7 Flights - Gabriella Tal and Gareth Calway

Gaby's Seven Flights as a video playlist

composer/performer Gabriella Tal in her library in N. Carolina

Lyricist Gareth Calway after eating his latest birthday cake in UK

Gabriella Tal and I have been co-operating on a sequence of ghazals (Persian love lyrics), working title 7 Flights To Heaven. 

This is the place to find links to what we've done so far. Keep coming back as this blogpost will be updated as we add more and as I work through our back catalogue. One (p)operatic voice and an eloquent acoustic guitar. All you need!

If You Conquer  The oooo- ooohs are divine!

All The Heavens In A Thought The calm after the fury

And, finally, the seventh heaven: This is God

These lyrics are written for the female voice and are love songs of increasing intensity. 

For those who also like maps, quests, drumbeats and battles (like me) there are alternative beat poem versions in the male voice, telling the same story in different words. The genre here is heart-beat music, a bit rocky. 

This Face That Burns Upon My Eye In Searing Fiery Gale  'Divine desperation' anybody?

666 Rockets The afterlife as a fireworks display

Wedding Guys and Gals.

Goodbye Cruel World

Hear it realised as a sound poem here.

Film to follow:

An autumn leaf detaches itself from a tree and Falls. On it is some writing - a suicide note. The performer catches it in his hand.

The performer holds an antique magazine issue of Dante's inferno (vol 1 of 36, publ. 1903) with a burnt-brown cover. He is wearing shades and removes them during the Dis-tinted spectacles verse, only to restore them before the end. He indicates his heart on "This Not (knot) only love dares to tease undone." A modern take on Dante at the mouth of hell.

Now was the day departing, and the air
Embrown’d with shadows…  (Inferno)      

As fall off the light autumnal leaves 
One still another following, till the bough
Strews all its honours on the earth beneath
E'en in like manner Adam's evil brood
Cast themselves, one by one, down from the shore
Each at a beck as falcon at his call. (Inferno)

The night train West voids a soiled brown note and leaves the downfall station; 
Goodbye Cruel World - I trust you receive THIS communication.

The Zoo-break heart-freeze sin-beasts of Dante shadow the Circle Line,
Paddle up shit creeks out in the Styx to Dis-on-Vacation.

Spine-chilling out dark half glasses of Daily Hell, Bank Holiday
Messiahs Dis-May my heart; Dis Troy, dim Dante’s Vision. 

God save me from my Dis-tinted spectacles’ bewitching
Bewildering shadows of Dis-appointment Dis-guised as Eden. 

God save me from Dis-consolation Discourse, Fifty Shades
Of Grave; the pinched shrill of Avant-God; this don't know 'Who' we are from Adam.

The name is Bond. Adam in a Bond. The Actor Who Can't Go On.
Wash off this Who-do, not dis, not dis, this suicide mission.

Hell isn’t other people…….It’s ourselves, our self-fulfilling 
Cock-up conspiracy clouds; our I-land’s alien nation.

Marx says to do is to be; Sartre to be is to do, Sinatra
Do be do be do this ‘Not’ only Love dares to tease undone.

Who to do or not to do? to be or not to be? Who’s that 
At the tunnel’s end? Death. I embrace your oblivion.