Fammere & Eurydice

#		Title	Length
1		Green Man	6:17	Play
2		Tide of Life	3:57	Play
3		Single, Sacred Body	4:56	Play
4		La canzone della sirena	5:06	Play
5		Evora	3:52	Play
6		Markets of Remorse	4:36	Play
7		Ephemerae	4:08	Play
8		Khora Sfakia	4:46	Play
9		Silence in Your Eyes	4:58	Play
10		Thrall	9:09	Play
11		One of the Just	4:02	Play
12		The Smell of French Books	3:29	Play
13		Orpheus Recusant	1:27	Play
14		Eurydice	4:47	Play
			1:05:30

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Description

Fammere & Eurydice

Fammere & Eurydice is a mystical, exotic soundtrack of love between a wandering poet-singer whose only home is self and a sibylline princess captive to a tower of self and self doubt. Their mythic romance set in contemporary Europe, North Africa and islands of the Mediterranean is heroic and enchanting but, also, young. Both hesitate. He steps back, for he does not trust her hesitation; she disappears, for he hesitates. Their tragic denouement, like most--like Romeo and Juliets, is so sad because it was so unnecessary.

Here are first lines of the last poem he wrote to her [track 6]. It was left upon a wooden table in a little blue room open mouthed to the sea. He will never know if she found it amid a world of wind and wings:

I have spent another morning
in the markets of remorse
trying to buy back a single afternoon.

I search by the scent of her
in September, where the sky and Mediterranean had offered her to me.

All I find among reflecting
pools and wet feet is her hat, and, then, that is gone.
Why would someone take it from me,
all that was left to me.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

And here are the last lines of the first poem he had written to her a decade before [track 3]:

I cannot learn to love the lost hours.
Every fluted pillar prophesied you.
Your breasts restore me to the first
and last face of God.
Our love will confound all vain idols
of commerce and compromise,
for we have been chosen to demonstrate the single, sacred body.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Fammere

"Alternative Art Songs. Art Spoken, Art Sung. Contemporary Art Songs. Enlightened Art Songs. Ecstatic Art Songs. Alternative Enlightened Art Songs. Progressive World Poetry & Music. Poem Songs.
By any name this is a new genre; and Fammere is the artist where it begins.
Li-Young Lee, Elise Paschen, Rachel Webster, Kenneth Clarke, Mark Perlberg, Risa Kaparo, Tatiana Blanco. (Shakespeare, Ronsard, Rimbaud, Prevert!) Fammere has composed for them all.
Fammere & Eurydice is his first self-portrait and master work.
This album is accompanied by Lessons of Water & Thirst (www.cdbaby.com/fammeree2), a book of poems described by Bob Holman (director of The United States of Poetry) as "a recipe for unearthly delights."
Fammere is a contemporary troubadour. Really. He left home on the cusp of eighteen with fewer dollars, his sisters guitar and his fathers blessing (If you want to starve you may as well begin now--).
His career as a poet and musician began before the Cathedral of Notre Dame and across the Petit Pont on the left bank of the Seine among dusty shelves of Shakespeare & Company in Paris. To perform where Esmeralda had mesmerized medievals and to write in Hemingways overstuffed chair, blessed young Fammere with a vision which would protect and propel him through an odyssey of two decades and beyond.
Poet Chad Walsh suggested he continue his evolution in Ireland. Beginning at the tomb of Yeats in County Sligo, Fammere crossed Europe on foot. He followed the paths of Grand Tours and even greater adventures: crusades and pilgrimages, culminating upon Mt. Sinai.
Listen for evidence of faerie rings, trysting stones, Goddess temples, marble theatres and medieval palisades in the west of Ireland, south of France, the mountains of Crete and Morocco, the plains of Turkey, deserts of Jordan and Egypt and verdant islands of the Pacific.
Refreshingly, forty-something Fammere isnt a typical icon. When we first met at his reading and performance at Shakespeare & Co. in Paris (an event televised by ART and, I believe, lifted by Ethan Hawke for Before Sunset), I was assured by his eyes and beard.
All self-important popular singers (curiously named as circus entertainers) want to to look like this skinny Matisse flourishing eyes of a mystic and hands of a lover.
Fammere is a born artist and was born to be an artist. He is passionate as the Greeks he admires, daring as the troubadours, profound as the movement he has single-handedly initiated.
Some may believe the title of this CD implies that Fammere considers himself to be Orpheus reborn. Well, I can only respond by saying that he may very well be. It is not simply his art, his writing and music, his dedication, his story, but his voice. Listen carefully to this record. I have never heard anything or anyone who better elicits the pure magic of a mythic character in flesh and blood.
To experience the exotic--and often erotic--adventures of love and lost love, self and self found, to rekindle fantasies and faith, delight in this CD, this seminal recording, this transcendence. Thank you, Fammere."
- Adele de Stael

Fammeree delivers. Buy the album to enjoy the future of poetry now.
- Kenneth Clarke, Executive Director of The Poetry Center of Chicago

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Fammere & Eurydice includes:

1. Green Man
2. Tide of Life
3. Single, Sacred Body
4. La canzone della sirena
5. Evora
6. Markets of Remorse
7. Ephemerae
8. Khora Sfakia
9. Silence in Your Eyes
10. Thrall
11. One of the Just
12. The Smell of French Books
13. Orpheus Recusant
14. Eurydice

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

LYRICS

1. Green Man

If we were one God,
we would feed each other everything; and everything would eat us,
and we would never die.

My tongues would serpent in your temple
where water becomes blood;
and the pink imprint of our lips would be
a talisman above the bed.

We would not need
to protect our skin from light;
we would not need
to protect our skin from skin;
and nothing red would be unclean
at the mouth of the Tigris.

I know what the dark book teaches,
but the garden is within us all.

I am a green man, and I am my messiah now.
I am not embarrassed, I am not alone,
I am not afraid.
I cannot lose anything,
for nothing is mine.
And I will never be hungry,
for everything is mine.
Where, then, is the throne of heaven.

I know what the dark book teaches,
but the garden is within us all.

If we were one God,
we would not appease fathers of don't.
We would kiss the tips of each other,
for lips are the spout of the fountain
and eyes, the light of the fountain.
Nipples are ready to blossom,
and a rose is a mouth of the mother.

I am a finger, and you are a finger.
Our hand is a leaf, our leaf, a wing,
and leaves and wings will
cathedral us again.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

2. Tide of Life

One restless night,
deep in a world of wood
Trying to rhyme memories half understood
Curious light, confluent signs
Here in the tide of life

Walking a line, walking alone sometimes
Reaching to find someone to harmonize
Lyrical lines, written in signs
Here in the tide of life

All the sadness
And the darkness I've carried
I've heard every rule,
but I will play the songs
I wrote to sing

There in your eyes I see no silver cage
Between the lines your dreams are safe
Lyrical night, speaking in signs
Here in the tide of life

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

3. Single, Sacred Body

I sing the fountain of your silence
I dream the promise in your eyes
I love each island in your river
I drink you in before the sky

Once in a frozen time
drifting into night,
we said wed meet again.
Here, sitting side by side,
the way your hands hold mine,
our lifes begun.

I cannot learn to love the lost hours.
Every fluted pillar prophesied you.
Your breasts restore me to the first
and last face of God.
Our love will confound all vain idols
of commerce and compromise,
for we have been chosen to demonstrate the single, sacred body.

Once in a frozen time
drifting into night,
we said wed meet again.
Here, sitting side by side,
the way your hands hold mine,
our lifes begun.

This hand pressed netting,
this veil of brides,
this storied fabric winding its whisperings about us, sleeplessly
compelling our mouths together for breath for birth:

I now assume Botticellis love for you

And if time were to abandon us
in some unmeasured embrace,
I would rest beside you
until we were chosen to be brought forth again from the cold.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

4. La canzone della sirena

[I shall call her Eurydice. She is every woman who dreams and remembers her dreams, who sings and whose songs are remembered. Eurydice had eyes that would become the color of the sky or her chemise. We were visiting Vernazza in the north west corner of Italy, one of the five mountain towns, the cinque terra, above the sea.

I wrote this song for her to sing in the Pirates caf at night. She wrote the words. They tell the story of a siren who calls sailors to her cave, the darkest waters from which no mortal re-emerges.]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

5. Evora

In Evora there is a church
and the church was once a mosque
and the mosque was once a church
and the church was once a temple
in the time of the Romans

Behind the altar there is a false tomb
and beneath a Christian name
there are thousands of years of roots writhing through stone
and water echoes up vertebrae
which must have been steps
and its light is the juice of emeralds

Now, consider the well that is my throat
and the pool that is my chest

What does one do when a well has been capped for so many generations?
Is water safe in the stomach?

How did I become addicted to a self-imposed periphery, its tithes, its prick and its poison?
Can all of this be unlearned in one generation, one season, one summer?

My grandfathers and grandmothers
and their grandparents meet
for the first time in me
I carry them to familiar places
I am their hands, their thighs, their nose, their eyes, their lips, their teeth,
their tongue

How did I become addicted to a self-imposed periphery, its tithes, its prick and its poison?
Can all of this be unlearned in one generation, one season, one summer?

I am the voice and the body now
and all that is closed will be opened
and all that hurts will be repaired
and all that sleeps without dreaming
will be green again

In Evora there is a church
Inside the church there is a tomb
and inside the tomb there is a cistern
Inside the cistern there is water
and its light is the juice of emeralds

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

6. Markets of Remorse

I have spent another morning
in the markets of remorse
trying to buy back a single afternoon.

I search by the scent of her
in September, where the sky and Mediterranean had offered her to me.

All I find among reflecting
pools and wet feet is her hat, and, then, that is gone.
Why would someone take it from me,
all that was left to me.

How did she become my Genesis.
There were Jerusalems before her,
tents of silk embroidered with silk; anchovies and resin wine; lavender, cloves, coriander, thyme;
boxes of rose, bowls of bone,
wood, stone.

I surrender each coin. I surrender,
face up:
She sat upon the other bed, sunlight pushing at yellow curtains as if they had not been yellow before, sunlight pushing at the curtains of her hair, no longer able to support its weight.

I want that moment back. I would hurt myself against her chair if necessary to please the twin idols of her knees and kiss her fingers before our meal and touch her hair from her eyes, as love promises, and follow her, veiled as I am, navigating puddles and waves between strands and sleep, chrysalis to chrysalis,

in the little blue room open mouthed
to the sea, the one she promised
will be there.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

7. Ephemerae

I could not sleep while you slept.
Any little animal might have sheltered
in your body;
and I kept leaves from your eyes
and things from your hair until your lips revived,
bending back my fingers
to the lessons of water and thirst.

Fires that night digested the wet,
and when their long viridian
became your arms and a delirium
became our legs, threads relinquished us,
and we were not puppeted by earth,
and we were not puppeted by heaven.

We became larger than form and texture and scent--
something like clouds--
and fear was driven from the manger
of our bellies, and anger's thin lips
could not diminish us.

We ate everything that was red, and everything red was delicious.
My sap was greening your milky body,
then your legs slapped.
They slapped into fins and you arced
and my chin and ear separated,
and silver and more silver and silver again, I quivered behind you.

Ten thousand skies
Ten thousand nights
I should have known I would outgrow
A fascination with empty


8. Khora Sfakia

I walk among the whores of Sfakia,
the once beautiful sons ad daughters
hoarding fragments, lording and ladying and burning from the altar of their lips
all instincts still migratory.

For them the paths of scree
to the promontory decay at the turning of the sky. They hobble to the one tree where an attendant is also a boatman
and negotiate a passage back.

I am pressed to vertical earth, hatless, mapless and without sunglasses.
Golden bellied birds flash in a swift geometry upon lapis lazuli, and I tremble with the thrill of superstition:
What spirits are these? Whose soul cries from the mouth of the ass?

Now, the water is a Leviathan and ready to swallow.
It thrashes about, not content
with its containment, neither convinced nor concerned that lungs need land.

The whores of Sfakia wheeze and sleep with mouths open and lamps glaring
and garments pressed to their eyes.
If their messiah were to come
in the night, I could not follow,
for this is not a Diaspora, and the Son and the Father are only one half
of one God.

I wonder why the earth supports us.
We expect so much and renew so little.

Its Here and husband, back and forth
and up and down, scattering bones
of aborted destinies.
He first slurred the ancient name
of this place, Khora Sfakia--
The whores of Sfakia, he announced
and everyone laughed, then laughed again and laughed all the next day.
Now, she and he and I are pinks
upon the sand.

We offer our knees to the waves,
and Hero calls, and her call takes
the body of a gull.
Each of us awakes from the truth
of dreams to the lives of our own making.

The sea moves her skin and enters me.
I do not fear translucence. I do not fear this pregnancy, for I am with me.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

9. Silence in Your Eyes

In a languid haze, Elysian gate
I shade my eyes
And two lovers rest on a simple bed
of sorrel leaves and spent desire

Silence in your eyes

In a second take of the last embrace
you would not leave alone
We could close our eyes
to a faint disguise
we'd wear to hide from time, from fate

Silence in the sky, in your sighs
Silence in your eyes

If a written line could materialize
into a wish
I would know where you've gone
For a silver thread
that I thought we'd shed
is still tied to my wrist to you

Silence in the night, in your sigh
Silence in your eyes


10. Thrall

Can the priest pretend your body is not the plan of his cathedral?
Can I pretend you are not my cathedral?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

11. One of the Just

[She was in a cold stone kitchen preparing. I was in a twin stone room discovering the music for this song. I heard her chanting Hey, hey, hey, hey, ha, ha, ha, ha, howd your life get strapped to a clock against the ringing of my strings and the ancient percussion of a knife chopping against a board. I knew it was the pain of a daughter never born.]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

12. The Smell of French Books

The smell of French books is particular.
It is the bloom of favorite shoes
and pillows plump with nursing,
bells of etched glass and cream yellowing
in the belly of a spoon.

The small of French books is one candle
and three cold canvases in a crumbling room in Picardy and meadows beyond the rusted crucifix, pinking with puberty and wooing the mooing cows.

There is a Livre de Poche beside the bed. I refresh myself with Bonnards busy virgin in her emerald bath, then struggle through four more pages.
Little accents fly off like perfumed arrows. From dialogue I guess the plot and meaning of the story--as I do in life.

I remember so little grammar,
my ceremony of French books
will never change.
It is the lick, lick, lick of a chocolate clock, and I am asleep before the chiming.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

13. Orpheus Recusant

And if time were to abandon us
in some unmeasured embrace,
I would rest beside you
until we were chosen
to be brought forth
again

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

14. Eurydice

[The poet is finally allowed to bring his beloved back from the kingdom of death, the realm of shadows. For a moment, he loses her voice and looks back and loses her forever.]


Richard Fammere

fammeree@att.net

www.fammeree.net