Light in the Woods

Collection Contents

#		Title	Length
1		Rubye's Light	11:35	Play
2		Those Eyes	4:53	Play
3		Slow Shooting Star	7:20	Play
4		First Firefly	4:16	Play
5		Diva With Wings	8:58	Play
6		Gray Heron	4:20	Play
7		Cloud Ride	4:28	Play
8		Light in the Woods	6:05	Play

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Description

"Elegant simplicity, wonderfully plaintive muisic". The Scotsman, Edinburgh, Scotland


I have written in depth in the Armchair Magician section about my experience returning to music. In brief, when listening to musicians in Istanbul who loved what they were doing, I promised myself that I would not write music if it caused me pain. I was willing to give it up if it couldn't create joy in my life. Later that year, I sat at the piano, my mind full of the melodies that are now recorded in Armchair Magician. These songs were my expression of those months on the road. One friend wrote, "The music nurtures my sense of peace." And that is what these travels and this journey to music did for me.

After so much time on the road, we began to long for a place that felt like home in this country that was so far from my country of birth. This plea sent out to the night sky, started us on yet another journey, this one into the workings of a farming village of only 15 families located in the foothills of the mountains. In the winter, we are battered by a weather system that pushes across the Siberian continent and over the Japan Sea. We found a 100-year -old farmhouse on a cliff and set up our ceramics studio there. Living in the crowded city below, we had forgotten the joy of simply gazing out into a misty expanse. Our location above Deep Valley gives us an ever-changing vista of rising clouds and fog, shadow and light. The valley below is the home to three traditional hot springs and a favorite place to walk and take a dip on snowy afternoons. During our first years here, all available funds were funneled into the house to keep our roof from falling in or the land from sliding down the mountain and as ceramic artists we became engaged in beautifying a house that was in itself a work of great beauty. And, everyday we could we walked on the forest roads. One night at dusk, a great owl swooped past us and little by little, walk by walk, I fell in love with this landscape and wondered if it would ever take shape as melodies. I worked in the same way that I did with Armchair Magician, only writing if it felt good to write. This time, the music flowed with my ceramics, with work on an owl sculpture seamlessly flowing into the composition of "Rubye's Light". In this way, Light in the Woods, is more deeply intertwined with my every day life than any other work.

I perform this work with poetry. Here, I give you "The First Firefly". The rest of the poems, written by Patty Christiena Willis can be found inside the CD cover and on our website, christienaprince.com:

First Firefly


When winter whistled about us
Threatening our fragile peace
We walked outside
and stared into the trees
on the distant hills.

When we saw a star
twinkling through bare branches
We closed our eyes and prayed
For the first firefly of summer

For nights too hot to move
For new rice plants
in the flooded fields
For cups of plum wine

And its lonely dance

The first firefly