Recovery and Relief (Sea Mountains)
A brief passion
“A Brief Passion”
A passion can pass,
In a twinkle of an eye,
A leeward glance,
A breath and a sigh,
Inhaled fragrance,
With luster of jade,
Horizons of memories,
That never fade.
Sanford R. Bender April 19, 2021
A lull in the battle
My drawings of Cathedrale Notre-Dame d’Amiens from the thirteenth century were drawn while researching Gothic architecture, and how cathedrals in France were being constructed with arches, vaulted ceilings, flying buttresses, and stained glass windows. After drawing the horizontal and vertical lines of the structure with straight edge and triangle, I soon became entranced and astonished by how consecutive arcs drawn with a compass established a rhythm that appeared to dance gracefully across the page. The visual motion of the arcade struck me deeply as being musical, my other passion. The original guitar composition, “A lull in the battle”, inspired by medieval music, is what I imagined as being evocative of an exhausted knight pausing from battle, only to reflect and mourn a bygone romance.
Elephant Concert
“Elephant Concert” originated during an animation course that I participated in in the early 1980’s. The original film was created with colored paints on celluloid. The story was about an elephant man who plays his cello while sounding the clarinet-like melody through his trunk. The unappreciative audience soon becomes unruly and resorts to heckling as an expression of their ignorance.
The original music was played on violin and clarinet. The current music composed for clarinet and guitar heartily welcomes an improvised or composed violoncello part to play along with the guitar and clarinet.
The emotionally upset performers quickly make their exit from the intolerant city. The elephant man leaps upon his bicycle and pedals furiously as his companion, the violoncello skips alongside.
The duo finally finds consolation after a well deserved rest in the countryside. Their appetites will soon be appeased as they gaze into the aromatic delicatessen that will soon be opening for business.
The Sand Dollar
The Sand Dollar
Walking around the curve of beach
The light house still far to the west
Out over seemingly endless dunes
An infinite distance reminding me
Of the poet who observed that
Beyond mountains
Were more mountains,
Soon after my companion turned back
I accepted the futility of continuing
But in my turning around
Circumventing the ocean’s horizon
Looked down upon a treasure trove of shells
Glittering beneath my feet,
There in the curls of seaweed
I found a sand dollar
Smooth and round
Ten pine like needles radiating
The image of the moon
Which would soon appear
Over the darkening sea
Not from where I came
I played banjo more than guitar for a while since I especially enjoyed its mirthful and spontaneous independence. This instrument could provide enlightened commentaries on the most tragic and haunting occurrences of lost love, betrayal, revenge, murder, and perhaps even evoke valor and the emergence of integrity.
This music for guitar with slide and five-string banjo is reminiscent of traditional ballads travelling from place to place like fairy tales with subtly changing variations over a common theme; only to alight into my own imagination as another powerful resource fueling my creativity.
Moon Cats outside my Window
I awoke just after midnight to a most supernatural music outside my window as cats appeared singing under a full moon. That is what I imagined when I listened back to the music I was composing with tracks of guitar, slide guitar and harmonica. The painting of the nocturnal scene was finally realized two and a half months later from drawings in my sketch book. Whereas an irate neighbor may react to this lunar concert by lunging for a garden hose to spray amidst a torrent of profanities, I was drawn deeply into this feline world of sensory agility and mindfulness for which the music was my portal.
“Moon Cats from outside my Window” is composed and performed in three tracks for acoustic guitar, acoustic slide guitar, and harmonica by Sanford Bender.
All is well
The declaration that “All is well” would pertain to a specific event since it certainly cannot apply as a universal world perspective at all times. I composed this music as a mantra to emerge out of a difficult dilemma for which I could not change the outcome. The guitar duet brought to me a sense of peace in recognition of life’s inevitable flow. Once, I drew a barred owl in less than a minute’s time as the nature rescue center bell was heralding its imminent closing. In that moment, I sensed that the owl and I were both “well” despite previous traumas that had limited our abilities to fly gracefully in the twilight.
“All is well” composed and performed with two acoustic guitar tracks by Sanford Bender