Waterfall is about the cycling of energy. The power of the waterfall is generated by a release, a free fall, and for me symbolizes the dynamism between opposites - the electricity between positive and negative, male and female, the force of flow, the receptive pool. In this story, lovers, consciousness are born with a yearning to discover the source of this power that they experience. They climb upstream seeking origin and yet along their way the rain begins to fall, bringing the realisation that life force is omnipresent and that no one source can be expressed through its cyclical nature.
I dreamt of creating the water rhythms whilst amongst the great falls in Gavernie in the Pyrenees, and my strongest experience of this track is standing in streams with the extended ear of a microphone watching patterns of movement, mass, shape, texture form the tones that I could hear. Eventually to record the sounds of water drops I headed to a lake with my little then 8 year old friend, Zoe Wilde, and a bucket of pebbles which we cast in splashes. It was a delight to construct the rhythms and I remember saying to Dad "Isn't amazing how the water sounds like tablas" to which he replied "Ah Francesca, isn't amazing how tablas sound like water!"
lyrics
The river waters were born
To fall from a great height
Arc white lightening storm
To a mist of a thousand lights
Force and flow carve the stone
To deep and a dark pool
Under there's a cavern
Where the thunder and the throbbing
Spin the water to a silent silver spool
Where we lay
Our bodies soft as the earth
Our nerves the alive roots
Channelling the stream of love
The cascading dream above
Tenderly emerging leafing shoots
We arise to the open
Up where the rocks stand tall
To the roaring power of surrender
Of our waterfall
Sheng shui
We climb up the current
Follow the curving course
By a guiding hand
The contour of the land
Seeking the source
When the heavens they open
Alighting little spheres upon our skin
Cloud to rain to aquifer
Spring to ocean
The water of life within
Sheng shui
credits
from VelA,
released October 21, 2012
Francesca Baines: voice, banjo, water rhythms
Lea Miklody: cello
Jeremy Baines: djembe, didgereehoover
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