In Memoriam Harold Budd (May 24th 1936 – December 8th 2020)
Suddenly, the Budd is blown by harsh winds
And by the sound souls still search for. As Harold leaves,
His sense rises into the expectant night and far sky.
Colour cries, carved by his keys and by the air
He engendered, for as dreams parade, and his pavilions
Are walked on once more, The Pearl dries.
But still it catches the light, as music’s Mirrorball
Reconfigures, with a shimmer of strings and piano
That emboldens the room to remain
Both in this part perceived realm and in the unknown
Land of his music, where cities glaze while abandoned
And a song serpent savours the wound his bloom seals
To stall pain. At times of opposition or stress,
I look to Budd’s Ice Floes in Eden. I hear his Gypsy Violin’s
Searing murmur, as his storm of sound gathers pace.
His is the soundtrack within as the blood and skin
Rise translated. His music glides with star fusion,
Just as a distant craft must through space.
Harold Budd seeded stars in his minor keys
And suspensions. A Sculptor at work around silence
He also threaded a shape through air’s loom.
As with the Enos and Gavin Bryars, he soothes
Through sowing sound sprung dark flowers.
He was a cartographer clearly, charting a scented path
Through lost rooms. There was no surrender to time
In Budd’s world, there was instead, a mastery of it.
He found the correct key for dreaming and the tempo
To ease or prise fear from the fallen fruit of the flesh,
Through the name stung strength of a flower;
Part of the earth and air moving through it, he grew
Through soft spells cast for ears. I play Budd’s
White Arcades and Coyote all day, whenever I wish
To communicate beyond language.
I walk through the halls and rooms he has fashioned
And will fashion again as he’s heard above the rush
Of the real. For his was a period parlour.
In either By The Dawn’s Early Light’s haunted western,
Or some wind blown, cold stone boudoir, where his
Sweetened music is tasted and where sound is something else
Each hand feels. And so, the ambient Artist ascends,
On account of this earthly static. Harold Montgomery Budd,
Now stars listen to your melodies made for moons.
Your shade stays sustained even as you are rearranged
Now beyond us. The cost demands the flower folds.
In such music, and in this sad refrain
You’re retuned.
David Erdos, December 10th 2020
Illustration: Claire Palmer