Orpheus: Singer of the Soul

According to my mum, I could sing before I could walk, and when I stop and recall my childhood, singing was a supreme constant during that time (and, when health permits, I still sing as much as I can to this very day, although most of that is confined to singing along with songs that I love on the i-pod around our home), and recently I have been recalling with greater intention and intensity some of the singing I used to do. I loved trains as a boy, especially steam trains (my favourite was the gloriously named, racing car green coloured giant Evening Star), and even travelled behind this majestic locomotive a couple of times on steam excursions in the late 70s, and two songs I can recall practically word for word to this very day, are 'Freight Train' and 'Canadian Pacific.' I have practically zero recollection of nursery rhymes or children's songs, as the songs I learned and sang were the songs my mum loved and played constantly, by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Abba, The Carpenters, and the present day contemporary 70s hit singles. It brings a smile to my face to visualise me standing on one of the tables in school, only around four years old, singing songs such as 'Nice 'n' Easy' by Sinatra, 'Jeans On' by David Dundas, or 'Oh boy!' by Buddy Holly, and how wonderfully crazy that actually is. Dear reader, your Nocturnal Butterfly's first school had less than 100 pupils, and when it was raining during lunch or breaktimes, the teachers would get me to stand on a table and sing for everybody. I thought nothing of it at the time yet it gives me a warm glow now. I would also sit on the doorstep of my Mum, Nain and Taid's little terraced house in North Wales where the four of us lived, and passers by would stop and ask me to sing, and in return I would be paid handsomely in items such as chocolate bars or crisps. My portfolio of songs to draw on also grew very quickly, and before long I was also bringing tears of joy/sorrow to my listeners, as I added poignant ballads such as 'Danny Boy', 'Amazing Grace', and hymns such as 'In the Garden' and 'There is a Green Hill Far Away' to my repertoire. Looking back, this astounds me, and I truly do wonder at times how different my life might have been if I hadn't been born with such a chronic, limiting and inherited condition as CF. Don't get me wrong, dear reader, for all its struggles, I adore my life and if one tiny alteration had meant that I wouldn't have met Lydia and/or we hadn't fallen in love with each other then I would never change a single thing in a million years, but in the interest of reflection and curiosity, it does give me cause to ponder. But it's pretty incredible to think that from those humble beginnings, singing for members of the public in a little village in North Wales , at the age of 4-7, were the first steps that led me to being the original Gavroche in the 1985 RSC/Cameron Mackintosh production of the longest running musical in the world, Les Miserables, at the Barbican and Palace Theatre in London, at the age of fourteen. It is quite a journey. And, although my professional singing career was taken from me by my CF, I am starting to realise, especially when I consider the incredible responses I have from audience members when I now occasionally sing at open mics, that my singing really is something unique, and that my voice and delivery genuinely touches many people on a very deep level. Consider this happening from a couple of months ago. I had been invited to sing a couple of songs at a local event that had a "Musicals Theme," and one of the songs I decided to sing was Nat D. Ayer's  'If You Were The Only Girl in the World' from the 1916 musical, The Bing Boys are Here, which opened at the Alhambra Theatre in London and ran for 378 performances. At the end of my performance, a lady came over to talk to me and, with genuine emotion in her eyes, said she hadn't heard that song for decades, and told me a very moving story about how her father had once recorded it as a message for her mother, when he was away fighting in the First World War.

As you can probably imagine, this meant a great deal to me, for what is art for, if not to bring us closer to the people we know and love (whether they are still physically here or not) and to somehow express the deepest emotions in our hearts and souls? I remember reading in a German Romantic Fairy Tale once that tears from the listener are what the singer hopes to be paid in, not gold and silver, and I certainly felt that very deeply at that moment. So, bearing all this in mind, it won't surprise you to know that one of my great heroes, and someone who has fascinated me ever since I first heard his name and his story, is Orpheus.

Frieze of Orpheus at Wightwick Manor

Orpheus's legend is well known to many. In the Greece of the ancient world, Orpheus was the person/demigod whose music and singing was so beautiful that even the trees, animals, and even the stones moved closer so they could hear him. Birds would flock round and listen, and he had an intimate connection with all that exists. Warring armies would put their weapons down and stop fighting when he sang and played, and he sang of his immense joy at all creation and celebrated the gods and the seen and unseen aspects of existence. He met and fell deeply in love with the dryad wood spirit, Eurydice, and by his kiss awakened her into energetic life.

Eurydice and Orpheus

But on their wedding day, Eurydice had to flee from an advancing Arsisdaeus, a horny satyr who was attempting to take her for himself, and was bitten on the ankle by a snake she had inadvertently trodden on. She died before anything could be done to help her, and, heartbroken and utterly crestfallen, Orpheus decided to try and make his way down to the Underworld itself in an attempt to persuade the gods to release her back to life. Orpheus's beautiful singing tamed Cerberus, the three headed dog that guarded the entrance, and all other manner of obstacles and finally found himself face to face with Hades, the god of the underworld, and his wife Persephone. His song, both in words and delivery, was so plaintive and heart-wrenching that they agreed to release Eurydice back to him, but only on one condition. He had lead the way and he must not look back at her until they were out of the caves of the Underworld...

Orpheus gets so close to fulfilling his task, but, at the last moment, mistrusting the gods, he glances back to check that Eurydice is with him, and in that instant, loses her forever...

From that moment on, Orpheus is distraught. Over time, he does sing and play his lyre again, but from now on his singing was more reflective and melancholy. Whereas before he had sung with abandon about nature and life, praising gods such as "Zeus Thunderbolt," even though the storms terrified him, and offering hymns of praise to "Laughing Aphrodite", born from the sea and who wove everything together, he now became more introspective, singing of his loss and longing. Where once his singing had produced blissful obliviousness in his listeners, now they also experienced remembrance. He still enchanted everything with his songs, until, one fateful day, he drew the furious ire of a group of intoxicated Maenads (female disciples of Dionysus), who, becoming increasingly outraged when he continuously rejected their amorous advances, eventually tore him to pieces, with Orpheus's head landing in the river, where it initially continued to sing before it fell silent. I was going to add 'forever' to that previous sentence but that wouldn't be strictly accurate. As it is my belief that wherever and whenever beautiful singing is heard and performed, Orpheus is present. His influence remains everywhere and it extends beyond music, as well. He refused to eat meat due to his love of animals, and preferred to fast rather than consume their flesh, and whenever a kindness or a feeling of love and appreciation to our non-human animal brothers and sisters occurs, Orpheus is present there, also. It was his singing and music that enabled his beloved Eurydice to be born from a tree, so he is present whenever love brings an individual(s) to a heightened life. He was a friend and believer in Dionysus, so whenever people gather to celebrate, dance and drink, Orpheus is there, and if the music playing is the very best, he will be the one emanating from the speakers. When great poets write their beautiful, haunting, majestic poems of love, longing, lust and memory, Orpheus resides in the words. He was in intimate contact with the moon goddess, Artemis, and for this reason he knew the allure and mystery of women, and whenever people notice the beauty of the moon, and take pictures of her to share on social media, or when lovers kiss with only that glowing moonshine to light up the scene, he is there, fondly smiling. But most of all, it is through the finest portrayers of the ancient art of singing that Orpheus is found, especially in the scintillating singers that "turn the soul-circuits in us", as Plato once described. You will probably have your own singers that do this for you, dear reader, and mine are my revered artists who bring that human, all-too-human, yet eerily otherworldly quality to their performances:

                                         
                                    Rufus Wainwright:

                               

                                  Billy Mackenzie:

                                   

                                     Meow Meow:

                                      

And, of course, whenever we hear a bird sing, whether that be a humble sparrow, a songstress such as a blackbird or a thrush, even the cawing of a crow or the screech of a seagull, through to the King of Song, the Nightingale, Orpheus is most certainly present.

It is said that when Orpheus was killed, every drop of his blood gave birth to a beautiful, light-coloured flower, which they called The Orpheus Flower, and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in his Sonnets To Orpheus wrote:

"Raise no commemorative stone. The roses shall blossom every summer for his sake. For this is Orpheus. His metamorphosis in this and that. We shall not take thought about other names. Once and for all, it's Orpheus when there's singing. He comes and goes."

"Gesang ist Dasein"

(This is singing as being)

Your Nocturnal Butterfly

xx

This post is dedicated to my greatly missed mum, who introduced me to music and taught me to sing, so many moons ago.