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Track 1 on the album
Fata Morgana
(for my Fairy Grandmother)

Both of my real Grandmothers passed away before I had any distinct memories of them. My third, un-real Grandmother is the only one I knew. She was my Grandfather’s second wife and came from an outlandish place called Ingushetia, the Soviet Highlands… I thrived on her stories and old family photographs. I saw my Grandmother as a fascinating Russian doll – but when she opened up, the smaller dolls inside her were not children. They were the ancestors. She was my link to a lost world, and when she herself succumbed to an illness, I felt that it was now my turn to tell her stories.

Here is her own grandmother, all in black, standing tall and dark like the stone towers that watch over the ancestral villages in the mountains. When she died, it is said that she became a cherry tree planted above her own grave... Rascal village boys enjoyed climbing the tree and stealing her cherries.
My Grandmother's mother was the most beautiful woman in Ingushetia. She outshone the moon, they said, and she married a man of the sky, a fighter pilot. Out of the first world war, he emerged a national hero, but during the second 'great' war, he was killed almost instantly with hardly any glory.
It seemed that the war was lost. As the invading enemy advanced, my great-grandmother’s urban, sophisticated family had to flee to the mountains, to the ancestral villages studded with stone towers. However, when armed men came to the village, they were not Germans. The had Soviet uniforms and cruel orders - all the women, the children, the elderly were given just one hour to pack their belongings. Declared Enemies of the State, they were all packed into freight trains and dispatched to the wastes of northern Kazakhstan. There, only precious heirlooms could buy warm clothes and food. My great-grandmother was clever. She took all her gold and diamonds with her, and both her children survived.
And so we finally get to meet my Grandmother and glance over her unbelievable life story – Stalin's purges and deportation, arranged marriage, scandalous divorce, escape into the medical profession, an affair with a celebrity doctor from Moscow ending in his divorce and her second marriage... Her own family never forgave, but mine did - there was something surreal about that lady, a charisma and dignity I've not seen in anyone else, and we all fell, utterly and helplessly, under her spell. Even in illness and death she was statuesque. She was the biggest crush of my childhood and teenage years, and I loved (still do!) pretending to be her grandchild

lyrics

You came to me when I slept
your lips made no sound
your feet made no din
I missed you so much since you left
and I asked you:
My darling, where have you been?

Chorus: And you smiled softly
and I saw that
you'll tell me whatever I wanted to know
But some things must be hidden
and so...
I woke up
with your voice in my ear -
the link is unbroken,
I felt you were here
My fata morgana
my mystery fay
on the horizon of my senses
you melt away...

Your stories of joy and of strife
are scattered like beads
but I am the thread
You looked so real and alive
and I asked you:
What is it like, being dead?

credits

from Eternal Child - Daria Kulesh, released January 31, 2015

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Folkstock Records UK

Boutique label releasing handpicked singer songwriters from the Folkstock fold.
Most engineering, mixing and mastering by Lauren Deakin Davies.
Except Bright Season by Bright Season - released 31st May 2014
The F Spot by Friends of Folkstock - release date 17th May 2014
Passing the Baton - Swarb and Folkstock friends - 5th April 2014
Debut EP release from Kelly Oliver on 26.11.13. Far From Home
... more

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