Alula Down (Mark Waters & Kate Gathercole) have released a new single titled ‘wrap your hills around our absence’. News of the release seemed like an opportune time to invite Kate (also, along with Mark, a member of Sproatly Smith, Heed the Thunder) back to Folk Radio following her last guest post (AGRI-PSYCH COMES TO TOWN) to talk about the single and these strange times.
wrap your hills around our absence…
On Monday 23rd March 2020 the UK went into lockdown. Walking the dog up the hill from our house that evening the road below was silent. Neighbours called their conversation from across the other side of the field – How are you? All OK? Isn’t this so weird…? But the birds around us continued to sing, bees hurried by, and the trees relaxed into leaf against the blue sky.
I had already been coughing – just occasionally, nothing to worry about, and anyway I was ‘taking it on the chin’. By the next day, I felt fluey and shivery and couldn’t smell the dinner cooking. Two and half weeks later I was still exhausted, but much better, and missing people.
And now birdsong filled the sky .. and those people who were well and fed and not key workers were starting to talk about feeling happier .. slower.
So like others during coronavirus we found ourselves taking time to reflect on the impact of lockdown on us and on the world around us – aware of our absence from the patterning of earth’s systems, and the strange and welcome relief of this new silent spring.
It has been shocking how quickly we have come to accept hundreds of deaths each day – at the time of writing in total over 30,000 in the UK. What could proper preparedness and leadership have prevented, and what should we learn as we look ahead.
As we come out of lockdown there will be many stories to tell. Perhaps one of them will be a recognition that for some of us who were lucky this was a time to rediscover what makes life worth living, to focus on who mattered, what mattered, and what we hope to take on with us into the next phase of all of our lives.
The title of the song is from a beautiful poem by Nadine Anne Hura:
Papatūānuku – Mother Earth
Rest.
Breathe.
Recover.
Heal.
‘wrap your hills around our absence’ is a limited one sided 7″ lathe cut single released on the Future Grave imprint. Half of the limited edition will be sold directly by Future Grave: www.reverbworship.com/future-grave.html, and the other half through the Alula Down Bandcamp site: https://aluladown.bandcamp.com/track/wrap-your-hills-around-our-absence Huge thanks to Roger Linney at Future Grave / Reverb Worship
Photo Credit: Imran Shaikh