Aware that the language of poetry and spirituality find meaning in the depth of relationships, Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity offer ‘Excerpts From A Continual Conversation With A Silent Man’ by Still on the Hill this June as a free music download. St. Francis found peace in poetry. (Ever remember hearing about the Canticle of the Creatures?) Our Assisi troubadour saint would totally enjoy this musicial focus on poet Wallace Stevens.
The ‘Continual Conversations with a Silent Man’ is part of a collection of well known poems that I set to music in a collection I call ‘The Never Ending Conversation’. I was drawn to the Wallace Stevens poem, ‘Continual Conversations with a Silent Man’ for its sheer beauty and the powerful images that it conjures in my mind. For me, it is a meditation of sorts. Like ocean waves lapping on the shore year after year for thousands of years, oblivious to the goings on of man kind. Somehow, it calms my mind to think of this. Actually, I imagine that you will see it very differently through your own lens. That is what I hope for.
-Kelly Mulhollan
How does this song move your heart? What are some of your never-ending conversations on things? We’d like to hear from you.
About Still on the Hill
Still on the Hill is the folk duo comprised of my wife Donna, and myself. Most of our music is actually of a very different sort. We write ‘storysongs’ of the Ozark mountains (where we live and where I am from). The Never Ending Conversation (the CD with the Wallace Stevens poem) is a solo CD I produced of a very different sort. It combines my love of folk music and classical music along with poetry. It was my attempt to write a collection or ‘art songs’ as they call it in the classical world. I saw no particular reason why a folk singer could not pursue musical setting for classic poetry in the same way composers such as Brahms, Schubert, and Ives had done.
-Kelly Mulhollan
Lyrics
The old brown hen and the old blue sky,
Between the two we live and we die—we live and we die
Broken cartwheel on the hill.
Broken cartwheel on the hill
As if, in the presence of the sea,
We dried our nets and mended all our sails, all of our sails
talked of never-ending things, talked of never-ending things.
And the wheel that broke as the cart went by.
It is not a voice that is under the eaves. It is underneath the eaves
It is not speech, the sound we hear, the sound we hear
As if, in the presence of the sea,
We dried our nets and mended all our sails, all of our sails
talked of never-ending things, talked of never-ending things.
