A Litany for Courage and the Seasons

Joseph Campbell, author of The Power of Myth and The Masks of God, wrote: ?We have come forth from the one ground of being as manifestations in the field of time. The field of time is a kind of shadow play over a timeless ground.?In music we normally think of sound as the focus of attention, the positive value. Musical sound occurs against a field of silence. If the perception is reversed, musical sound can be seen as a way of framing and of shaping the perception of silence. Richard Beale?s poetry grows out of the silence of the earth and the universe. Each poem rests on this silence and draws its power from it. Each of my six songs is finally a meditation on silence, a way of shaping the perception of the timeless ground.