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Chimney
Mountain Studio
Music |
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Late afternoon was always my father’s favorite time of day to sit on the deck and look up at Chimney Mountain. In the company of creek sounds and a light breeze, he would contemplate the mountain for hours, breathing it in like air, savoring every detail. He found it fascinating to watch the incoming weather systems lift over the Chimney Mountain ridge, majestic cloud formations billowing up from behind the mountain and casting shifting patterns of shadows across the slopes below. He said it restored his soul. During a beautiful fall, as his health rapidly declined, I longed to take him back to see Chimney Mountain one final time, but it wasn’t possible. That’s when, on sheer impulse, I bought a Native American wooden flute to play for him, hoping he would enjoy the simple, pure sound of “a little walnut stick with some holes cut in it”. As I began improvising, my father watched me so intently that I figured he either liked it or thought I was nuts. Either way there was nothing to lose, so I continued experimenting, trying to convey feeling impressions of the mountains and nature that might resonate with him. I would ask, for instance, “Does this sound like the wind at night?” With unfailing humor, he would laugh and say something like, “Well, I don’t know about all that, but it’s a mighty fine bunch of notes.” It was more than enough to keep me going. The time came when it was difficult for him to speak, and simple silence often took the place of conversation. So I was quite startled on the occasion when, as I was sitting beside his bed playing for him, he made a deliberate effort to lift his head and stretch out his hand toward me and the flute. “You should do something with that,” he said softly. I resolved that I would. The songs of this album have their roots in those first improvisations for my father. I offer them in honor of him and the mountain land he loved, and with hope that you, too, will find them “a mighty fine bunch of notes”.
-- Mary Raymer |
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Click highlighted song titles to hear song samples CD is $15. Scroll down for ordering details. Mary Fortson Raymer is a Georgia native who infuses her music and art with a deep love of nature and the north Georgia mountain landscape. She holds degrees in both music and art from the University of Georgia and taught piano in Athens for many years. She now resides in the mountain town of Dahlonega, where she is pursuing both painting and composition for the wooden flute.
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