Carpet of the Sun

by Phantomimic All rights reserved RAGG

Let me tell you a story about a father, his daughter, and their music. My story begins way before my daughter was born, in fact it begins with a moment I had with my own father. One day when I came back from a grueling day in high school I decided to get my spirits up with some rock and roll. I started blasting from the stereo Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" and woke up my father who had come early from work and was taking a nap. He came out to the living room just as Robert Plant had finished his introductory screaming and had gone on to sing "I come from the land of the ice and snow..." My father angrily asked me to turn that "thing" down. I said I was sorry and obliged but then he just stood there looking at me like if I were some sort of devil spawn. I asked, "What?" My father replied with a question of his own, "Do you really like this shit or are you just being a snob?" This was the first outright criticism of my music that he ever uttered. I guess my father was asking himself, "Where did I go wrong?" He grew up in a society that danced with elegance to the rhythms of Caribbean music and where young people got together to read and recite poetry. He was, of course, also exposed to the music coming from the United States but it was the likes of Glen Miller, Fran Sinatra, Doris Day and so forth. He also knew that the younger generations often clashed with the older ones. My father

had himself had many disagreements with his parents. But there had never been the deep cultural divide that grew between him and me, and that was so evident when it came to music. I grew up too in Latin America. I spoke Spanish, and I was exposed to the local songs and appreciated many of them. I could also hold my own if the need arose to dance to their beat. However, the "zeitgeist" of my time was rebellion and there was no better way to rebel than by embracing a music genre that seemed to be so alien to the generation of my parents. Of course, our great neighbor to the "North", which has always had a great influence in the popular culture of our nations, dutifully supplied us with a steady stream of hits by bands that one-upped each other to see who was more bizarre or outrageous. If you add to this that I spent many years in American and British schools you can see how I developed a fondness for Rock n' Roll. However, when it came to Rock and Roll, I was not a snob. This music nurtured and supported me through the growing pains of my teen years and beyond. When a lady would deny me her love (and this happened with an alarming frequency) I would play Simon & Garfunkel's "I am a Rock" or America's "Lonely People". After some fights with my father I would play Cat Steven's "Father and Son". When I was flooring the accelerator of my old Dodge Dart down the highway I would blast Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" or Deep Purple's "Highway Star" from the tape player. I lost part of my hearing frenetically dancing at parties and at rock concerts that included the likes of Van Halen, Queen, and Peter Frampton (it was a big thing then to hear ringing in your ears the day after). I went to the first screenings of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and The Who's "Tommy". I surfed the waves of the

Rock, Punk, Disco and New Wave genres as they washed over the Latin American cultural landscape. All this music was woven into the very fabric of my identity, and was there to accompany me on many of my life's most special moments. One such special moment occurred once when I was driving with some friends along a mountain road. It was a picture perfect day with a blue sky and cool weather. We were traveling next to a sizeable river with many small waterfalls, bordered by small fields of crops that followed the contours of rock cliffs that towered to the sky. We had the windows open and we were all singing to the music blasting from the car's tape recorder. It was then that this beautiful song started playing. My friends started singing along with it but I had never heard it before. It was from an obscure (to me) British Progressive Rock band called Renaissance that blended rock with classical music. The song was called "Carpet of the Sun". It is really difficult to describe the effect this "moment" had on me. The song was an anthem to living, to the sun, to nature, to the circle of life, and to everything that is beautiful, good, and wonderful in this world. Here are the lyrics: Come along with me Down into the world of seeing Come and you'll be free Take the time to find the feeling See everything on it's own And you'll find you know the way

And you'll know the things you're shown Owe everything to the day (Chorus) See the carpet of the sun The green grass soft and sweet Sands upon the shores of time Of oceans mountains deep Part of the world that you live in You are the part that you're giving Come into the day Feel the sunshine warmth around you Sounds from far away Music of the love that found you The seed that you plant today Tomorrow will be a tree And living goes on this way It's all part of you and me (Chorus) And it was not just the words and how well they fit the moment and the setting; it was the music, and the voice. The lead singer of Renaissance, Annie Haslam, has a five octave vocal range. When she hit the chorus of Carpet of the Sun it was like a rocket taking off, and it was very difficult to follow her. Needless to say that I taped all the Renaissance records my

friends had and I memorized the lyrics of this particular song. But, to quote a line from John Mellencamp's song "Jack & Diane": "...life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone." The years came and went, high school led to college, and from college I went off to the "North" to pursue a post-graduate education in a field of science. I got married to a wonderful woman who seems to have an endless supply of patience to deal with me. I tried going back South but that didn't work so I returned and stayed here in the U.S. It was in the interim of this back and forth that our daughter was born, and from the first day of her life I sang to her when it was time to go to sleep. Since my first language is Spanish I sang to her many of the songs that my grandmother sang to my mother, and that my mother sang to me. These songs from Spain and Latin America are simple melodious happy children's songs abundant in rhymes and often short on meaning, some of them a century old or more. But what happens when you exhaust your repertoire and the kid is still not asleep? I am the sort of dad that thrives on originality; I cannot repeat the same song twice. So when this situation arose I would switch to my second language; English. However, not having grown up in an English-speaking culture I did not know any such songs in this language. So what did I do? I would sing rock and roll songs to my daughter, and I would start with the Beatles, at their very beginning of their career. Yes, there I was walking up and down the hallway of our house at 3 AM cradling our little bundle of joy with my arms, casting shadows from the

faint glow of a night light, and softly singing "love, love me do, you know I love you..." Other songs from the Fab Four would then follow "Eight Days a Week", "Yesterday", "From Me to You" and so forth. When I exhausted the Beatle songs I knew, I would continue with songs like Neil Diamond's "Song Sung Blue" or John Denver's "Annie's Song". By then my little girl was asleep and I would quietly go back to our bedroom and deposit her on her crib. But sometimes I needed one more song to do the trick, and I would sing the song that I always left for last, "Carpet of the Sun". And when I sang this song I felt I was extending an invitation to her to live and grow and revel in the delights this beautiful world has to offer with the assurance that I would be standing next to her guiding and protecting, at least until she could fly on her own. "Come along with me..." As she grew older, other activities such as reading gained a greater time share of the nighttime going-to-sleep bedtime ritual although still there was always a song at the end and most of the time I was the designated performing parent. The difference was that I did not select the song anymore, she learned to make requests, and sometimes I felt like an old rock star pleasing his fans. However, the years passed and the reading and the singing became sporadic and then ceased altogether. The world also moved on. Records and cassette tapes were replaced by CDs, and videos by DVDs. Cell phones, iPods and digital cameras made their appearance. The internet came along and changed and is still changing the face of humanity. The music of my youth was

displaced by Rap and Hip-Hop in the hearts of young people, and is now only played in a declining number of "Classic Rock" stations. Many of the former rock stars of yore are still around making their beautiful music but most of them look like my grandparents used to look. Once my wife and I demonstrated some dancing to our daughter and she referred to what we were doing as "Retro". The cutting-edge music I loved and danced to now seems quaint, and apparently has been archived and cataloged much in the same way as an artifact awaiting its placement in a museum. So I started to mentally prepare myself for what I knew was coming. I thought it was a matter of time before we came full circle; history repeating itself. I believed the day would come when I would be taking a nap and my daughter would wake me up blasting some unintelligible "gansta rap" song from her CD player and I would angrily ask her to lower the volume, and then inquire, like my father had done many years ago, "Do you really like this shit or are you just being a snob?" But then a miracle happened. My daughter still liked my music! I would buy CDs for myself and my daughter would listen to them and ask if I could get more. I obtained several "Greatest Hits" collections for her from bands like The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Eagles, Led Zeppelin and Queen. When I discovered iTunes I would download music for her, sometimes 3 or 4 songs a week, and they would go straight to her iPod to be played over and over. That is the way she discovered Styx, Starcastle, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, The Ramones, The Troggs, Uriah Heep and many others. When she was old

enough she bought CDs by herself too, Cat Stevens, Journey, Elton John and more. When we ride in the car she listens to the "Classic Rock" station and her most often asked question is, "Who sings that?" This then leads to more musical discoveries like Boston, The Alan Parsons Project and Crosby, Nash, Stills and Young among others. In her Facebook page she lists The Steve Miller Band, Meatloaf and other such artists as her favorites. My music seems to be an endless treasure trove that does not seem to exhaust her interest. In high school she banded together with a group of like-minded friends who also like their parent's music and who never get tired of requesting at parties "Classic Rock" songs from Rap/Hip Hop DJs who regard them with bewildered eyes. Sometimes in a class an old teacher will make a joke involving an ancient musical reference and she is the only one who gets it and laughs. But this is not to say my daughter lives in the past, she also likes modern bands that I have never heard off like, Puddle of Mud, Basshunter, Pearl Jam and Daft Punk, but their music is a music I can relate to. No matter how modern, at its heart is still is good old Rock and Roll. I have asked her why she likes my music and she just replies that she doesn't know. Maybe she has not found the need to rebel against anything that we (her parents) represent. Or maybe it was the fact that I sang my songs to her while she was a child and that is why she likes them now as a young adult. Either way I am fortunate that there is this particular aspect of our culture that both of us can appreciate and share.

I will end this story by telling you about another one of those special life moments. Last year my wife and I received a call from our daughter. She had stayed late at school working on a project but a friend of hers had asked her if she could go with her to a concert. Our daughter wanted to ask permission to go with her. It turns out the father of her friend had bought tickets for the whole family to go but at the last moment the sister of my daughter's friend could not make it, so there was room for one more. I asked what band it was and my daughter replied, "Renaissance." I went silent for a few seconds. My daughter said, "Dad?" I belted out, "Annie Haslan Renaissance? Carpet of the Sun Renaissance?" She said, "Yes." And so it was that my daughter got to see Renaissance play live. Annie Haslan and her group performed some of the old time favorites, delighting the mostly older audience (my daughter and her friend were the only teenagers in the premises). And then after the fifth song or so when Annie sang "Carpet of the Sun", my daughter cried. "What's wrong?" asked her friend. She replied, "My dad sang this song to me when I was little before I went to sleep".

The day will come when, if not death, at least fatigue, arthritis, carpal tunnel or vocal nodules will have silenced the last performing musicians of my generation. The day will come when my music will mostly fade from the public consciousness into the realm of collectors, historians, and cognoscenti. But I have the hope that my daughter will sing her songs to her kids as I sang mine to her, and that at least within my family we will all continue to share OUR music. "And living goes on this way, it's all part of you and me..."

The photograph of Northern Maryland from Sideling Hill facing east was taken by Phantomimic. The quoting of the lyrics of "Carpet of the Sun" in this article is covered under the United States Copyright Law of Fair Use (Title 17 of the United States Code, Section 107). If you want to see a video of Renaissance performing "Carpet of the Sun" go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtSQFewjDD0

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