Wylding Hall Quotes

“I should have been more frightened; that came later.”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“You’d have to be so careful, more careful than we can even imagine, to keep that one spark alive. Because that’s what kept you alive, in the cold and the dark.”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“But things like Christmas or holidays, any kind of religious ritual or shared experience, like performing together, or a play—those take place in sacred time. It’s like this—” He grabbed a pen and drew on the inside cover of the paperback. A little Venn diagram: two intersecting circles. “—a circle within a circle. Do you see? This big circle is profane time. This one’s sacred time. The two coexist, but we only step into sacred time when we intentionally make space for it—like at Christmas, or the Jewish High Holy Days—or if something extraordinary happens. You know that feeling you get, that time is passing faster or slower? Well, it really is moving differently. When you step into sacred time, you’re actually moving sideways into a different space that’s inside the normal world. It’s folded in. Do you see?”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“Arianna simply wasn’t up to it. She had a pretty voice, she could carry a tune—that was never a problem. But she had no depth. She couldn’t interpret a song, place her stamp on it. Unlike Lesley, who fairly stomped on it! And that’s what you need in folk music. These are songs that have been around for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. They existed for centuries before any kind of recording was possible, even before people could write, for god’s sake! So the only way those songs lived and got passed on was by singers. The better singer you were, the more likely it was people were going to turn out to hear you and remember you—and remember the song—whether it was at a pub or wedding or ceilidh or just a knot of people seeking shelter under a tree during a storm. It’s a kind of time machine, really, the way you can trace a song from whoever’s singing it now back through the years—Dylan or Johnny Cash, Joanna Newsom or Vashti Bunyan—on through all those nameless folk who kept it alive a thousand years ago. People talk about carrying the torch, but I always think of that man they found in the ice up in the Alps. He’d been under the snow for 1,200 years, and when they discovered him, he was still wearing his clothes, a cloak of woven grass and a bearskin cap, and in his pocket they found a little bag of grass and tinder and a bit of dead coal. That was the live spark he’d been carrying, the bright ember he kept in his pocket to start a fire whenever he stopped. You’d have to be so careful, more careful than we can even imagine, to keep that one spark alive. Because that’s what kept you alive, in the cold and the dark. Folk music is like that. And by folk I mean whatever music it is that you love, whatever music it is that sustains you. It’s the spark that keeps us alive in the cold and night, the fire we all gather in front of so we know we’re not alone in the dark. And the longer I live, the colder and darker it gets. A song like “Windhover Morn” can keep your heart beating when the doctors can’t. You might laugh at that, but it’s true.”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“But mostly I'm just respectful of old ways. I believe things for a reason, and in the old days they did things for a reason. And if you don't understand why—well, you might end up opening a few doors better left closed. That's all.”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“People forget that the colliers didn’t just bring the canaries into the mines to warn them against the gases. They took them down because they sang so beautifully, even in the dark.”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“It was a big deal when a new record came out; you’d buy it then find one of your mates who had a stereo and everyone would come over to listen to it together for the first time.”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“But there was that one night when we all lay around in the dark and felt—something. I think it only happens when you’re young. This weird sense of possibility; a kind of knowledge. You know there’s a door, and even if you can’t see it, you can sense it opening, and if you’re quick enough, you can slip inside.”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“But it was just a paperback by Mircea Eliade. The Sacred and Profane. “Do you know this?” He held it in those big hands as though it were a butterfly he’d caught. “It’s brilliant. There’s two kinds of time, he says—sacred time and profane time. The outside, everyday world—you know, where you go to work, go to school, sort of thing—that’s profane time. “But things like Christmas or holidays, any kind of religious ritual or shared experience, like performing together, or a play—those take place in sacred time. It’s like this—” He grabbed a pen and drew on the inside cover of the paperback. A little Venn diagram: two intersecting circles. “—a circle within a circle. Do you see? This big circle is profane time. This one’s sacred time. The two coexist, but we only step into sacred time when we intentionally make space for it—like at Christmas, or the Jewish High Holy Days—or if something extraordinary happens. You know that feeling you get, that time is passing faster or slower? Well, it really is moving differently. When you step into sacred time, you’re actually moving sideways into a different space that’s inside the normal world. It’s folded in. Do you see?”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“There’s an old West Country ballad called “The Lady of Zennor.” Will turned me onto it when I interviewed him for that long piece I did for Mojo about Windhollow’s legacy. It’s based on a legend about a mermaid. Zennor’s a fishing village in Cornwall. I visited it after talking to Will; he told me there was a memorial in the village church. I thought he was having me on, but damned if it wasn’t the truth. The story goes that there was a young man in the village who sang in the church choir. His voice was so beautiful that every Sunday, a mermaid would come out of the sea and walk up to the church and sit in the back just to hear him. I don’t know how she walked with a tail—they didn’t go into that. Eventually she converted to Christianity so she could marry him. The church is ancient, twelfth century, and when you go inside, you can see where she sat—someone made a special little wooden pew for her, with a mermaid carved on each end. I sat in it—no one was there to stop me. The church was empty and I could have walked out with it if I wanted, it was so small. She must have been tiny. I asked Will why he was telling me about this particular legend and song. Obviously I knew why, but I wanted to hear him say it, even if it was off the record. He wouldn’t.”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“The air had that sweet green smell you get before the leaves begin their turn toward autumn. Dew on the ground, everything shone and dazzled. Like walking inside a kaleidoscope—every shade of green you can imagine, and blue sky beyond, tiny birds hopping everywhere.”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“We are the boys who come today To bury the wren on St. Stephen’s Day. Where shall we bury her feathers? In a grave mound. What shall we do with her bones? Bury them in the ground. They’ll break men’s plows! Cast them into the sea. They’ll grow into great rocks That will wreck ships and boats! We’ll burn them in the fire And throw her ashes to the sky. A bit bloodthirsty. You’d be surprised how many old songs are like that.”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“I thought he’d copied out a spell. Later, when I heard the Wylding Hall album, I realized it was an old ballad by Thomas Campion—a song in the form of a spell, dating to the fifteenth century. Thrice tosse these Oaken ashes in the ayre, Thrice sit thou mute in this inchanted chayre; Then thrice three times tye up this true loves knot, And murmur soft, shee will, or shee will not. Goe burn these poys’nous weedes in yon blew fire, These Screech-owles fethers, and this prickling bryer, This Cypresse gathered at a dead mans grave: That all thy feares and cares an end may have.”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“You don’t know Clare? The mad poet who slept in hedgerows? And little Wren that many a time hath sought Shelter from showers in huts where I did dwell In early spring the tennant of the plain Tenting my sheep and still they come to tell The happy stories of the past again.”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“The oldest extant parts of the house were Tudor. An entire small Elizabethan-era manor tucked off to the back, surrounded by yew trees. Very lovely but dark—the trees were hundreds and hundreds of years old and overshadowed everything. A thousand years, maybe. Do trees live to be that old? You reached that part of the house by a narrow passage, very dim, with oak paneling. There was a long, narrow hall with a minstrel’s gallery, stone flags on the floor. On the upper floors, there were any number of rooms. I couldn’t tell you how many, because I only had a very cursory look when the estate agent showed me around. But what I saw was marvelous. Lovely carved paneling, small leaded windows. Beautiful National Heritage stuff. But very dark—not a lot of windows, and most of them deeply set into the walls.”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“But that second album—it was all a sort of amazing chemistry. Alchemy, Julian called it. He was into all that kind of thing—magick with a K, astrology, god knows what else. Palmistry, reading the bumps on your head. Casting spells. He wanted the album itself to be a kind of spell. An enchantment. You’d listen to it and without knowing it, you’d be changed. “Ensorcelled.” That’s his word, not mine! Back then, Julian believed in that kind of thing.”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“People forget that the colliers didn’t just bring the canaries into the mines to warn them against the poisonous gases. They took them down because they sang so beautifully, even in the dark.”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“He was whip-smart, but somewhat of a social and emotional innocent. You could see it pained him to talk to people he didn’t know—he was a publicist’s nightmare—and that acute shyness could come off as arrogance, especially in someone so good-looking.”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall

“Have you ever seen a bird without its beak? Horrible, just tiny dead eyes and a hole in its face.”
― Elizabeth Hand, Wylding Hall