Category Archives: Music

The Wave Goodbye

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So close your eyes for that’s a lovely way to be
Aware of things your heart alone was meant to see ~Antonio Carlos Jobim

Bill and Jim at the Backstage Bar Photo by Doug Harper ©2012

Bill and Jim at the Backstage Bar, one of their last gigs together. Photo by Doug Harper ©2012

Last Saturday, amidst a dozen other things claiming our attention, we attended the wake of a good friend and fellow musician. I must admit that I wasn’t looking forward to it, as he died the night before his 53rd birthday, much too young. But what I had feared as a sad evening mourning his death was instead a joyful celebration of his life, overflowing with laughter and stories.  His girlfriend Marsha had filled a table with photos of Jimmy, many of them including my husband Bill, as they often performed together, two musicians in love with the guitar.  Bill had put together a slide show of photos and videos of Jimmy teaching and performing – it was a joy to hear his voice and his guitar. The place was filled with musicians (many of them on their way to a gig) as well as various artists, radio personalities, friends, and family. I came home thoughtful and smiling.

Flamenco_Gold

Flamenco Gold by Sibthorp, used by permission GFDL via Wikimedia Common

A few nights later, I had a powerful dream.  I was asked to sing a bossa nova song for a stage show, one that I recognized but had never sung, and I was being coached by three Brazilians, two women and a man. The women showed me how to move and dance to the music as I was singing – they considered this an essential element to performing the song properly. As I struggled to get everything just right, I saw a procession move forward from the back of the stage, solemnly moving as if in a slow dance step. Instead of two by two, it was a block of Brazilian men and women dressed in simple black clothes, nine across, nine deep.  In the center of the procession was Jimmy, tall and blond, with a serious expression on his face broken by a small smile. As they proceeded to the front of the stage, I realized that I had been coached to sing this song as a farewell to my friend, as a tribute to him for using his musical gifts well.  This was his ceremony to pass from one world to another, with an honor guard all around him. I awoke with the melody of the song ringing in my head;  I realized that it was Wave by Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Have you ever had a dream that was not about you, not about processing your own psyche, but something bigger, higher, truer than your personal issues, more real than waking life? This was that kind of dream. And I can’t get the melody of Wave out of my head, I’ve been singing and humming it for days now. My friend Kenia, Brazilian vocalist extraordinaire, has offered to coach me on this song, making part of this dream come true.

Here is a concert rendition of Wave beautifully sung in Portuguese by Esther Badia. (

Here are the English lyrics to Wave written by Jobim.  Here is an English translation of the original Portuguese lyrics to Wave (the English song lyrics were also written by Jobim.)

Here is a recording of Jimmy playing another bossa nova, My Little Boat. 

Jimmy, may you dance and strum your way into the next life with a smile on your face and escorted by music. Peace.

Be Neither Silent Nor Still

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winter skyIn the past few weeks, the silent landscape of winter has shifted into a vibrant chorus of bird song as the winged ones return and begin to court and nest. The spring equinox has passed, and though winter lingers on, each day grows longer and brighter – light is returning to the world. A time of renewal in the earth also seems the time to renew one’s spirit.

Ten years ago, I composed a set of pieces for the 125th Anniversary of Duquesne University entitled “The Trees of Righteousness.” The text, taken from the biblical sources of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and the Psalms, explored the sense of being called to a purpose in the world.  The second movement, “Be Neither Silent Nor Still” always comes to my mind during Lent and Holy Week.  It is about the dark night of the soul, about searching for light as well as a cry for compassion and justice. As we emerge from the long dark nights of winter, the song reminds me that this is a universal experience of being a human on the earth, regardless of one’s religious or spiritual beliefs. It was written for my dear friend and colleague Guenko Guechev, whose magnificent voice you will hear on the recording. May you find renewal of the heart, mind and spirit this spring.   

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Be Neither Silent Nor Still from “The Trees of Righteousness” music by Lynn Emberg Purse,  @2003

O God, be neither silent nor still.

I look for the light but all is darkness
I look for the light, the light of dawn, but I walk in shadow.
I reach out like a blind man, a blind man along a wall
waiting for justice, for justice, and there is none.

O God, be neither silent nor still.

The wretched and the poor look for water and find none.
Their tongues are parched with thirst, parched with thirst.
Will you not turn the wilderness into pools
and dry land into springs of water?

O God, be neither silent nor still.

Give me a new heart, give me a new heart and
put a new spirit within me.
Take the heart of stone from my body, the heart of stone
and give me a heart of flesh, of flesh,
a new spirit within me.

O God, be neither silent nor still,

Preparing for the Storm

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  • Red pennisetumcut down old foliage in garden and prune shrubs
  • rake and clean up garden beds
  • reveal unexpected blooming crocus and say hello to them
  • view handiwork at end of the day before it is covered by white mulch (snow)
  • light a fire in the fireplace
  • uncork a bottle of wine and toast the wilds of March
  • review and revise lists of plants to order from catalogs
  • finalize plans to visit garden shows for a flower fix
  • dream of the garden to come
  • smile

Memories of a garden in motion 

In My Dreams

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In my dreams, I’m not bound to walk beneath the earth.
In my dreams, my guardian will return and lend his wings,
his wings to carry me aloft, his wings to carry me,
a lost and lonely child, alone in the dark
~ from “In My Dreams/Thumbelina’s Lament” by Lynn Emberg Purse ©2008

ThumbelinaThis morning, the sun returned.  What a powerful experience, after days of gray skies and waves of snow, freezing rain, and ice. The myth of Persephone, the queen of the underworld who is allowed to return aboveground in the spring and summer, is on my mind these days.  Even as I start seeds for this year’s garden, I have been working on a musical based on the fairy tale of Thumbelina, a variant of the Persephone myth. I have always loved this tale, especially since Thumbelina’s good deed of saving the swallow who falls underground earns her a pair of wings and the gift of spending the rest of her life aboveground, living in a flower.  But before that happens, she must go through her own “dark night of the soul” – living underground for the winter and being promised in marriage to Mr. Mole, a wealthy character who will never let her go above ground again. In the spring, the swallow returns to rescue her and flies her to a garden.

The Persephone myth is a reflection of the rhythm of the seasons, from the hibernation of winter to the blossoming of spring, but from a psychological view, it is more than that.  The journey “underground” is often compared to the “dark night of the soul” that many have experienced, a time of living underground in one’s psyche while experiencing doubt and despair, but eventually returning to sunlight.  In a similar vein, the Hero’s Journey was explored in depth by Joseph Campbell and brought into popular consciousness. The mythical journey of the reluctant hero surviving chaos and danger in order to retrieve something of worth is a constant source of story for books and films.  Last night’s Oscar winning film, Argo, is a perfect example of a story that never loses its power.

BlackOrpheusposterAnother variant on this theme is that of Orpheus, who could charm the stones with his music and who descended into the underworld to retrieve his wife Eurydice. Perhaps you remember the 1959 film Black Orpheus – filmed in Brazil by French director Marcel Camus – and the beautiful song of the same name written by Luis Bonfa. An adaptation of the Orpheus myth set in Rio de Janeiro and featuring samba and bossa nova music, the movie won the 1960 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.


butterfly and flowersIt is late February and spring is around the corner. The treetops are turning red with the rising sap, bulbs are rising from the earth, and I can feel the sunlight on my face. I’m ready to emerge from the underground and spend the rest of the season living in a flower.

In my dreams, I feel sunlight on my face.
In my dreams, I have found another place,
a place where color and light have blended just right
into a rose, a flower, a bloom, a place to call home
Where I can live and be me, be free.
A place where the swallow can go, a place that I know,
a place in my dreams.
~ from “In My Dreams/Thumbelina’s Lament” by Lynn Emberg Purse ©2008

Dreaming of Oz

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Dorothy singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"

Dorothy singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”

I was eighteen years old before I realized that the classic 1939 Wizard of Oz movie was not filmed entirely in black and white. I had watched it every year of my childhood on our sturdy black and white television, enchanted every time by the magic of the Land of Oz and Dorothy’s adventures there. When I returned home for Easter vacation from my first year at college, I settled in front of our new luxury item, a color television, to watch my favorite movie. Of course, the movie starts in sepia tone, close enough to black and white for me not to notice the difference, and I dreamed along with Dorothy as she sang of a land “somewhere over the rainbow.” Imagine my shock and surprise that matched her own when she opens the door of her wind blown house and stands breathless before the colorful landscape of a new world.

Dorothy looking into Oz

Dorothy looking into Oz

Like Dorothy, I feel as if I am standing on the threshold of a new landscape, though I must pass through the long storms of winter before I can step into it.  The Christmas decorations are put away and the house has lost its festive air. The romance and beauty of fresh snow fall has degenerated into rough trampled paths through the woods punctuated by dark bare trees and a leaden gray sky. It is the black and white and sepia tone world of every day life. But the seeds to this year’s garden have arrived and I feel very much like Dorothy, standing in her monotone world while peering into the vibrantly colored Land of Oz.

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It may be a long passage of winter months before I can cross that threshold into the rainbow land of my garden, but the seeds I hold in my hand become a magic carpet in my imagination that will eventually carry me there.

Video clip of Dorothy opening the door to Oz

Video clip of Dorothy singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”

Related posts:
Planting a Seed
The Space Between