Seabird she flies .... thoughts on a life and death

| Life & death | Seabird | Tibet |

A song ....

Ariane Lewis, Tin Shed Cafe, Thirroul, 10/03.

A song can change your life, even if only for a short moment; a kiss can co-mingle souls, another life changing event ..... One such song is Tim Buckley's Phantasmagoria in Two which I first heard one cold, dark and misty night, around the turn of the new millennium. It was introduced to me by a friend, Ariane Lewis. She is no longer with this world, having come into it on 8 November 1979 and passed on to the next at the age of 27, on 27 April 2007. In correspondence during the early 2000s I came to call her Ari or 'Rain. We had met by chance on campus and out-and-about engaging with community and art and music. Prior to the night remembered herein we had communicated through email and sms on all sorts of matters - politics, the local scene, earth and sky, Indigenous issues, and the mystery art of writing and transferring thoughts to paper or online text. The emails became lyrical, poetic, and full of emotion and wonder. A connection slowly developed as we both exchanged words and thoughts. We would meet up on occasion, but most of the contact was online or on phone, with the number of times we actually met face to face over five years able to be counted on a set of fingers. For some reason we did a lot of that - my marriage had fallen apart, and she was full of life, energy and activity and direction at a time in which I was searching for something else. She had so much going on in her life at the time, but squeezed me in through late night online discussions and exchange of whatever.

So we came together one cool, full moon night, some time around November 2001, shortly after 9/11. I recall that the clock has just passed ten as I drove to her house beneath Mount Keira, got out, and knocked on the front door. She had invited me over to listen to some music, discuss politics, and imbibe in a cup of tea. Ariane and I shared an interest in the plight of Tibet, and she had been studying Tibetan Buddhism for a number of years, mainly in Sydney, though she was also active in bringing it home to her city of Wollongong. All of this culminated in the magnificent and inspiring TibetFest of 2006. But that is another story ...... 

Once the tea was served, we sat down on an expansive lounge, with the room lit only by moonlight falling in through some large, floor to ceiling glass windows. The night was still, late spring, and silent. I could hear nothing else apart from our words and the music of her choice. We sipped tea, talked, and then Ariane got up and moved towards the sound system, next to a large television. She said, as she inserted a CD into the machine, "I'll play you some Tim....."

Tim Buckley, Phantasmagoria in Two, London, 7 October 1968. 

I sat there totally in the moment, enchanted by a stranger feeling of openness, and aware of her ethereal presence - something truly magic and undefinable, and something which, a quarter of a century later, the writer still wonders about. She was younger, but also older in spirit and so, so much wiser, in a way that remains unfathomable. Was it due to previous lives? Yes, no doubt. She must have lived before, along with achieving so much in her relatively short 22 years on this earth at that point in time. She was who she was, and that was all that mattered.

That number 22 - it was, and remains, the writer's special number. The day of birth, the 22nd, and just over 22 years separated us. The juxtaposition of the two twos. Meeting her when she was turning, or had just turned, 22. Nothing to see there, but perhaps something in the numbers .....

That night was a moment to be mindful, to take it all in, unconcerned by the world around, and focus on the meditative stillness of her presence, and the location, snuggled under a mountain covered in dense green foliage, dark and foreboding but also protective of place and Country. It was one of those magic nights where, in hindsight, nothing else existed except that moment, the place, and the music, all of which became etched into the consciousness of this writer.

Phantasmagoria in Two by Tim Buckley came on and we sat there in complete silence, listening. She looked at me, at my reaction, and my focus. I think I began to smile, or, at least I felt a strange joy - an ecstasy - come over me, for the song was a pure expression of love, like I had never heard or felt before. It was beautiful. 

At the time it struck me as incredibly moving, mystical and magical. Just like her. It was a simple acoustic song, with some electric guitar in the background as the recording was from a live concert in London on Monday, 7 October 1968. The words were the key, weaving a strange mood, and most especially the phrase: And everywhere there's rain, my love. Uncanny. Simply guitar (acoustic and electric) and voice, and a plaintive plea from the heart for love - to experience love, its pain and joy, to have and to lose, to share or simply know it, perhaps alone when love was lost. It now reminds me of Nick Drake's exquisite Strange Meeting II, a song she also introduced me to, either that night or shortly thereafter. It is one of the most fragile and beautiful songs I have ever heard....

Nick Drake, Strange Meeting II, YouTube, duration: 3.39 minutes.

During the brief time that we knew each other, Ariane spoke often of Nick and Tim. Those two songs - connected by the words Two / II - have stayed with this writer ever since, though the one who introduced both of them has gone, lost to cancer at the tragic, pop star age of 27. Whenever Phantasmagoria in Two is play - especially the few live versions that have survived - it takes one back to that first hearing; that first sitting with Ariane, under the moonlight, and sharing the music she knew and loved. She passed that love and emotion on to me, and for that I am eternally grateful. It is as though the melancholy of the lives of Tim and Nick - both dying early from accidental or depression inducing drug overdoses - was to pass on to her, and to us.... To Tim, to Nick, and to that well of feeling and emotion that they both opened one up to - a feeling of sheer love, natural, real and sublime - to them, and to her, it is clear that the music, the words, and the performances will remain forever. How could one not want to repeat it, revel in it, and know it over and over, especially when it refuses to be ignored. 

Phantasmagoria in Two

If a fiddler played you a song, my love
And if I gave you a wheel
Would you spin for my heart and loneliness
Would you spin for my love.
If I gave up all of my pride for you
And only loved you for now
Would you hide my fears and never say
"Tomorrow I must go."
Everywhere there's rain my love
Everywhere there's fear.
If you tell me a lie, I'll cry for you
Or tell me of sin and I'll laugh
If you tell me of all the pain you've had
I'll never smile again.
Everywhere there's rain my love
And everywhere there's fear.
I can plainly see that our paths have changed
Our sands are shifting around
Need I beg to you for one more day
To find our lonely love.
Everywhere there's rain my love
And everywhere there's fear.

Phantasmagoria in Two is one of those classic, heartfelt, modern songs that moves you in a physical and intensely emotional level. The listening to it that night resulted in a kiss. This was not just any kiss - it was, as Adrianne Blue has pointed out in her extensive historical analysis of kissing the investigation into its impact, it was a co-mingling of souls like no other event in the writer's life up to that point in time. Romantic kissing is a pleasure, no doubt. It can be a peck, or an intense physical and emotional connection between two people on a path to sharing and often culminating in love. That night with Ariane the kiss (a singular word for an event which was anything but singular) was to stay with the writer for the rest of his life. Why? This was unknown until encountering the references in Blue's book to the soul-mingling kiss, viz.:

I prest my Julia's lips, and in the kisse,

Her Soule and Love were palpable in this. (Robert Herrick, 1648)

..... 

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Something undefinable.....

Ariane Lewis was a unique individual - an extraordinary person, actually. The present writer knew her fleetingly. However, though the relationship was short - spanning just 3 to 4 years - it was, for about half of that period, intense. On one occasion, during 2002, we shared a stage. It was the occasion of a Free Tibet evening at the Tin Shed Cafe in Thirroul. Ariane, as usual, had organised it and the Australian representative for the Government-in-Exile was present - Tenzin Phuntsok Atisha. I spoke briefly, as the Member for Cunningham, as did Ariane and Atisha, and a friend read a poem. 

  

It was a blur, but then much of that period remains so with the present writer.

.........

References

Blue, Adrianne, On Kissing: From the Metaphysical to the Erotic, Indigo, 1996, 224p. 

Buckley, Tim, Phantasmagoria in Two, Dream Letter: Live in London, 7 October 1968, 2 CD, duration: 4.50 minutes. 

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| Life & death | Seabird | Tibet |

Last updated: 2 November 2026

Michael Organ, Australia