Adj. Relating to birds distinguished by feet that are adapted for perching. Includes all songbirds.

Phrases used to describe mystical experience by authors such as Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite.

The field grew dark with the blood of men after the sun,
That glorious luminary, God’s bright candle,
Rose high in the morning after the horizon,
Until the noble being [creation] of the Lord Eternal
Sank to its rest

- From the Battle of Brunanburgh, a poem inserted into the Anglo-Saxon chronicle celebrating Athelstan’s victory against the Irish Vikings and Scots in 937.

- “An interpreter of sacred mysteries and arcane principles.”

- Freedom from worry. A good thing? Or a bland emotional whitewash?

- The god of art, dance, games, beauty, music and flowers in Aztec mythology. Known as the “Flower Prince”.

- John Vanbrugh, not only a wonderful architect, but a fascinating character.

Adj. Showing the cunning or ingenuity or wickedness typical of a devil; “devilish schemes”; “the cold calculation and diabolic art of some statesmen”; “the diabolical expression on his face”; “a mephistophelian glint in his eye”.

The Memory of ſome Men is like the Roſe and other odiferous Flowers, which caſt a ſweeter and ſtronger Smell after they are plucked: the Memory of others may be ſaid to be like the Poppy, and ſuch Vegetables, that make a gay and ſpecious Shew, while they ſtand upon the Stalk, but being cut and gathered, they have but an ill-favoured Scent. The worthy Perſsons examplified in theſe Records, may be compared to the firſt Sort, as well for the ſweet Odor of a good Name they had while they ſtood, as alſo after they were cut down by the common Stroke of Mortality.

Stephen Wren, from the preface to Parentalia or Memoirs of the family of the Wrens, a family history that concentrated on his illustrious architect grandfather, Sir Christopher Wren.

Lundy was always an excellent musician, but never attempted to make a living with his music. He liked to play to entertain himself. For example, he got into the habit of taking down the fiddle after supper was finished, a practice he continued to enjoy into his old age. He worked mostly as a farmer, but by no means exclusively. He was also employed as a blacksmith, a violin and watch repairman, and a dentist, although he just referred to it as “pulling teeth.”

My friend picked up a recording of this fiddle player from a junk shop. It was recorded by the Library of Congress in the 1940s, but apparently it represents some of the oldest fiddle tradition on record, because Lundy was an old man by that point and rarely changed his repetoire. He had learnt the fiddle and his tunes from an older fiddler, Green Leonard, who was active in Grayson County in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. The record, therefore, is about as close as we’re going to get to hearing American folk music as it was played in that era.

That friend of mine has moved to Berlin, and I’d love to get a copy of these recordings. If anyone out there owns the record, “Emmett W. Lundy – Fiddle Tunes From Grayson County, Virginia”, it would make my year if you could record the LP to MP3 and send it my way. Or alternatively, if you’d be willing to sell the record, please get in contact with me.

A strange, surprisingly frequently occuring character in religions and mythologies. The “guide of souls” to the land of the dead, the Charon. According to Jung, the psychopomp archetype is the mediator between the conscious and unconscious realms. Thus a shaman can be regarded as a sort of living psychopomp.

- Anton Chekhov

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

-(of light) flash or sparkle : the light coruscated from the crystal glass