In My Arms Many Flowers
‘In My Arms Many Flowers’ is a midnight lullaby, a shimmering and mournful tone-poem – partly addressed to a good friend in need, partly poetically informed by horrors of war – about gathering strength and maintaining hope in the face of great sorrow and tragedy. Finger-picked acoustic guitars/effects and vocals, violin, grand piano, swirling organ and forceful upright bass. A sprawling, detailed and ornamented long-form composition – ghostly and almost baroque in expression – ‘In My Arms Many Flowers’ is at the same time adventurous and romantic, nocturnal and bleak. A perhaps impossible artistic attempt to channel into a stream of pure undisturbed empathy, bring forward or pass on some deep sense of dignity and respect, hope, love and understanding through such fatally simple and banal tools as chords, melodies, timbre/texture, voice and imagery. ‘In My Arms Many Flowers’ is the first and only single from Quiet Sonias forthcoming EP, ‘All Black Horses Came Thundering’ (November 11 2022).
listen to In My Arms Many Flowers
‘In My Arms Many Flowers’ was my first serious attempt at writing a composition with finger-picked guitar inspirered by American Primitivism figures such as Robbie Basho, Leo Kottke and James Blackshaw. I was also inspired by the seemingly free-flowing yet tightly composed melody-writing of contemporary jazz artists such as Tigran Hamasyan and Avishai Cohen, and the work with silence, texture and dynamics in early post-rock, modern classical (such as the Wandelweiser-label) and classic ECM recordings (Stephan Micus, John Surman, Eberhard Weber). The lyrics are inspirered by ancient Japanese Zen poetry, 1920’s German Expressionism, French Symbolism and the Danish ‘Blue Poets’.
LYRICS
In My Arms Many Flowers
Blackout as April under the stream of stars
Butterflies at construction sites
Crawl, sister
Mother, I can barely see
Faceless when it rains
Shatter window panes
For heaven’s sake
Look out where yr going
You’re broke and very brave and I believe in you
Just a few more days
While we wait for a miracle
Now everything’s supposed to be quiet
And in my arms, many flowers