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LANCE STONE ON MARMION ROAD

from David Heavenor - LIVE BOOK LAUNCH CONCERT by David Heavenor

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Part of Lance Stone's introduction to David's collection of song lyrics, a reflection on his favourite song MARMION ROAD.

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Marmion Road
I start with my favourite of all David’s songs, the sublime Marmion Road. David describes its genesis: the memory of lying in bed at night as a young boy in the coastal town of North Berwick and listening to the sound of the sea and the gulls. One night a storm washes a ship up on the shore, and children explore it and play on it until, come Spring, it is ‘lost to Flot and Jetsam’s crab claws.’ What has prompted this memory, however, is its associations with Rosanna, a childhood ‘chum’ who is present in another later storm, as her ‘long white gown tumbles down this autumn evening / And the lighting cracks, interrupts our breathing / And all the words that I lack / Fill up all the space between the stars…’ This is stunning imagery – the lack of words being absorbed by empty space, a silence filling a silence, an absence replete with an absence. There is ambiguity here: are these ‘words that I lack’ those of the songwriter attempting to articulate the scene (the kind of writer’s-block lack portrayed in another Heavenor song, The Idiot Slot), or is this the inarticulacy of love, the failure to express deep feelings in words?
Either way, what strikes me in the song is the juxtaposition of images of earth and sky. On the one hand, we have of ‘a house by the sea’ with ‘a child tossed in his sleep’; on the other hand, we have the vastness of the heavens and the void between the stars, aroused in the imagination by Rosanna, who, we are told, ‘floats like the moon’ and who is present in the lightning’s crack. Here is a move from the confinement of bed, home, sea, shore, and shipwreck to the infinite horizon of sky, space, stars, moon, and lightning. And the song ends with a beautiful twist: the wreck on the shore has morphed in the child’s dreams into a moon-ship awaiting him just off the lee shore, poised to bridge the gap between earth and space.
Here we see the basic features of the songs that I will look at: the tension between above and below, earth and sky, confinement and expanse, and some resolution between the two

credits

from David Heavenor - LIVE BOOK LAUNCH CONCERT, released May 7, 2023

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David Heavenor Edinburgh, UK

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Support David's next recording at https://ko- fi.com/davidheavenor

David Heavenor is a Scottish singer songwriter based in Edinburgh Scotland. He has produced 8 albums plus 3 EP's.

I'm Watching Rosanna. ' An insightful song....beautifully written and observed. Iain Anderson. BBC Radio

'Jenny & the Cold Caller. One of the best songs ever written...' Ricky Ross ... more

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