Asha Quinn ~ Lydie

Asha Quinn (aka Asha Elijah, Asha & Asher Quinn) plays an improvised piano piece 'Lydie' from his album "Sketches of Innocence". CD/download here: www.ashaquinn.c...
This piece was originally on an album called "Art of Love" made in 1990, which just consisted of improvised piano sketches. Later, in 2005, along with another piano-ish album called "Single as Love", I amalgamated them into "Sketches of Innocence".
These were sketches or vignettes from holidays I took with my wife before our kids were born, principally to France & Crete, but also down to Santiago in Spain, where we found ourselves on that pilgrimage route without even realising it!
In the French villages down that western side of France, through the Loire and the Dordogne down to the Basque country, we saw many sweet children playing, kittens chasing, dogs barking, and festivals gathering everyone up in the village square for music, dance & revelry. We speculated that if we had a daughter we would call her Lydie, and a son might be Julien.
In the event, in 1994 & 1998, we had two sons, Theo & Isaac, so Lydie stayed unborn, in heaven.
Long before that, in 1969, I met my first girlfriend, Ursula, from Germany. It was a long-distance love, and I used to hitch over to her village, Wittingen on the East German border, or to her university town, Göttingen, or go on my Honda 50cc moped, or in my first car, a 3-wheeled, fibre-glass Reliant Robin, or by train. I was 17.
Going on a moped was quite something. I'm surprised now that my parents let me. It did a maximum 50 mph and I went full throttle all the way. I'd get the ferry to the Hook of Holland, and then motor the 300 miles or so across Holland & Germany. It was cold, sometimes snowy, or in the summer exhilarating. I felt like "Easy Rider"! I loved the towns, and the names; Delft, Apeldoorn & Deventer in Holland; Munster, Osnabruck & Hanover in Germany.
Then across the Luneburg Heath to Celle, and finally Wittingen. I'd see deer at night. Once, in my 3-wheeled car, a white pony ran out of the forest on the ice straight into me, breaking the fibre-glass. It was quite shocking and he was very dazed. Then, amazingly, his mother (a snow white mare) came out of the forest, picked him up by the neck with her teeth, and took him back. There was no blood.
Another time a white owl accompanied me for a few hundred metres. I found it magical, and always felt protected. Ursula had many brothers & sisters, and they had children. Her sister Renate had two little girls, Antje & Dodo.
Antje was 8 when I met her, and Dodo 2. I adored the girls. They'd blindfold me and lead me round their garden as their donkey. One time, Antje sat between Ursula & I on my moped, so she was in a sandwich! I'm amazed now that HER parents let her do that, but actually it was safe enough. Another time we took the girls in my 3-wheeled car round the villages, and the country-folk had never seen anything like it! There were many dropped jaws. Antje felt like a princess!
We'd all go skating on the frozen lake in winter.
They all went to the local Lutheran church, and sang the most incredibly beautiful Baroque choral sacred pieces by candlelight, at Christmas, Easter and all the festivals. Mama was always in the kitchen preparing big soups, and dinner was dark German bread, local cheese & sausage and beer (my first beer!) I loved it all.
Ursula & I introduced each other to many things of culture; music, art & film. Kandinsky, Hundertwasser, Fellini, Praetorius, Albinoni, D.H.Lawrence, Herman Hesse, Georges Moustaki, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens, Mike Oldfield...
I loved her university town where she studied literature. We'd listen to new music on the radio, and I dreamt of one day getting my songs on the radio, too. Well, that came to pass! In fact I was just on the radio this week again, in Hungary.
Ursula and I pulled apart romantically in the mid 1970's, but always stayed in touch. I once visited her in 1997 on the way to giving my first ever concert, in Copenhagen. Still to this day she sends me fabulous music that I've never heard before.
But the girls, Antje & Dodo, well, I hadn't seen them for 49 years until this year when Ursula sent me UA-cams of them with their children, singing choral music at Christmas in Berlin! It made me shed a tear because it was so beautiful, and because it was them. Antje, my little 3-wheeled princess, had become an earth mother with hundreds of beautiful children!
Today came an inspiration to make a film for this piano piece 'Lydie', an unborn daughter in heaven on the one hand, and the spirit of Antje on the other. Antje told Ursula the other day that she still feels connected to me somehow, 49 years later! Strange! I feel that, too.
Sometimes these things are karmic; they are eternal soul connections. Antje thought I had a daughter. Perhaps Antje was a daughter in a previous life.
The girl in the film looks like Antje used to look, to my mind.