Tiger Playing With Its Mother” (Eugene Delacroix, 1831)
“Tiger” (Ito Jakuchu, 1755)
“Tiger” (Utagawa Kunisada, 1830)
“Tiger” (Eugene Delacroix, 1830)

Angel

April 17, 2018 — 3 Comments

We buried one of my best friends from college yesterday. Tomorrow my sister-in-law and her family bury her younger brother. My friend Troy lived with Parkinson’s disease for a decade. Jen’s brother Zach died suddenly in a plane crash.

“Angels” was the suggested theme for week 15 of #songaweek2018. I didn’t have much interest in using it. I’ve never been a big angels fan (baseball or otherwise). Too sentimental, too kitschy, too many ceramic travesties foisted on the world. I did briefly start a song tentatively called “Don’t Blink,” but couldn’t sustain an interest in it.

So I pulled up some old song ideas from my files and found a recording of a tune and some chords, no words. And then it all started coming together, a song woven from the threads of my life that week.

Zach’s sudden death. Troy weakly hanging on to the last moments of his life. Two men’s lives tragically and senselessly cut short.

Winter refusing to leave my neighborhood, breathing cold and snow over everything, week after wearying week. An insistent reflection of my own middle-aged angst.

The physics book I’ve been reading, Reality is Not What it Seems, and its discussion of a 3-sphere, a current understanding of the shape of the cosmos; and how Dante envisioned it long before Einstein did, possibly from looking up at mosaics of angels in the Florence Baptistery.

The visions of painter and poet William Blake, which thankfully are something else my mind calls up when I hear the word “angel.”

In writing this song, I more deeply felt why angels have been consistently present in stories and art. There are moments, especially the moments around death, in which we reach out for something like us but not. A being of great beauty, power, intelligence – but also one who brings deep comfort. Not a god, not a human, but someone who knows more than we do, who has seen further into the mysteries of existence and can still say to us, “fear not,” can guide us from what we know into what we don’t.

Hold me while I freefall
While the winds of death squall
Keep me in your vision
Carry me to paradise
Angel
Let me sing forever
Where the clouds can never
Take me from your vision
Carry me to paradise
Angel
Lead me from this dark cave
Sail me cross the light waves
Fill me with your vision
Carry me to paradise
Angel
Fly me through the shadows
Lift me from the cosmos
Add me to your vision
Carry me to paradise
Angel