From the recording FROZEN IN TIME
ARTIST OF LIFE
"This song was written by my dad. He's a heck of a good songwriter. I surprised him with this cover. Changed the name of the file so he wouldn't see what it was. I always loved this song. He wrote it after reading Beauty and Sadness by Nobel Prize winning Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata"
***
Fitting that the last song on Frozen In Time is a quiet acoustic ballad and cover song. Penned by Vopnfjord’s father after reading a book by Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata, here Vopnfjord junior pays homage to an inspiring story and also to what are clearly the roots of his musical talent and encouragement passed down through family. A delicate number with lyrics mysterious and sombre, Vopnfjord sings softly, “But the pictures she paints are alive / With the colour of a love that lingers.” A nod to his own album’s title, the song freezes in time the portrait of an artist capturing her own past in the present. The resonance to Vopnfjord’s own artistic expression here in that being a cover of his father’s song, it gives the track more meaning. The last lines: “That the sadness you feel is the child / Of a beauty of a love so tender / That survives up the stair / In the soul living there / In the heart of an artist of life,” signal the woeful but hopeful mission of the artist of life. The Artist, like Vopnfjord who secures the title with this album, takes beauty and misery, love and loss, and forges them in the soul, painting through emotion and recollecting a moment, rendering it timeliness.
Lindy Vopnfjord
Acoustic Guitar and Vocals
Engineered by Jeremy Darby and Julian De Corte at Canterbury Music Company Toronto
Engineered by Todor Kobakov at Kobakov Sound Toronto
Mixed by Todor Kobakov at Kobakov Sound Toronto
Mastered by Steve Fallone at Sterling NYC
Produced by Todor Kobakov
Lyrics
ARTIST OF LIFE
Tender white hands
You’d sear the only work she knew was love
Stony green eyes
You’d sear she watched the only work she knew
Slip through those fingers
But the pictures she paints are alive
With the colour of a love that lingers
In the room up the stair
In the soul living there
In the heart of an artist of life
Temple bells ring
A melancholy beauty in their hollow timbre
Memories thrive
On sounds that were alive the day that they were born,
Remember
That the sadness you feel is the child
Of a beauty of a love so tender
That survives up the stair
In the soul living there
In the heart of an artist of life