A Song For Albertville

As perhaps a final salute to our time in France, I made a rough recording of a song I wrote to try and capture something of our little alpine town.  There are obvious images which, for those of us who lived there, recall various everyday sights and sounds, and for those who haven't, hopefully share something of the world around us, like a little musical scrapbook.

Beyond that, the song is trying to describe something of the ambiguity of "post-Christian" Europe.  Beautiful scenery, walking to the bakeries, narrow streets.  On the other hand, things that are just a bit off, maybe more than a bit tragic:  Empty churches, war memorials that bespeak of not-too-distant loss. And yet, even there, where perhaps the masses have decided to abandon God, his grace falls like the rain, and his goodness abounds.  It's a mixed goodness, like all that we would experience on this Earth, but, in the words of Buechner: "What's lost is nothing to what's found.  And all the death that ever was, if you set it next to life, would barely fill a cup."  

It's a fact to be learned anywhere in this wide world.

(sorry, the web music player I was using is not working currently.  So, the only way to listen is to follow the link and download.  I swear it's a clean file, having placed it there myself.  Web gurus: feel free to suggest a solution to this problem.)

Albertville

(download)

In the autumn, we'll go walking

all through this valley town

Across the railroads, and down to the river

where the alpine peaks look down

And when we turn into a narrow passage

where the wind is brisker

and it scatters all the leaves and all the halves of chestnut shells

up above, under the eaves, where the sun in shining

all the ivy's afire with the red and bronze

that's ringing like a bell

And the bell's ringing on the hillside

at the church of Conflan's tower

though there's never anyone on the inside

and it always rings eight minutes past the hour

though there's much in what's been lost

it's as yet nothing to what's found

there's beauty and there's tragedy

like there is sky and ground

and this is where we live

where the alpine peaks look down

When the fall passes to winter

the snow will hike the downward trail

from the rocky peak of Belle Etoile

to every hollow of the vale

and our boots will trudge the unplowed walk

four times a day to the school

to take our kids across the street into the warmth of the bakery

coming home, they're running in the snow

as we pass by a pillar

topped with a stone eagle with its eyes full of bravery

it's the monument with all the names there

of all the sons of the town

felled amidst the two world wars all those years ago

that their memories would go on

----

When the peaks are green again

then it won't be very long

until it's our turn at the station

for the train to take us on

We'll have glanced up against the story

the mark is small, but indelibly made

and that's fine, for the story's held by ancient hands

they work mysteries, but never have they strayed