Beyond The Sunset

FTLComm - Tisdale - Friday, July 6, 2001

In another life as a choir boy who sang for weddings and funerals the symbolic phrase of the old song seemed to refer to life after death "Beyond the sunset, oh blissful morning, when with my Savour Heaven is begun." Its funny how those words and ideas, so much a part of ones speech and song had other meaning than when I look back on them from the perspective of today. The trite cute phrase of the past takes on a new meaning and sometimes seems even more trite and more "cute". The blasted cloud yesterday

afternoon, shredded by high upper winds, the glow in the East last evening as the sunset progressed and the bloom of light in the South, all of these tell of big events, not symbols, or analogies, but real tangible occurrences that in some ways are as momentous, or even more momentous than the images the lyricist was eluding to in his attempts to get that catchy phrase for his tune. Art of any kind is a frail attempt to develop a link with a greater reality, often it is feeble and sometimes profound.

Thursday did not fade or die quickly, but lingered with its very best moments in its very last glimmers of light that washed the Western sky. A trunk of solid red light driving through a plate of slate cloud to illuminate wisps of water vapour and all of that glory done just for me to see and photograph for you, pretty cool stuff, when you think, beyond the sunset.