In praise of FreeClarity’s The Ten Human Years of Preta Eshana
I
(AIMS)
At a time when the hand no longer knows what to treasure,
Nor the human mind to encounter the value and worth of the soul
A new story comes, shining fresh light through the kingdom
That for mankind has lain buried: and so a free clarity outlines
For those who are lost the heart’s goal.
Creative artist and Buddhist teacher, Stephen Givnan
Has written the tale of Preta Eshana, a female hungry spirit
Granted access to our world. In her timely passage, one day
Represents ten years of existence, through which she journeys,
Observing the sadness of woman and man, boy and girl.
In these cynical days, the story supports Givnan’s passion,
Along with his soul fed compassion, felt and evident on each page.
For his beautiful story allows an equivalent world of expression,
Among fellow writers, musicians and artists,
Setting down a template or bible for a burgeoning spirit age.
The project is Sheffield based with profits designed
To help the vulnerable of that city. As each act fills and feeds them,
They may seek comfort elsewhere than the drink
That has borne them away on dark streets’ submerged rivers,
Along which the drowning in bedding that road meet their brink.
And so the sweet spirit comes to observe and to soothe them;
Her path provides inspiration to the artists Givnan invites.
They become part of Free Clarity, as you might release the Djinn
From the bottle, in order to find your own tonic,
To refresh not the throat but fear’s night.
A limited edition vinyl will house the hopes and sounds of Eshana
And a hand woven volume will contain the stories and thoughts
Of the friends who grasp the hands of those lost to both despair
And addiction, as they capture reflections and echoes and create
The kind of art that defends.
II
(ALBUM AND BOOK)
In the prologue that Kate Brennan reads to this impassioned story,
Martin Snape’s cloud of synth gathers as the spirit of Preta Eshana
Descends,probing the light and the wayward glance of each mirror,
Preta questions perception as a guiding light seeks an end.
A peel of beats ruptures through as the world we know
Achieves focus; ambience and abstraction soon attain melody;
A signal call guiding her through the shape and form of a cosmos,
Down to earth’s darkness with its need for a star’s remedy.
In Year One Preta explores mankind’s dreams as Oscar Downing’s
Shrieking synths soar to claim her, and yet these shouts stretch the senses
To the point of enraptured despair and sleep’s calm.
As the imagined state relocates the troubled horde living nightmare,
The entrance of her presence will, like the music here, serve as balm.
Melissa Lynn’s art in the book is a beautiful Lynchian landscape
In which sister spirits align against dark to shine bright.
These small sibings heal under a scrape of cloud and sharp moonglow,
To represent bodies like Preta forming themselves, to seal night.
In Year Two Preta wakes and takes on the demands of the morning.
As the human receives obligation, so Preta’s awareness gathers.
Gyu’s accompanying music finds form with ambient guitar resonating
And percussive shimmer that sets thoughts in motion and images
Of doors, opening. A flurry of electronic notes like a bird cloud duly rises,
As intoxication of spirit lends uplift even with the pressures of day closing in.
Edna Cantoral’s Silicone Acrylic form shows man in distortion,
Bearing under the labour of a representative shard of wood.
Mankind’s fragile fabric presents this mottled figure,
As concision of sound and image supports the progress
And path towards good.
Preta’s spiritual self, in Year Three, leads her to the poor
And the desperate. She attaches herself to a young man,
Reminding her of her son. Through her presence he learns
That the fear of the ruling hand shapes his shadow.
In allowing his darkness there is no grace or grain to be won.
Jowy Maasdamme’s digital pencil art soon enchants
As a face houses spirit and the soundtrack music suitably
Captivates. A folkish guitar sets the tale for Ray Hearne’s
Money ballad, as representative of the evil across which
Each day breaks. Exploitation reigns in Year Four
As Preta Eshana grows tarnished. In living among us man’s anger
Stains from dark cloud, easily. These she disperses to fight
Against the prevailing forces that tame us as Frances Rowles’
Wooden puppet Tianamen Squares up to a tank.
Hands poised in prayer, the firing gun blasphemes at her,
The obscenity of the image as starting here as old news,
Raul Maduro’s soundscape is scratched with birds
As skies glisten, and a guitar refrain resounds, singing
Across a handful of notes, wordless blues. Soon so many colours
Align within this sacred project. Soul itself seeks dimension
And finds it at once with each mark. Preta Eshana becomes
Through each sign, song and story the means for all progress
To establish itself on God’s chart. After the Flood’s string sparked
Song ushers in the fifth year and stage of the journey;
Luke Durkie’s cartooned image of a tower torn apart sets the scene.
Preta’s anger takes shape, as a physical need forms from challenge,
But those surrounding her are not subject to the spectre she shapes:
We’re obscene. Unused to the pure, despondency grows within her,
With invisibility once more claiming our hopelessness becomes hers.
After the Flood’s music enchants, capturing disillusion and sadness,
As the theme builds and motors it is driving her through our curse.
And yet there is a rallying cry to be heard in the motion; a resolve
Slowly forming just as enlightenment itself attains dawn.
In Year Six she walks across land and oceans. Examining us in all classes
So that society’s school can be warned. Earthly comforts do not still
The discontent raging in us. Max Charles’ digital collage shows bright cities
And the sheen like mask that seals gaze. Humans turned on themselves
And turned in too, each soul folded, immune to the message
Sent from the murdered heart or old page. We need not be as we are.
There is still so much to accomplish. But only if we lift the visors
And blinkers too, to see all. Tom Collister’s metronomic string
And strike shows how fast time is running. Preta Eshana is moving
To the sound of a long submerged call. One that would see us all rise
As the splinters of tune achieve status. One that Preta Eshana is stirring
In the passing airs, miles and sky. As yet we can’t see, but this is what
This story wakens: the long neglected but sacred, the continual need
To ask why. Juliet Ellis’ photograph of a New York Cemetary,
With its angels turned to the skyline in a fading grey manifests
What Year Seven contains, the realisation that man only seeks
To be happy and that while the trapped suffer, they nevertheless
Seeks the blessed. This restores Preta’s grace, marred as she was
By the human and the renewed vigour features in Snappertronics’
Beat storm; as the bass skitters through and distorted horn features,
The voice of John Cage exhorts us to see the excellent day attain form.
Hope stakes its claim at the precise point of wreckage and the motion
Implied by the photo shows that even in death there is scope.
As one looks at this book and listens to the album, the reader stroke pilgrim
Is edging their way towards hope. Neil Campbell’s ruminative guitar song
In Year Eight complements Preta’s mission. She sees that a new story
Is needed to map out a path to free men. For mankind is not, and has never
Been kind to each other, as those of all types, creeds and genders
Have neglected to remain heaven sent. Henja Kerkoff’s line drawing
The Touch represents this need for connection. The warmth of Campbell’s
Song shows that shelter remains in our province if could just see and care.
Everything remains possible, as Eshana’s guiding spirit now guides us,
Influencing discreetly, as if turning an invisible wheel in the air.
In Year Nine she is clear on what is required. Offered the chance to stay
She refuses as mankind’s lesson is clear. Even mankind sees it too,
Freedom and Clarity have been outlined. But in our own refusal
To assume that new shape Hell stays near. Eshana opts to return
To the Spirit realm that has birthed her, in order to assist the starred
Essence of life itself in its tasks. Asa Bennett’s soul smeared prayer assists
Elevation. ‘If I should plant a tiny seed of love in the garden of your heart’
Is the line that like Bryar’s Jesus Blood breaks emotion into a hopeful hand
Of dried stars. A host of new planets arise as the strings bear us skyward,
As possible as new flowers breaking through ruined earth or held snow.
Mark Golding’s Acrylic chart diagrams her ascension.
It is also a portal stared at from below. An attractive escape,
Or spiritual sketch for the Sci-Fi, leading Preta Eshana
In congress with the beatific space we can’t know.
It is then that we see just what has been accomplished
As in Year Ten Eshana as spirit rightfully housed spreads her worth.
She plants these new seeds, implied and heard in this album
Of soul, souls and conscience contained within heart and hearth.
Displayed on each page and in the stories that follow,
We have seen how the journey of knowledge and truth becomes
Law. On the book’s final page there is a collaboration of spirit,
As Fran Green’s sky fused tower sisters the lilac tree’s sweet allure.
Two separate worlds become one thanks to a sacred day with Eshana
The one in ten gambit that in playing its hand finds the pure.
The accomplishment stuns under the gentle Givnan’s vision.
His Liverpool tones show all cities and all realms are ours, far and wide.
We need not separate. We need not to succumb to the ruin.
We can ascend and deliver. Everything still grows inside.
III
(OTHERS STORIES)
The project completes with the writer’s stories.
Each writer accomplished, From wavelength to page
And from screen. Some are recollections, some tales,
From sweet parables, to reflection.
The Playwright Esther Wilson’s sweet spirit,
Arti Prashar’s ruminations around a grave’s green.
Bobi Treglown’s report of Preta Eshana’s final transmission,
Tim Holmes’ beautifully resonant poem of man’s plight and struggles
As witnessed first and second hand by our guide.
Each are extensions of mind, As if Givnan had sown his own seeds
Of being for both these and new writers
To freshly populate a gold time.
Such as Tommy Calderbank’s tender tale citing a butterfly’s broken
Freedom, and thus hope, is a proxy for the imprisoned flame in us all.
David Edwards espouses Year Eight in a near Manifesto,
Charting the ways in which stories can clearly emulate new truth’s call.
Bob Banks responds to the quest that Eshana’s founding spirit has granted
As Kate Brennan details the affecting bonds with her life.
Matthew Bain’s poem assumes Preta’s intense form of struggle,
Within this compassion and signal stroke, she is wife.
As all Angels are, either to God or the Human. Be they male
Or female. Love’s companionship still resounds.
Asa Bennett documises her song, in fact and proceedure
As Luda Kadampa re-examines the journey,
As if essaying the profound.
Lucy Hopkins ‘glowbugs’ lecturing us on our learning
While Givan’s poem prologue reflects man’s mirror straight back,
The poet Lemn Sissay concludes, urging us to be
‘Light on the shadow’
This is how we Eshana.
And this is how love attacks.
Not with a wound,
But with a truth.
Read, attend, listen.
The lesson is teaching
How the colours of the heart
Retune black.
David Erdos 28th October 2019
Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot, Röslein auf
Comment by Medaillen on 19 November, 2019 at 1:58 amder Heiden.