Margaret Maria Music

The most powerful force in my creative journey so far was my deep connection to the art and life force of my dear friend, the great Spanish Surrealist painter and sculptor, Ángel Muriel (the Archangel of Empaths) and such an intense connection of worlds! He was so generous in spirit and creative inspiration!! He gave his love and art to me freely…to use as I wished…he trusted my world and my music so deeply!!! He is not living in human form any longer, but his spirit is so strong…it is now within me…making me more powerful…

The Dying Angel's Lament

I wrote this music the day after my dear Ángel passed through...it was to be prophetic.  Everything about Ángel and Margaret Maria was divine love that has existed before our sprits met here on earth, and we found each other through our art.  

 Our 7 'Art in Divine Harmony' videos celebrate the inexplicable oneness of our worlds. 

Art In Divine Harmony

Today, his Goddess Euterpe is desolate and mourning…and it feels unbearable to know my friend is gone… 

But as the greatest artists we know, he left his heart, soul, spirit and absolute fucking genius in every tiny detail and brush stroke that is his brilliant and extraordinary art. I think he knew I would take in some of him as he passed through…he knew I could and would as his divine twin…so I will write our story and document our love and our divine ‘Art in Divine Harmony’ journey… 

And I will also watch into the future, as his paintings will sell for millions…as I remember how he struggled in his life to make ends meet…and how hard it was for him to sell his art so our project could come to full fruition!! And for every million of non-creative energy exchanged as he is applauded in death, I will remember the fire and the crucible that was his life’s suffering for his art and his vision…amd I will never forget how in the last years of his life, instead of painting and working on his art, he worked in a restaurant (and I knew it would kill his soul to wake up every day, not to his art, but to work that killed his heart…or maybe broke it first!!!)…and it will make me stronger… 

The Three of Diamonds forever a symbol of our deep devotion and love and artistry that holds no bounds and is limitless… 

My twin spirit has never really left me… 

So I don’t say goodbye…I get used to having a part of him with me always… 

#Ángelmuriel #ángelgonzalesmuriel #surrealism #Spanishpainter #artindivineharmony #margaretmaria #divinetwin #twinsouls #art #artist #artistslife #surrealism #surrealistart #surrealism #spanishartist #musicandart #musicvideo #Composer #music #cello #cellist #Almagro #caceres

Shame On An Angel (link to YouTube)

The Goddess of edges has fallen into a conundrum. Her existence is a paradox and she feels taunted by the fates that allowed her to feel like this creature…entangling itself in ropes…dropping itself into a chicken coop during a storm…grounded. Whether they are mundane or magical can’t be discerned. What grounded them? Could they have prevented their predicament? Impeded by its enormous wings, on display and made to feel like a circus animal, the creature is poked and prodded, its shame deepening, tears spring to its eyes as the Angel is burnt to see if it is still alive. Waiting…waiting…waiting for its wings to regrow and gain the strength to fly again.

This music is inspired by the exquisite sculpture/installation made by Paul Fryer Studio called Morning Star 2008 and by the story: ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which inspired both the sculpture and the composer. Shame produces an implosion of the body: head lowered, eyes closed or hidden, and the upper body curved in on itself as if trying to be as small as possible (the bodily acting out of the wish to disappear).

The short story of Marquez does not provide a reason for the fall of the Angel. It is the composer who has extrapolated the predicament to create a reason that parallels that of the Goddess of Edges. Composer, cellist, producer, percussion (egg beater, milk frother, chop sticks, take out container, music stand, cello rib, spatula)- Margaret Maria

To see images of the sculpture/installation, please visit: www.paulfryer.net Instagram: paulfryerstudio

Loves Loving Love

‘The Goddess of Edges shows her heart and feels the tenderness of her lover gently caressing her face and letting her soar…her heart is singing, her spirit is dancing…she is speechless…how beautiful is this world of love…pure light is shining from within her.’ - M 

There is music constantly running through me.  I’m like an energy stash that stores up emotions and transforms them into music…and when I’m not in this process, I feel like something is wrong…like the wind goes out of my sails and I am rudderless.  So I create the energy I need to feel alive…the power of the love I need to feel…to recover, to heal and to breathe love into every note I make. 

Love is the only way I can survive…to be love…love in action…a day without love is a day wasted…a world without love is a world living inside darkness… 

I am sure now that love is our source…it is our life’s purpose and challenge and reason for being… 

To be curious and  brave, to find love in every tiny gesture, around every corner, within our deepest being, in every  moment, in every word we say and in every action we take… 

If the world were to truly love, the goddesses would rejoice…the world would heal…the secret of life would be revealed in its most divine… 

‘The artist recoils in pain and raises himself in defiance…knowing he deserves love and yet denies it to himself. He grasps to protect the innocence that is love…the innocence at the heart of life…rising to fight for that innocence…against all odds he is willing to sacrifice even himself…’ - Listen 3 - M.

The Goddesses rage against the so called god, who has made himself the arbitrator of humanity.  Killing at will, careless in his indiscriminate abuse of power over the helpless. The god who chooses suffering and evil over kindness and compassion, is not my god. This is not the god that I accept nor the creator of this world that I can live with. Everything in me rejects our existence…that such vile energy exists and was put on this earth.  The suffering of the artist depicted in such anguish and pain…through timeless space…it is too much to bear. 

Born in another time, I would have surely been burned at the stake. It doesn’t escape me now, that I live a very fortunate existence…in a peaceful country…shielded from most direct hits of earth’s horrors. Yet, I travel so fast through space and time…sometimes aimlessly shooting my energy out into the world where it is not being welcomed or received… 

Yet to stop, if I stop creating energy, the energy vital for my music to be found and born, then I feel absolutely helpless and devoid of purpose and that’s even more painful to sit in that discomfort. 

Which discomfort should I choose today? I choose the discomfort of burning…feeling the burning eyes and minds of pious humans…burning right through me…and of this god…who has placed burning inside me and inside those I love…those who can’t reciprocate because they are too afraid, or too hurt, or too confused…who’s bravery and voice has been taken away and their love hidden so far away…their energy withdrawing from my sphere… 

Here is all that misplaced energy…from my discomfort… 

Not sure you can enjoy this…it is not to enjoy…it is to experience and revel in the power of my energy… 

Burn Her…She Burns… 

‘Find what you love and let it kill you.’ - Charles Bukowski.

(I busted my bow in the production of this track 😞...but luckily it is able to be fixed and I will use my carbon fibre bow for the more violent articulations in the future!! Thank you to the SoundPost for helping me out with a loaner and David T. for the repair!)

I fight my trajectory every step of the way. I know what has to happen but I don’t want to go there, and yet there lies the most power I have in my body. 

To create in a state of receptivity to all my worlds colliding or aligning, all my feelings raw and exposed, I need to be unmistakably, abysmally, achingly, utterly bereft of help or solace or belonging to this world…taken over by the spirit world where my music exists and I just need to bring it inside me, towards me, welcome it with open arms and heart, with complete unadulterated bravery…with courage I can’t muster here on earth, but harnessing the courage and fear of the bravest souls who fight fear in their moments of truth…knowing that we are transient and made of stardust and we will return to dust soon enough. To find my music, I must dissolve into dust to become one with it…one with the star…and float in that agape uncertainty, which eventually turns into certainty but only as music…the music that I can float inside of and it saves me…one tiny note at a time, it saves me to create my future music…until my journey here is done. 

The Goddess of Edges lives between things…in a place of great energy and friction…she is liminal and achingly beautiful and transcendent in her balancing of the heavens and the earth.  She exists within me as I write this and as I search for this next music…she can bear the tension of paradox and the states of being that hover between particle and wave…seamlessly moving between the two. She is everywhere and she feels everything…she is this music…she and I are one.

As I sit here in Toronto looking out my window at my slice of peace, my mind and soul is hovering over the war in the Ukraine and the millions of people affected by tyranny and the mental illness of an individual who places no value on human life.  All of me is screaming at the injustice.  

None of us will get out of this life's journey alive...but surely if we know better, we must strive for that in every breath we breathe, in every decision we make. War must stop, selfishness on such a global scale must be thwarted.  I can only make this music...a symbol of good over evil...of the fight of everyday citizens of the Ukraine, arming themselves and fighting for their sovereignty.   

My music is a way of fighting...stop the war and find a way to limit the deaths and upheaval of hundreds of thousands of refugees who are fleeing.  This is unconscionable...every war is...all violence towards another fellow human being is... 

This music started out as this poem...after watching Russia invade the democratic Ukraine 5 days ago...and finished as a call for a miracle and honouring the bravery of the citizens who are staying to fight as the bombs keep falling. 

“I No Longer Pray For Peace” 

On the edge of war, one foot already in, 

I no longer pray for peace: 
I pray for miracles. 

I pray that stone hearts will turn 
to tenderheartedness, 
and evil intentions will turn 
to mercifulness, 
and all the soldiers already deployed 
will be snatched out of harm’s way, 
and the whole world will be 
astounded onto its knees. 

I pray that all the “God talk” 
will take bones, 
and stand up and shed 
its cloak of faithlessness, 
and walk again in its powerful truth. 

I pray that the whole world might 
sit down together and share 
its bread and its wine. 

Some say there is no hope, 
but then I’ve always applauded the holy fools 
who never seem to give up on 
the scandalousness of our faith: 
that we are loved by God…… 
that we can truly love one another. 

I no longer pray for peace: 
I pray for miracles. 

Poem by Ann Weems

My new album is about to be released and my own heart is in crisis.  This music has kept me company when my emotions were too overpowering to control.  I am so sad for the loss of something very special in my life and I don't know how to reconcile anything.  Life is just so unpredictable.  My great love has disappeared and I am searching.  I need this music now more than ever.  Maybe it will help those who hear it just as much as it is keeping the storm of life at bay from an undertow.  

About my new album: Feeling helpless limitation in my human form is a recurring theme throughout my life. But nothing has felt more helpless than the pandemic that paused 2020 around the globe with the fear of great loss of life in the world and close to home, followed by my own health issues and subsequent Covid near death experience that my sister had endured this year.  How we cope with being spirits in such an imperfect human world, how we bond, how we express, how we continue to remain strong, is a testament to who we are.  Expressing emotions and connecting with love and care to the world around us is all we really have in the end. We can’t hold onto anything or anyone, and it’s even more apparent when we are ill or gravely suffering.  This music is born of this helplessness in the hope that it can be helpful to others…it can offer some healing, some understanding, some comfort, some strength when we feel weak or when words fail us.

Words are failing me now...for now I will be quiet and let my music speak for me...for now...M.

Photo: Andy Wright Photography 

Stopping to think and reassess is where I'm at right now.  Nothing like a global pandemic to make us stop in our tracks as artists, to hear what needs to be said and expressed. So much music has run through me and into the world in the last 7 years since I quit my main job as cellist with the National Arts Centre Orchestra.  11 studio albums later, 3 licensing albums, my first world premiere for full orchestra, becoming a Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre, I am wondering where to turn next.  BTW, I never in my life imagined I would be a composer and in this place in my life (I just didn't know any of this music existed until it started opening up for me in my early 40's) Hence, this new website and the generous guidance of Steve Waxman, who brings to me a perspective that is opposite of where I came from.  What is my music?  What am I trying to say?  Where is my path leading to and why do I get lost sometimes? All of this to say, this crossroads is now a place to dream of what my music of the future will be.  

Check out my new website on Banzoogle...as it takes shape and expresses all the aspects of me and my music.