The Cover

I've just recently been finishing up the design work for the entire packaging of this Night Heir recording. Here are some smaller res versions of the front and back covers. (You can still click them for larger images) The painting on the front is by one of my all time favorites Edmund Dulac. It is a 1909 illustration for The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The color and tone of this image sing to me and the hooded figure strongly recalls a similar apparition from the painting the Isle of the Dead by Arnold Böcklin -an image that completely informed one of the songs on the record.

Böcklin actually painted several versions of this same image but this, the original from 1880, remains the starkest and most powerful for me.

See Also

The Words

WIND IN MY DREAM
MIST IN MY HOUSE

a Night Musick Cycle in ten parts

I Weeping of the Boughs
II The Night Heir
III No Sympathy from Demanding Idols
IV Indigo Woman
V Böcklin
VI Temples of Muir (every tree a cross)
VII Plaintive Orion
VIII I Seek Myself
IX I See Myself
X DawnMan outroduction


I

Strange face in a stone
and the river's moan is a voice,
the hidden family in wilderness.
The forest is restless.
There's weeping in the boughs and
I hear it.

Crows shrieking above
and sudden winds blow.
A wailing wind blows!
the Evening,
the Gloaming,
the Night.

II

Fog,
take your misty clothes off the
windswept hearts of men.

Sun, fail me not
and I'll go out to the wood every night.

Wild nature, lay your laws down!
As Above So Below!

I'm Dark…the stars and clouds,
the night - in the shape of a man

Standing in the secret Earth- there's
wind in my dream,
there's a mist in my house…

III

In the morning, when it's light
the family's eyes all open at once,
saying prayers, putting on clothes,
rosary, Jehovah, mysterious symbols.

We were guilty by religion,
symptoms of Jesus
and death on horseback and father time.
Now the days are short but the road is long
and there's a merciless storm out on the
horizon,
calling and coming.

Lords grown foul.
We are slaves now.
No mercy for fools.

IV

Moss,
dress me and lay me in an animal grave
with my woman.

Oh ground, lend us your name!

So the Indigo one will seek us to raise for
her own,
sincerely naive.

We'd been yearning for all of our lives for
such peace.

V

Isle of the dead, towering cyprus trees,
Christ-like figure in white,
stand in your boat and cast your mood
upon me.

I might have known.

This Holy gown of stars, hung for miles,
from my Father's halls…

…Now I Am!

VI

…


VII

Vice me in your wicked fist, I don't care, so lonely.
I'm lonely as a cursed man's wife.

I'm deep in the night
and can't find my way.
Orion, above me with me no belt and lain down.
Is it all weeds and ash snow in place of my birth?
The horn of plenty sounds so forlorn.
Forlorn.

VIII

I Seek Myself!
Woe,
Wind in my Dream, Mist in my House,
I Seek Myself!

IX

Mist Inside My House!

A wind in my dream,
I was born asleep.

Gone As If In Smoke!

It's all gone and I'm awoke.
And I'm reminded of something I'd forgotten.

We Have Met Before!

Haven't we met before?
Deja Vu.

Though I Might Have Died-
I See Myself!
I turn myself around & around and myself
surrounds me everywhere…

Searched all night to find you and Now-
Now that I've found you
the hand you reach out to me is mine!
Such is confusion over love and good will toward
men.
I believe the Sun will know me by my new name
when it comes back.

Sun, rise!

X

Morning, find me
and lift me back up to ground
& my body.
Restore me my only shadow
from out this long night of many dire shadows.
Is there a way?

Is there a way?

I would become burned by your debt-less amity
Recomposed, if it be your will
Finally, a man whose heart is an answer.

All bodies
All eyes
Flora & fauna
Birds & beasts
Children & lovers
are all sympathetic to the dawn.

Good Evening and Welcome

NIGHT HEIR, as a musical project, began around the Christmas of Two Thousand and Nine with a single song of the same name. I was in Maine at the time and the tune seemed inherent in the surrounding woods, especially during the snowy nightfall. As the mood and chords fogged up my head it became apparent that an entire suite lay hidden in this single song and had something to do with being in the woods at night- and perhaps having an existential crisis. It's a song cycle and it's specific relation to the evening hour has me thinking of it as night musick. This is a touch tongue in cheek, yet if the notorious term Magick has basic roots in the idea of manifesting the unmanifest then, similarly, I am interested in a kind of music which isn't shy to place emphasis on the need for emotional translations and meaningful unveilings. This is slippery, wordy stuff to be sure. But regardless, sonic ecstasies are easily, regularly and therapeutically employed by various peoples in a meridian of ways. It's exciting and encouraging that the music/emotion connection as a human legacy is trans-cultural and timeless.
Wind In My Dream Mist In My House is a desperate sense of confusion over dream state versus waking life and inside versus outside, respectively.
The album was recorded over the better part of the Summer in the basement of my house in Portland, Oregon. My good friend Adam Robinson pretty much single-handedly built an impressive, cozy little studio which he called "The Clearing." With assistance from Adam, as well as a guest piano performance and a modest choir, the recording was finished slowly and methodically, one instrument at a time.
My name is Sean Barry; any and all future information about this project will be found here as time rolls on.
Thank you for hearing.