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3/1/2008 10:02:27 AM
Ana,
I am glad you posted a link to your blog and that i had the chance to read such a heartfelt and poignant tribute to your mother... I empathise with those comments you made, that in the past you have pretty much ignored Mothers day and now you can't walk past a shop without being graphically reminded of it,consumerism is very cruel and unforgiving but it sounds like your mother knew very much that you loved her everyday and not just one so called special day of the year..it has however reminded me to call my beautiful mother tomorrow morning and tell her that i love her very much {btw,she has been battling a serious illness and is doing fine at the moment}...and seeing that you were inspired by Joni Mitchell ..i have to end this piece with some of her words.."don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you got till it's gone"....
Once again thank you...
Brendan
ps; i think you should paste that part of your blog in here for all to see...
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Ana Silvera
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3/4/2008 3:15:34 AM
Wow - I am so touched by all your kind words, that's just so lovely and such a surprise. I drew comfort from the ceremony, it was really helpful.
Love to you all with/without mothers and children and such. I will be writing an IAC blog in future too, then!
Ana xxxxx
Here's what I wrote:
This is a strange time for me; my first year of life without my totally inimitable, beautful, brilliant, irreverent and wonderful Mum. Strange to pass those racks of banal greeting cards that have been for my entire life, I'm afraid to say, overlooked, and now seem to be ambushing me left , right and centre (or to be more precise, in Clinton's Cards, Paperchase and Scribbler). I sit hear listening to Joni Mitchell's 'Court and Spark' which my mum first played for me when I guess I was around 10 or 11, the record that really began my song writing. I remember how mesmerised I was by Joni Mitchell's words, 'His eyes were the colour of the sand and the sea/and the more he talked to me, the more he reached me'
Not only were we incredibly close - barely a day went by that we didn't speak to one another - my Mum was absolutely my proudest fan (we're talking Jewish mother proportions here!); if anyone ventured into her house - and I mean anyone, friend, neighbour, canvassing politician, window cleaner - they would most likely not escape without a listen to at least one track of mine. Maddeningly embarassing, of course, but the absolute faith that she had in me, and belief that I should make and perform music remains with me profoundly.
When it came to deciding what should be engraved on her stone as I had to do this past month, I struggled. She was a great lover of literature, and I trawled through DH Lawrence, TS Eliot, Rainer Maria Rilke to find an epitaph but nothing seemed to stick. Time was getting tight and the Rabbi was making anxious calls to hurry me on. So when my aunt suggested song lyrics, I felt vividly that my Mum would have wanted my words above all.
The very first complete song I wrote when I was 18, 'Springsong' was one of my mother's favourites. It begins 'The sun is sleeping in your eyes/So when you wake my winter will have passed/'. I took the two lines from the refrain to be inscribed:
'So still is my soul -
And rests my heart to this lullaby'
I shall be singing this song on Mother's Day (with all my soul and heart) which is so fittingly the day that I will visit the cemetery to watch the stone be lowered and set, 'the granite markers/Those tributes to finality, to eternity'; 'We all come and go unknown/Each so deep and superficial/Between the forceps and the stone'.
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