Choer de garcons | Emma Undercover

Age in an ocean of youth

Writing has never been about the number of words. The song title “Turn, Turn,Turn.” is only three words but it was this addition that Pete Seeger applied to the biblical words of Ecclesiastes and made the song something of a philosophical icon of the last century

I can never see sunflowers without this song running through my head when I am here in France. The French word “tournesol” carries the notion of turning to the sun. We have fields of thousands of joyful shining faces that turn and turn and turn to their guiding sun. Of course, they have their season, and the season turns.

Close to my home there is a field of such flowers. In the middle is a rigid old tree, long dead. My pagan heart has been pondering this scene. The vibrant brash beauty forms a sea around this old rock. The picture at its most obvious level is of youth and death set in the context of time and season. Even so, the dead tree speaks as loudly as the clamouring crowd at its feet. Once it was a seed. Now it is an orator as the crowd turns its face to follow its message across the perfect blue sky each day closer to autumn and harvest.

In a similar mood I found myself in the 12^thCentury Romanesque church of Saint Savinien a few nights ago. The occasion was a concert performed by the Mukachevo boys choir. This group of young men from Ukraine visited our little village in France as part of a programme operated by “Eurochestries”. Broadly the idea is to spread the culture and music of “Euro” peoples to each other and to give opportunity to young folk to express their talents and see foreign lands. And there in the middle of this ocean of youth was a fossilised Romantic novelist applauding my little heart out to these wonderful young guys. They opened with JS Bach (Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring) and ended with ABBA (Thank-you For The Music).

Watch the videos and catch the re-writing of the lyric for the soloists in the ABBA song. They didn’t have any “girls with golden hair” but they pulled through like super troupers.

And there it is – my wonderful life here in France. Turning tournesols reach for the sun. Young men stretch their voices upwards with the joy and talent of youth. And my eyes, ears, hands and life – here to see, hear, love and write.

The principal contents of this post were featured on my Venture Galleries Authors Collection blog

Emma Thinx: Youth is a box of chocolates. Age is fat, sugar and doctors. Wisdom is eating the pralines.