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MP3 D.S. Lionfire - Jerusalem A Symphonic Saga
13 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Progressive Rock, WORLD: World Fusion
Details:
JERUSALEM A SYMPHONIC SAGA
part I The Mask of Love
A Rock Opera in 7 Colors
“A mystikal psychoanalysis
of the veils between
mortal and divine love .......”
Jerusalem A Symphonic Saga ... part 1 “The Mask of Love” ... is the first recorded CD of a seven part rock opera by D.S. Lionfire.
Originally written for the stage over a period of 20 years ... it’s a musically eclectic, spiritual allegory, which uses the crucible archetype of “Jerusalem” ... to portray various aspects of the mortal and spiritual drama of human existence.
In the play, “Jerusalem” is portrayed as a woman, having three suitors, representing .... Judaism ... Christianity ... and Islam ...
They all seek her exclusive love and attentions, by claim of their own particular historical, religious, cultural, racial, psychological, and gender paradigms ...
Throughout the work, Jerusalem strives to lift the suitors to the vaster understanding ... that the Creator has brought her forth for all ...
and all ... are the inheritor’s of her divine grace, guidance, and devotions.
She challenges them to rise above the self - limiting identites that keep them caged in the small boxes of “otherness” ... that they may ascend to the ...
“Mystical Path” ... the true “Warrior Path” ... the true “Jihad” ... that dares face “the battle within ... “ and venture the transcended path that carries them to the ...
“Dance of Love” ...and back to the Creator’s Feet ... and Oneness of “Divine Being”.
The History of Writing ...
Jerusalem A Symphonic Saga
In 1979, https://www.tradebit.comnfire went on a pilgrimage through Europe and the Middle East ... to the tomb of Avatar Meher Baba ... in India.
Along the way, he visited many places of spiritual significance to him...
Stonehenge in England .... Notre Dame of Paris ... the Alps in Switzerland ... St. Marco’s of Venice ... St. Francis’s cave in Assisi ...
St. Peter’s Cathederal in Rome ... the Blue Mosque of Istanbul ... the Acropolis in Greece ... and Pyramids of Egypt.
During his travels in the Middle East, he at one point sailed from Alexandria, Egypt , across the Mediterranean, to civil-war torn, Beirut ... During that voyage, he was invited to stay at the home of a Lebanese friend he had made on the ship.
Upon arriving in Beirut, he and his new friend were given a choice by a taxi driver, to “take the long way” or go through a “sniper zone” to get to the friend’s house. After choosing “the long way”, the driver abuptly decided he would take the “short way”.
Upon having his guitar case, tensely searched at two barricaded check points ... the sojourner decided to politely bow out of his new friend’s invitation... and somewhat graciously ... or ungraciously ... decided to venture immediately onwards towards Jerusalem ... his primary destination in the Middle east.
He bid farewell to his new friend of whom he’d had such long and rich conversations ... under sun and stars ... traveling “deck class” on the Mediterranean freighter.
As he arranged an overland taxi in downtown Beirut, he gazed at the bullet and shrapnel scarred buildings ... of what once was considered the “Riviera of the Middle East” ... and was silently torn by the pierced melacholic paranoia ... that seemingly could be, “scraped out of the air”, in this beautiful land of which Kahlil Gibram once wrote ... “The Prophet ‘.
After a few hours, he took a taxi with three other travelers, up into the mountains of Lebanon ... and precariously, without a visa, traveled through the night across a desert plain... to Damascus, Syria.
To the chagrin of some unamused border officials ... and the taxi driver ... (but fortunate and angelic protection of some fellow travelers), he arrived in Damascus near dawn.
A peculiar and somewhat troubling sight to some of the Syrians in the bustling bus and taxi station ... he was again taken under the wing of an Arab traveler, who altercatingly, but unfledgingly, translated to an unwilling taxi driver, the need of the sojourner to board his taxi and find his way to Amman, Jordan.
After a replenishing stay in a cheap, but clean and airy hotel in the heart of Amman, he aquired the proper papers to cross the Jordan River to enter Israel ... and then onwards to his rendezvous with “Jerusalem”.
It was his week in the “Old City” of Jerusalem ... that the seeds were planted for his writing of “Jerusalem A Symphonic Saga”.
It wasn’t long in the “Old City”, that Jerusalem became for him ... a place permeated with the piercing, archtypical ... ”Terrible Beauty”, of antiquittal lore, or in his translation ... ” a price will be payed, to behold it ...”
A strange and Chimerasque music seemed to perfume through the airs’ of Jerusalem ... and everyone seemed to move to it ... and breath to it ... whether they knew it, or not.
Jerusalem became for him the “Crucible” ... of the told ... and untold stories of the mortal and spiritual struggles of Mankind ... and it’s ancient, enduring efforts, to raise it’s love and possessive embraces of the Earth ... to a new Love and Transcension, that arcs beyond the veiled contingencies of the World ... into the resplendent aureoles of the Heavens ....
He had many vivid experiences and imaginings while staying in the “Old City “...
On his first visit to “Dome of the Rock” ... he found himself in the holy mosque... alone (except for the keeper) ... at sunset... gazing upon the “Rock” ... of which it is believed Abraham was bequested by God to sacrifice Issac on ... Jesus was to have preached His message of love and mercy... and Mohammed, was to have made His “Night Flight”, on His white horse, through the kingdoms of Heaven ... to the feet of Allah .......
It was on that early evening, that he had a vivid imagining of Mohammed’s Night Flight ... and it appeared to him as if beholding a Grand Ascension painting of ElGreco’s ... hued in the colors of Renoir and Monet ... and then somehow set ablaze with the fiery brushstrokes of Heaven ...
and it wasn’t the sight of the Imagining ... but the “Presence” within the Sight .... that so deeply moved him ...
He unknowingly made his first visit to the “Wailing Wall” ... on the Jewish holy day of “Yom Kippur” ...
After standing before the remaining wall of Solomon’s Great Temple and trying to fathom it’s ancient presence ... and then leaving his “prayers and note” in the sacred Wall ... he proceeded to the back of the Sanctum with guitar case in hand ... and once again in the Middle East, was asked to reveal the contents of his guitar case.
The usual sigh of relief appeared upon the eyes of the two young uniformed gentlemen, with sub-machine guns swaying at their sides ... when they beheld the glistening wood and strings ... of a vintage Gibson guitar.
Unkowingly to him ... off to the side, also beholding this peculiar revealment ... were two young children whose attention had been captured by the quiet, below the radar, drama. As the soldiers walked contentedly away ... the eager expressions of, “play us a song” were gestured from the faces of the two boys.
He at first felt it wasn’t the time and place to play a song ... but upon watching the persistence and earnestness, dancing in the eyes
of the two young children, he concluded the “Architect” of his journey was inviting the sojourner to play a song of his pilgrimmage ... at one of the world’s holiest sites ... enroute to the tomb of “the Ancient One” ... Avatar Meher Baba ... in India.
He softly played a song for the two young children, before politely being asked to leave by some of the elders ...
( “dear mothers and fathers ... throughout the land”) ....“The Times They are a Changin” / Dylan
And it was while walking the “Via Dolorosa” ... (the crucifixion walk of Christ to the Cross) ... he painfully heard on an inward level... the tragic, “weeping and knashing of teeth” of biblical narration... and unwillingly beheld in his mind’s eye ... “pools of blood” flowing through ancient, arched passageways of this incongrously cruel and triumpantly persecuted City ...
On ... worn, smooth stones ...
of Journey and Destiny ....
leaden chained ... and golden threaded ...
together, in the swiriling crucible
of the “mortal winnowing” ...
of Darkness from Light .......
he wondered, at the Suffering of Christ ...
the price ... the Prophet’s pay ...
the price ... the Mortals pay ...
mayadramatically Kali’d ...
... into the Phantasmagorphic Journey ...
of ... Trial and Tribulation ...
and Transformation ....
back into the embraces ...
of the Creator’s ...
Grace and Glory .......
After a week, and many other stories in the “Old City” ... ( and New and Future City) ... he parted and carried with him a spiritual ... “torch and scar” ... that still burns and aches inside him, in an unsoothed “internally phoeinixed drama”.
He crossed back over the Jordan ... into Amman ... where within a few days he flew to Iran ... where for three days he was confined in Tehran at the “Mehrbad Airport “... three weeks before the American Embassy takeover of “79”.
While there, he was treated kind and compassionately by the Iranian people ... perhaps intuitively aware of the honor and care given a traveler in one’s land ... but he drew a “hard line” from the government officials at the airport, who were no doubt under pressure to not grant such graces ... especially to an American travelor.
Fortunately for him, he had bought a mystically insightful book about “Whitman” and “Leaves of Grass” while in Alexandria ... and it pleasantly transported and carried him through the minor stings of sleeping on plastic chairs and eating sugar cakes and Iranian cola for two days ...before receiving army rations from the embassy, the day before leaving for India.
After his third paradoxical day in Tehran... he took a night flight to New Delhi ... and arrivived in the country of his final destination ... When his feet touched the ground, the words “Mother India” seemed to surge through his entire being ... and it felt as if it was the first time he was “Home” ... in his lifetime.
After passing through Customs at 4 AM, he took a bus through New Delhi, where he was left off at a small park, near the railway station.
Upon entering the park, he stopped and quizically conversed with an uncannigly, personable Myna bird ... almost at arm’s length, above him in a tree. The absurbly cryptic conversation ... with the bird gazing in his eyes ... went on for a vacumned space of time, of five to ten minutes ... during which it seemed the bird was ... mystically sizing him up ...
Then, almost as if breaking a trance, he said good - bye to this creature of seemingly antediluvian knowing... and proceeded to the railway station to catch the “dawn train” to Bombay.
Upon arriving at the railway station, curious and happenstance sight to some of the Indians ... another backpacked and weary Westerner, but with guitar in hand and he was soon asked to play a song for the growing crowd of passengers on the platform.
Somewhat shyly and hesitantly, he released his guitar from it’s case,
and sang a song ... whose inner fire quickly turned to ash the reluctance he had originally felt ... and he rode the vision of the song into the hearts of the grateful onlookers ... and was thereby baptized in the playing of his music on many occasions in India.
He was then disentangled from the crowd, by a young woman lawyer from Bombay and guided to the part of the platform where I could catch my third class coach. She seemed to wonder at a Westerner riding “third class”, but he assured her, that at this point in his journey, third class would be a luxury ride.
They soon bid each other “good travels”, as she moved on to first class and he boarded the bustling, loud and crowded, wooden seated, Shaker simplistic ... coach to Ahmednagar.
He soon feel into a deep, slumberous sleep, forgivingly buttressed by the shoulders of two fellow passengers ... and had a rich archtypical dream, that was later to become of much significance to him.
Upon waking ... he remembers the thick, fragrant heat of day and the airs permeated with myriad scents and smells ... of this new world that was whirling by ... outside his train window.
He viewed the cities, villages, and countryside... abustle in the “ten thousand undertakings of Man” ... curious at the men adorned in their sunlit, white cotton coverings ... and awed by the women ... gowned in exotic, rainbowed sari ‘s ... as if waiting for “Krishna” ... or “God’s Messenger” to arrive at any moment to their home and table ... for tea.
He remembers the irridescently emberous skies of evening, bloom from the late afternoon, furnaced skies ... and imperceptively fade into the velvet indigo of coming night.
And then he watched the mysterious, wood fires begin to appear on the hillsides ... as if a nightime ritual of praise and beauty ... to the light that had temporairily traveled off to sleep.
He recalls the crystal stillness of the sky at midnight ... as others lay asleep ... gazing out his window, with cool breezes glazing his eyes .... and configuring in his mind’s eye, a new constellation from this yet unexplored angle and hemishere of stars ...
And he constructed an ... “Ecstatic Lover” .... breast arc’d and bursting forth ... into world’s beyond ... the visible embraces and sparkled glitter of distant sunfires ... physically etched on the molecular membranes and symmetries ... of fleshen eyes.
He was at one point, untarnishedly... chastised by the conductor, in the middle of the night for contentedly sleeping on the floor with .... “untouchables”... or what the soujourner considered, “fellow untouchables”.
Late afternoon the next day, he arrived happily, but quite exhausted, into Ahmednagar ... whereby he immediately proceeded to the tomb of Meher Baba ... in Meherazad.
His stay and experiences in Meherabad and Meherazad (where Meher Baba lived and conducted most of the activities of His life), remain primarily the stories and experiences for another day ... or perhaps for only the inner sanctum of his own heart ...for much of the inner essence of that experience is quite ethereal ...and at times mystical ... and not easily conducive or accessable to the laced language and most clever symbolism of words ... (perhaps that has someting to do with why Meher Baba observed “Silence” for forty- four years).
He will say, how fortunate he was, to have met many of Meher Baba’s closest disciples (Mandali) while in India ....
Mehera, Eruch, Mani, Padri, Pendu, https://www.tradebit.comer, Katie, Meherji, Mansari, Arnavaz, Korshed, Rano, Nargis, Aloba, Bhau, and Bal Natu... and in northern Hamirpur District ... (where Baba said His “Heart” was ... ) ... Keshav Nigam and Pukar.
He’s never met before or since ... human beings permeating such close presence ... to Heaven, Spiritual Grace, and the Divine ... and considers it one of the greatest blessings of his life.
It was during his travels to the north with one of Baba’s long time disciple ... Aloba, in Hamirpur District, that he wrote the song “Can You Hear Me” ... that was later to become the climatic song of “Jerusalem A Symphonic Saga”.
And it was “Can You Hear Me” that he sang in Mandali Hall, upon returning to Meherazad from the north ... that Baba’s sister, Mani, after hearing it expressed... “that was a real prayer... “
Throughout his pilgrimage through Europe, the Middle East, and in India ... Baba’s inner and outer presence was more real than the air itself... “like an invisible fire of love, whose embrace and gaze, was always, unspokenly ... in and around you.”
Once, while fathoming Baba’s presence upon the hill by His Tomb ... (after years of efforts in meditation and pray), it became piercingly clear to him, that any words, or names, or thoughts ... become barriors and veils of seperation, from that which we truly adore and love... and as necessary as they are, to steer us, on our way up the “Mountain” ... they must be surrendered and forgotten ... to further approach the rarified airs leading towards the top of the “Mountain”...
At one point in his efforts that morning, he was granted some semblance ... of a momentary cessation of those burdens and barriors ... and was allowed to be with His Beloved Meher Baba ... in a way that he was never able to “Be” before ... or seldom since ...
Baba often reminded lovers and seekers, that it was by “losing” “one’s self” ... that one could truly find “One’s Self ... and God ... and themselves .... as God... and that, was the true essence and dynamic of Love.
Later that week, upon privately asking Eruch about his episode on the Hill ... Eruch nodded knowingly ... and confirmed ... that it was a treasured glimpse of the “Presence” ... we yearn for all the time ... from the Beloved and Divine.
On the sojourner’s last day in Meherazad, after a gathering for tea and singing a farewell song on “Mehera’s Porch” ... he for the last time entered Mandali Hall, where Eruch greeted him and gave him an ebrace in the doorway ...before “returning to the world” and bid him farewell, saying ... “Sing His Glory” .......
He the next day, flew out of India, and upon returning to the states in late December of 79, he soon moved to New York City. About a year later, still brimming from and assimilating his pilgrimmage to Europe, the Middle East, and India ... he wrote a song called “Jerusalem” ... in which the “City” of Jerusalem ... and the visionary”Archetype” of Jerusalem ... were personified as a “woman” ... a mother, sister, daughter, and lover ... tested and torn, over thousands of years, by all those who wished to possess ... that which cannot be possessed ... but can only be earthenly hosted... and heavenly treasured...
It was not long after that, that Baba seemed to present to him the idea of writing a complete musical / rock opera, based on the concept of that song ... with the simple, but powerful allegorical metaphor ... that this woman “Jerusalem” was being courted and persued by three suitors... representing the three main religions of the Mid East and wesatern world ... Judaism, Christianity, and Islam ....
Having previously written two rock operas ... “Christangelis” i972 - 74, and “The Thousand Stars of Mavu”, !977 -79 ... it became quickly clear, that this allegory, would allow him to write symbolically ... and extensively .... a sort of “Mystical Psychoanalysis” about the complex historical, religious, cultural, racial, psychological and gender paradigms of the characters, and how they reflect on the macrocosmic city and vision of “Jerusalem” and the uderlying presence that it occupies in the psyche of the western mind.
Eposodically, over the next 20 years ... between raising a family, designing and building a stone house, becoming a registered nurse and Art Therapsit, writing songs and poetry, occassionally painting .... and most importantly ... trying to become a more worthy “fire” at the
“Lions” (Baba) feet .... he wrote the first 4 parts (52 songs) of “Jerusalem A Symphonic Saga” and drafted the basic music and conceptions of what will hopefull manifest as the last 3 parts ... which are to be more cryptic and riddle-esque in lyrical nature ... and more orchestral and choral, in musical nature, as thet attempt to symbollically express the main character’s journey’s through the inner garden and heaven’s ... back to the Feet of the Eternal Divine ......
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