31. THE LANGUAGE OF TREES

We decided to meet each other in the band, in order to start composing our following album, though we didn't have the slightest idea what we were going to write about. However, in the end, we worked in the same way as the previous years. Each one of us would start writing our own songs and when completing them, we would present our demos to the others. This is how the composition procedure would start. One of the following mornings, I got up from bed and went straight to make coffee. I walked out of the house, in order to enjoy the Irish spring and my flowers in the garden. I think I hadn't had such a feeling of serenity in years. I had missed walking out of my house with a wide smile on my face, only because a simple flower made my day. Even though problems of the previous years did not vanish, during the last month I felt more carefree and delicate.

I was looking at nature's beauty outdoors and this is what I got inspired by. I could start from the garden. I was still excited by Mother Nature's topic and style and mad about nature, so my mind was still stuck on that. That's why I put my big straw black hat on and along with my coffee I grabbed a pen and paper and sat on the little table in the garden. And there I started writing the lyrics of a song, which was later called Flower Blossoms. I hadn't thought of the music yet, but the lyrics were inspired by this beautiful show, unfolding before my eyes.

I found soon inspiration about the music too. I need to say that, during all these years, our music had more or less atmospheric, folk and acoustic elements. Our best songs would last about ten minutes and their ending was distinguishable by a long guitar solo. One could clearly notice that we were inspired by Pink Floyd, especially by songs like Comfortably Numb or High Hopes. However, this time I realised that the songs I was writing for that album were more progressive and the sound was more down to earth. One may compare it to Dream Theater, though I'm not such a big fan of them. Or maybe an album such as Fear of a Blank Planet by Porcupine Tree. Also, the other guys in the band kept on with that and also considered this change in our sound to be a very positive development. 

As huge Pink Floyd fans and given the fact that it was my favourite band, since I was five years old, and as I said before, our main influence, in April 2020, we were about to do a gig in London, which would be a Pink Floyd tribute. I can remember that three weeks before the gig, Vivian, Bryan and I were drinking wine and I was telling them that I was so excited about the gig and that such a tribute had been a pipe dream for me. The day, when we would perform live, I gathered the rest of the guys outdoors and told them seriously: "Listen up. If the time is enough, we're playing Echoes too. The whole song! That's why it's very important that we do our best in that show. Don't forget that we owe our success to those people". However, an hour before the show, I went out to smoke a cigarette, as my whole body was sweating. I'd never ever panicked so much before, prior to appearing on stage. Quite the contrary, actually. I usually had a really good time during live shows and I loved headbanging before the synths. In general, I'd overcome stage fright, because as an actress, you have to play a role before a huge audience and you can't afford to have any stage fright. However, this time, as a sort of a perfectionist, I thought that it was necessary we are perfect because when you pay a tribute to a band, it's out of the question that you don't perform as good as they do.

I ended up being in the dressing room, with my arms raised in front of the air conditioning, while the air was falling upon me. Then, Dina walked in and told me, laughing:

"I wouldn't advise staying like that for a long time. You'll get a strain in your neck and you'll feel the heat of the show". Then she saw that my face was pale and she said:

"What's wrong with you now? You're the only one of us, who never got scared to walk on stage. You're an actress, Ingrid. A stage fright, now?"

"We're making a tribute to Pink Floyd!", I replied. "If anything goes wrong...".

"Nothing is going wrong, Ingrid", Dina reassured me. "Just believe in yourself".

Yes, of course. The latter was something I would surely do.

Nevertheless, as soon as we walked on stage, any kind of fear vanished. We started the show, playing Astronomy Domine, which was the first song from Pink Floyd's debut album. And I truly think that it was the best show we'd ever done. For the first time ever, I felt important and that what I was doing was worthy. I felt proud and such a feeling was completely unprecedented for me. The only problem was that this night was the last one that Lydia did a real live show with us.

After this fantastic live show in London, we went back home, in order to compose our following album. As soon as we played at the Celtic festival, we started working without a pause. Alexandria's composing procedure goes as follows: Each one of us writes our own songs at home. I have to work on the songs twice, as the lyricist of the band is only me. Thus, I try to make my songs as complete as I can. Then, the rest of the guys send me their own demos, in which I add the lyrics. After meeting with the band, we make any necessary changes and English speaking members correct any mistakes, if they exist, as I'm no natural English speaker. Next, we spend our whole summer in Rockfield, recording the material, while sometimes we drive to Bristol if we are about to use our folk orchestra. Of course, I have to mention that we have not included this orchestra in every album, especially in more progressive rock albums.

The album had no title yet nor did it deal with any specific topic. For the first time, we had written a vast amount of songs, which outnumbered a typical album's tracks. Furthermore, after many years I managed to write music while being inspired by the world in general and not because I wanted to confess to people about something bad I was going through and because this made me upset. In this album, I also composed a song, which still remains one of my favourite ones and its name is The Life of Your Heart. When I presented it to the band, I simply said: "It's a song about your hearts". It was about pure and 'unselfish' love. And when talking about love, I'm not only referring to these cute couples, who are crossing a bridge, holding hands, and then shooting their selfies, in order to post them on Instagram. I'm referring to feelings in general. The fact that you can have a heart of your own and feel another person's heart. And during a difficult time to be able to smile, and touch the hand of a fellow man and say: "I can feel you, brother". Whatsoever, what's the point in being born? Only for feeding ourselves and not caring about anything that doesn't have to do with ourselves? I had always believed that everything is built upon feelings and that's why it hurt so much when I seemed to be completely expressionless, at least off stage. This way I wanted to make people realise how crucial it was to be compassionate, empathetic for a fellow man. And that's what The Life of Your Heart was about. And stepping on that, I ate a humble pie and thought it'd be really sweet if Lydia could sing that herself. But she wouldn't do any better. She replied to me: "There's no way I sing something so corny. Sing it yourself". I really wanted to cry, when she said that. I anyway gave the song to Dina to sing and I remember that, when giving her the lyrics to read, we suddenly heard a wail and when we turned around, we saw Dina in tears.

On the other hand, there was a specific song, which was rather upsetting and completely 'taken out of my diary', because it was about everything I had been feeling all those years and all I've been talking about in the previous chapters. Of course, I'm referring to Riders of Night, which is probably Alexandria's most popular song. The story goes like this: From a high mountain, one can see a forest, in which a row of horse riders appears every night. However, all you can see is their own silhouette and not their real face. They seem like shadows, without an identity, without a name and they don't even know where they're heading to. They seem lost, without a self and they all follow the masses, in the same way, in the forest, until the morning, when they disappear. If anyone approaches them, they also lose their own self and become a shadow, just like these horse riders.

When writing that song, of course, I didn't mean to represent Nazgul's story from Lord of the Rings, as many people assumed. In fact, the song had nothing to do with Tolkien nor any fantasy story. Riders of Night had a special meaning and one could find out about that because of its form. Sofia was the first one who realised that this song, music-wise, had no structure. She also joked about it saying that it would be a fully successful rap song if instead of lyrics, it contained a freestyle. But she actually was partially right. The song was built upon a riff I was playing on the piano, at least until its solo and its encore.

What I wanted to do was tell people all I felt about this self I had lost. That I myself felt so lost, without a personality, that I was only following the masses as if I were following these horse riders and none of us knowing where we're heading to. Also, the encore of the song contained the repeating line You don't know where you're going. However, Riders of Night's main characteristic was its solo, which wasn't played by an electric guitar, as many people wrongly assumed. It was a solo, actually composed by Vivian for a guitar, but I ended up playing it myself on the synthesizer. Anyway, Riders of Night was a song which was very popular among people and it has been performed so much live, that I dare to say that nowadays it has become really boring for me to perform.

In June, we returned to our beloved studio in Rockfield, taking our friend, Sofia, along with us. Every day we had a wide smile on our faces because we had a wonderful time with each other and we weren't feeling this wretchedness of the previous years. And the upsetting explanation for that was that it felt like Lydia didn't exist anymore. She was a member of the band only on the paper. But this, unfortunately, suited on us and I was turning a blind eye to the whole situation. Anyway, when I was in a good mood, I was walking down the stairs, singing Coco Jamboo, while when Dina herself was in a good mood, she was walking down the stairs, singing Lacrimosa. When Sofia heard her, she whispered to my ear: "Hey, this woman has a brilliant voice. I wonder why you haven't used this part of her voice yet". I told her that such a powerful operatic voice wouldn't fit in our heavy progressive rock sound. Truth be told I wasn't a huge fan of opera either, even though Dina's colour resembled more of a Broadway musical singer, so her sound was sweeter and more mellow to listen to. But she herself was also thinking that an operatic voice wouldn't sound that nice in Alexandria's songs.

Apart from recording, I was doing other things too. I didn't feel like starting to write another book, but I decided I could do something else instead. During that time, I'd started to keep my own diary. I considered, then, that there was no point in hiding from people anymore. That's why I divided my diary into two parts, which clearly described my sudden personality change within these two years. The first part was called Childhood's End (just like Pink Floyd's song) and the second one Maturity. Then, I published it, however, I changed the names of my relatives and friends, so that nobody would know that it was my own real diary. Many people liked it and many copies were sold too, however, everybody said that this is Ingrid's darkest book and the older she gets, the more cynical she becomes. They had no idea that this was no fiction at all, but my real diary!

I also used to play in the theatre, even though I had never had acting lessons. On the one hand, I'd watched my parents performing, so I had tried to get something from their acting style, and on the other hand, I knew I couldn't express myself at all in real life, so I was trying to express myself through acting. And I can say that it worked perfectly. Thus, on Wednesdays I would escape from reality, going to a café in Rosses, which was called Harvest and had a garden too. I used to eat a delicious cheesecake, sitting in the café's garden, while writing scripts for a theatrical play. And this was something like a ritual for me. This used to happen every Wednesday and during the whole week, I was looking forward to Wednesdays when I would express my whole inner world while eating cheesecake all alone in Harvest.

During the same time, I used to attend some lessons at the University, which were about Modern British Prose. This subject didn't exist in the schedule yet when I was a student myself, but I wanted to attend it so desperately, thus the professor accepted me in her class, though I wouldn't be able to sit for the exams at the end of lessons. I can still remember students checking me out and asking me if I'm a new student. One of the works we analysed was Katherine Mansfield's, Miss Brill. This work was about a woman who is desperately expecting Sunday to come because she was looking forward to going to the town's square and find herself in her own world. While reading this work, I had a little shock, because I realised that I was doing the same thing on Wednesdays. I also used to go to Harvest, to write my scripts and get lost within them. Anyway, I attended these lectures to the end and I can say I was extremely happy about that. It was also then, that I developed a passion for Virginia Woolf and I considered her to be my own alter ego and I used to make jokes with my friends that I was Virginia Woolf in my previous life!

In the meantime, we were in Wales, in order to record our next record. During the recording sessions, very often I used to take a walk in the fields on my own or along with Sofia. As I said before, my passion for nature was still there, so I was literally hugging trees at times. At some point, Sofia told me: "Oh, come on, Ingrid. You had always had two passions: trees and languages. Nothing more".

"Oh, really?", I joked. "I think I'm going to use these on the album".

The truth is that this happened indeed. The title of the album came after this joke I made with Sofia. Along with the rest of the guys, we decided to call it Arborial Language in the sense that both of these were my biggest passions. At first sight, the title seemed to be meaningless. However, some people interpreted it as if it were for the 'language' of trees and their communication system. Funnily enough, a few years later I read a book, called The Hidden Life of Trees, which was about the way, with which trees 'communicate' with each other through their roots.

I suppose these were the most relaxing recording sessions we'd ever had. And everything proceeded, as we'd calculated it. However, we'd written so many songs, that they couldn't fit in a single disc. The original idea was that we would release a disc, which would contain only these songs that would fit and the rest of them would go to our following album. However, I instantly refused and it was out of the question that I would agree with such a proposition. Every single album contains songs, which are the result of my mood or my preferences at the time of its composition. How could I have known how I would feel when composing the songs for the following album? So the next idea was that we would make a double album. And that was the best solution. Consequently, we agreed on the fact that a double album, called Arborial Language would be released in June.

During the days that we were in the studio, we were thinking about the tour and the dates we would do the shows. However, Lydia would always seem quite disinterested in the tour and she wouldn't even participate in our decisions as a band.