You can't choose your lifetime; you can choose your battles: Strata Florida
Heroes have slept long in the shade of Dafydd’s Yew. They may yet wake. Will we?
I was 4 when I saw a striking image in Wales. I was days short of 54 when I finished writing about it.
The summer of 1976 was hosepipe-ban hot. My family rented a caravan on a small farm in West Wales, which we’d return to for years to come, making friends of “Uncle” Cerdin and “Aunty” Sally and the peaceful but vibrant world of Gorrig, near Llandysul.
I remember being fascinated by the way in which the soil had fragmented into semi-regular shapes with gaps between them (which I’d later see again in Andy Goldsworthy installations). I loved the castles, the abbeys and the coast – the magical blue-hour evenings at New Quay, the farmyard buzz of the cream tea shop and the terrifying climb up the cliff at Cwmtydu Bay, because I’d got myself stuck on the steepness and going back down wasn’t an option.
Being near the sea during a drought was such a contrast of blues and yellows. And it all came to a head when we first visited Strata Florida Abbey and I saw the row of warrior princes’ graves. There were the headstones, weather clean of carvings, offering no clue as to who lay beneath; and around them, sun-dried grass blew in the breeze as if bowing to the ancient dead.
I remember it vividly. It took five decades to express it in a way that made any kind of sense. In those years I’ve revisited and researched Strata Florida, but it actually hasn’t changed what I felt at the time and was just too young to express.
There they are, brave warriors who believed in something, were revered in their lifetimes and are now so far in the past their names have been forgotten. There they are, and here am I. Life is going on no matter what I do – they’re affecting me, here, now, and they’ll never know it. Is there any point in being a lost warrior? Do I now have to become some kind of warrior prince? If not, what am I going to be? Will it matter? Will it matter if it matters?
And so on!
This was definitely one for Laurie Glass’ endless composing talents, and what he came up with – a sort of lonely bravery, but mainly expressed in strings when one might expect brass – lifts my words to another level. I could probably have done another take, but I kept getting stuck on “Dafydd’s Yew” (even typing it, I discover, is a challenge) and it wasn’t getting any better; and it’s important for me that BC projects are just a touch rough-and-ready. I don’t think it would have felt as honest another time round.
I’m also rather pleased that the video has, to my mind, a touch of later-era Pink Floyd to it; and gratitude to Cottonbro Studio via Pexels for the lion’s share of the visuals. If you happen to know David Gilmour, will you send it to him for me? Thanks!
Gratitude also to my former newspaper colleague and bandmate David ‘Cuptie’ McKay, for coming up with a line that explains what Strata Florida is all about – when even I wasn’t sure. (I’m still not.)
In another turn of fate, it fell into my release schedule a few days short of my 54th birthday. Allowing for Scottish school holiday dates, it’s damn close to exactly 50 years since I saw the princes’ graves, and my fledgling Story Engine told me, “Give me that; I’m keeping it. You’ll get it back when it’s ready.” It can be a frustrating pain living with the mind I have, but sometimes it’s a glorious blessing.
The road leads from the river through the vale
Of flowers, to the last stones of the abbey
A road of sad resolve and reverence
Where mourners slow processed to Dafydd’s yew
While garden walls became the keeps of castles.
Here ancient princes lie in pensive peace;
the tender rain has washed away their names,
their headstones smooth and pale as buried bone;
And gold grass sways in whispered summer song
to keep them deep asleep and long forgotten.
Brave deeds encrypted, locked in chambered books,
Such souls who sought the colour in their acts
Have steeped themselves in shadows, damp and dull;
They tell themselves they miss not glorious light ~
And tell themselves they want their world this way.
Yet if those nobles stood and spoke again
Would we know how to listen, understand
That words of war for fallen flags, lost kingdoms
Might yet mean something in our darkling days,
Thus: ‘We know what we lived for ~ what of you?’
