Comments on Fragments of a Cale Season: Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed

Sure, I'd love to see that. Thanks!

2007-06-10T22:38:00.000-04:00

Sure, I'd love to see that. Thanks!

Seems to be OOP. Copies show up on Amazon and EBay...

2007-06-08T20:16:00.000-04:00

Seems to be OOP. Copies show up on Amazon and EBay—it's VHS-only, though.The title is also "Words For The Dying."

The quality is kinda wonky, but some of the content is priceless. Eno comes off as a complete flake, and Cale seems terribly uncomfortable in his own skin: at one point, Nilsson is so frustrated at trying to get Cale to open up that he gives Cale his own camera and asks him to do a sort of video diary, but even alone, in the privacy of his room, Cale cannot speak to the camera. he just sits there, and sighs, and fidgets...

There's some heartrending stuff near the end, when he and Risé and Eden are in Wales, and Cale's got to arrange to the sale of his childhood home, which has fallen vacant—he visits his aged mother in a nursing home to get her signature on some legal papers—he doesn't tell her what the papers are, and she barely knows where she is—the whole sequence is in Welsh, and it's terribly uncomfortable viewing.

There's also a snippet of an (to my knowledge) unreleased song called "Year of the Patriot," from an abortive collaboration with a Russian bass player.

I'm going to try to digitize my VHS copy eventually—shall I burn you a DVD if/when I do?

That's a very memorable connection. I think it wi...

2007-06-08T17:00:00.000-04:00

That's a very memorable connection. I think it will stay with me. There's something inescapably martial about the song. The poem was also partly inspired by the multitudes dead in World War II.

Obviously, the Falklands War was a major influence on the composition. I've always thought of the pair of ships sunk in that war.

I haven't seen the documentary. Is it in print?

Maybe it is about throat cancer: but this one kept...

2007-06-08T15:18:00.000-04:00

Maybe it is about throat cancer: but this one kept filling up my head some years ago, when the Russian submarine Kursk sank with all hands in the Barents Sea, and the memories of the dead were betrayed by bureaucratic incompetence and cover-ups. Maybe it was the Russian orchestra connection, maybe it was image of the voices of the drowned, saying "We shall obey." So haunting.

I know what you mean about Words for the Dying. I *wanted* to like the orchestral arrangements so much more than I actually did. Have you seen Rob Nilsson's documentary about the making of the album?