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The Whole Nine Yards Ep 135 27.8.23 Dreams Escaping from Towers with Roy Stannard on Mid Sussex Radio 103.8FM

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/roy-stannard/episodes/The-Whole-Nine-Yards-Ep-135-27-8-23-Dreams-Escaping-from-Towers-with-Roy-Stannard-on-Mid-Sussex-Radio-103-8FM-e28j82j

The Whole Nine Yards Episode 135

With Roy Stannard

On Mid Sussex Radio 103.8FM

Sunday 27th August 2023 3-5pm

http://www.midsussexradio.co.uk/listen

Dreams escaping from Towers

The castle or fortress tower metaphor gives us a powerful symbol for the ways in which human ambition can be confined by fear. It reminds us of the importance of breaking free from self-imposed barriers and embracing the unknown in order to break out our ambitions and invade our full potential.

The songs this week are the dreams on your battlements. Are you going to let them fly – or fall??

Hour One

Linkin Park – Castle of Glass (Living Things 2012)

Rich Kids – Ghosts of Princes in Towers (Ghosts of Princes in Towers 1978)

Chris & Carla – The Tower (Life Full of Holes 1995)

Blur – New World Towers (The Magic Whip 2015)

Kadebostany – Castle In The Snow (Single 2015)

Skylar Grey – Tower (Don’t Look Down 2013)

Lissie – Castles (Castles 2018)

Lissie – Castles (Piano version) (When I’m Alone: The Piano Retrospective 2019)

Anna Nalick – Citadel (Wreck of the Day 2004)

The Beauty Room – Fortress (The Beauty Room 2006)

Seals & Croft – Castles in the Sand (Summer Breeze 1972)

Don McLean – Castles in the Air (Castles in the Air 1981)

Gordon Lightfoot – If You Could Read My Mind (Sit Down Young Stranger 1970)

Hour Two

Freya Ridings – You Mean the World to Me (Freya Ridings 2019)

Bon Iver – Towers (Bon Iver 2011)

Lynsey de Paul – Ivory Tower (Surprise 1973)

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – I Second that Emotion (Single 1968)

Samantha Sang & the Bee Gees – Emotion (Disco Purrfection Mix) (When Love is Gone 1978)

Finley Quaye – Emperor (Vanguard 2000)

Elbow – The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver (The Seldom Seen Kid 2008)

Paul Weller – Old Castles (True Meanings 2018)

Freya Ridings – Castles (Orchestral version) Freya Ridings (2019)

Taylor Swift  – Castles Crumbling (Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) 2023)

Prefab Sprout – Prisoner of the Past (Andromeda Heights 1997)

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Always, my Friend

Always, my friend

The warm muffler of friendship

The kind you put on

Without thinking

before going out into the cold air

of mere acquaintance

the scent of many walks, many talks

The Swallows and Amazons hide-out

Safe from stalkers

Camouflaged from the inquisitive

 A place for after the apocalypse

The tenderness amongst the elements

The uncrazy point in the kaleidoscope

Where nothing changes except the seasons

And a word given is never ungiven

Where there is nothing unforgiven

That special seat in your favourite bar

The thoughts

who know who you are

The words that don’t need to be spoken

Because there are no cracks in the pavement

No promises broken

No potholes in the road

The one-eyed teddy

The veteran of childhood

The record with your past scratched into it

The tree house safe from the for-sale sign

The car that always starts

And drives without question

Even after the crash

The arm on the shoulder

When the shoulder is shaking

Time given

Rather than taken.

This is the nest without cuckoos

The place of rest

The church door that is never closed

A friendship that is never tested

Because there is no cross examination.

Where the beginning

Is also the end.

Always, my friend.

For Howard, and friends everywhere.

Words and Voice Roy Stannard / Music Matt Staples (‘One and Only’) 1.2.20

When your child has a child
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When your child has a child

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When your child has a child

When your child has a child

The first thought is not for line or legacy

not for the continuance of me

but the way water runs down a river

or the mountains roll over the horizon

the grand pursuit of the heart

of La Grande Bellaza

in the cradle of civilisation

like turning out of an alley

and finding light in the piazza.

When your heart finds a heart

and steals it like a bicycle thief

you forget that you have climbed

over a hundred Spanish steps

only to find a different kind of summit

In the seven hills

strewn with rejected Caesars and centurions

among the crumbling Vegas palaces.

When your life finds a life

and eating, praying and loving

become sacraments on the screen of your story

you can throw those rainy day coins into the fountain

knowing that your life will become sweeter

stirred by the baby smiles

of the unexpected dolce visitor.

When your love finds a love

the trees whisper ciao bella

life’s Colosseum opens itself to the sun

memories rusted on the Via Sacra

re-ignite in the Roman morning

and there is a new cry of hope

captured in history beginning.

For Roma born 16.9.2019 

Her first Christmas 2019

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The End and the Beginning

 

Long Furlong

The End and the Beginning

 

Because others had named the day

We can plot the moment

When first in a church and then

in the barn of an after bouquet of a wedding

you caught a glimpse of the future in each other

deftly like a slipping shadow at first

then ripening boldly like a stalk of March wheat

in the rape fields of Long Furlong

where the South Downs remind us of eternity.

In a barn you found a storehouse

Of possibilities, scurrying everywhere

Like mice intoxicated

you saw how they ran

and the hurt platoons of the past

counselled caution

as you sensed the enormity and the shape

of the secret places undiscovered

yet waiting like the ruined bandstand

on the Brighton shoreline where permanent words

would be uttered fifteen months later.

And that day

there was a silent espousal that whilst

others were celebrating a wedding

at a place where the bloodlines and the ley lines met

The River Arun would take the promise of the future, a twist of wheat

through the gap in the Downs past Arundel

and out at Littlehampton to the sea

where the Channel eddies and tides

caress the leg of a Brighton pontoon

where one day soon the story

would at the same time end, and begin.

For Callum & Frankie, to mark the day it all began on 23.3.15

Love Dad 26.8.17

For an audio version of this piece with ‘The Irrepressibles – The Tide’ (Album: Mirror Mirror 2010) used as a backdrop please go here

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Who Is Like God?

 

a-boy-looking-out-to-sea

Who is like God?

Love was the father and love the mother.

You arrived in December, anticipating another Christmas

A reward in yourself rather than a present

A pilgrimage more than a journey

Because we cannot find love in ourselves

Only with another

And you were the purest love

The world of love in a moment

To complete the place that was prepared for you

A place shaped, breathed into, palpitating, anticipated for you

And you arrived linking Winter with Spring

A week after Mandela died and two days before his burying

You arrived, your hair already hinting of gold

Woven like the wealth of the Transvaal on the South African flag

You arrived to separate the before from the after

The Anno Domini

Dividing the past from the future

You arrived to say that there was no going back

As the Ukraine edged westwards

After the charge of the dark brigade in Crimea

And your mother wrote the gospel of your life

Like a scream of joy

As the Scribes and the Pharisees fled back to the Old Testament

Making way for the new covenant of love

Turning over and seeding the soil of hope

Too big an enterprise now for the old scythes and hoes

‘We need a tractor’ you said in almost your first words

And we realised that the lines and the furrows

Could mean happiness after all.

Roy Stannard for Michael’s Naming Day 21.8.16

For a version of this mixed with music please visit Soundcloud at:

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The Language of Us

 

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The Language of Us

Before you, I walked at the edge of the group

A straggler in strangers

My life didn’t fit, held together with an unsafety pin

I was made not to measure

A bird not of a feather

And my hesitant shadow held back

Expecting never to be expectant, half a step behind

Like a skittish kitten, playing with fear

And then, amongst the bubble wrap multitude

Issuing and popping with importance

Was a face that emptied the page, cleared the stage

And invited me into your dressing room

Shutting out the mob that scratched and mewled against the door

And said sit down, I have a place for you

In my heart

Come and try it on

And I tried it on

Inviting you to lunch without waiting for an answer

Knowing that the glistening still water waves of the Marina

Would caress our conversation

And lap at our bruised emotions

As we refused everything on the menu except love

We had been things to other people

We had appeared as guests in others memories

We were both in a foreign country

But as the first twitch of feeling shivered between us

We found we had the language of us

That said yes whenever we touched.

Roy Stannard for Natasha

20.8.16

For a recorded version with music on Soundcloud please click here: