1.
Spring Shall Surely Come — a song by James Cheseldine
From the Community
As you might have picked up in my most recent posts, springtime in England is something of a phenomenon. A long-awaited season that never quite arrives as you expect it to and often masquerades as winter. It shows its true beautiful self for only a moment before we’re all plunged mercilessly into high summer, never knowing what to do with our wardrobe or the lack of air-conditioning everywhere.
As such it’s a subject of great interest for many songwriters, artists, and poets alike…
Please enjoy the album in its entirety, written by one of my oldest and dearest friends.
A short note about the cover:
Looking back to 2014 when James released this album, I only just realise how fitting is the theme of spring. It was the first project that launched my career of nearly nine years as a designer and brand strategist. As far as I could tell I was *just* making a painting for a friend to put on an album, and I had no idea what seeds I was planting.
Enjoy the painting too, and may you plant seeds of many possibilities this spring season 🌾
2.
Very Early Spring — by Katherine Mansfield
From the Internet
Very Early Spring
The fields are snowbound no longer;
There are little blue lakes and flags of tenderest green.
The snow has been caught up into the sky –
So many white clouds – and the blue of the sky is cold.
Now the sun walks in the forest,
He touches the bows and stems with his golden fingers;
They shiver, and wake from slumber.
Over the barren branches he shakes his yellow curls.
Yet is the forest full of the sound of tears …
A wind dances over the fields.
Shrill and clear the sound of her waking laughter,
Yet the little blue lakes tremble
And the flags of tenderest green bend and quiver.
-- Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923)
I wonder how someone’s captured experience of early spring in 1900 resonates so deeply today, yet it was not the same spring. It was not the same sky, nor the same fields nor forests. And yet, here we are 100 years later sharing in the same human experience.
3.
Springtime in Paris, 2009 — a photo by 17 year old me
From the Archive
“You’re going to see springtime in Paris! That’s stupendous!”
— Colin Simpson
For a lot of my teenage years, I was living with a school friend and his family. I was graciously adopted into the home as if I had always been there and always will be. Colin was as much a father to me as my own, and he had a deep commitment to education in all its forms. He encouraged me to travel, to go to university, and to engage in the arts and culture in a way that I wouldn’t have thought was available to ‘someone like me’.
Going to Paris in 2009 on an art school trip was the first time I was to go abroad, with the exception of coming to the UK from the Philippines when I was 11. I was excited but also scared. I was trying not to show it, but it was pretty transparent.
Anyway, I wrote this quote down in my journal, because it was the first time I had heard anyone verbally say ‘stupendous’ in a sentence and mean it.
Springtime in Paris - it was rather stupendous.
Like the photos from Paris. Always looking to see photos from other parts of the world.
All so good, but I especially love #3. Thanks for sharing that!