The music video
When I first conceived of penning a folk opera about homesickness… about longing… about this mysterious haunting amnesia we seem to have in “the West”, I knew I would have to begin with longing. And not just any longing. But a heart of hearts, marrow of marrow longing. The kind that makes you aware of that great ache somewhere in the center of your chest.
So who did I turn to, to achieve this level of haunted intuition - that we’ve lost something very treasured and dear to us? William Butler Yeats, and his exquisite poem, Song of Wandering Aengus, of course.
This is the opening track of a 13 song folk opera called Cianalas/Tãsknota - words that mean homesick/longing in two of my mother tongues, Scottish Gaelic and Kashubian. This is a work that is both personal and “catholic” (which you may remember was supposed to mean, as James Joyce once defined it, “here comes everybody”).
I hope you enjoy this video. All footage is my own, and I am grateful for the permission to use footage of the Stones of my ancestors.
Thank-you for celebrating this launch day with me. Independent music is a tough row to hoe, but I do it for the pleasure of it, for the joy of it, for the sheer magic of bringing something into the world that wasn’t quite there before. And hopefully, it connects, but that is not my department. All I can do is offer it to the best of my ability. The rest is beyond my scope. It’s humbling, and I am grateful for that.
Off to the local greenhouse to just breathe and get some red geraniums for my window boxes.
Lots of love,
Alana
PS- if you are on FB or IG, your presence on my pages there are very appreciated. The video is posted there, as well as on Youtube, and the whole technocratic algorithm world is designed to squash it, so our attention is on Kim Kardashian’s 50,000 fresh water pearls dress, and we never wake up :)
Give to us a heart of flesh.
Here is a link for a few places to stream and watch. (Audiophiles: if you have a hi-res streaming platform, rest assured this album was recorded at 48kHz and we have taken extra measures to ensure Master quality on those platforms!)
Yesyesyes...