Asha Elijah ~ If this is goodbye

Asha Elijah (aka Asha & Asher Quinn) sings Mark Knopfler's 'If this is goodbye' from his 6th album of cover versions called "Love is Blue." CD/download when the album is ready.
Since 1987 when I was first given a recording contract by New World Music, I've produced over 30 albums. Mostly they are my own compositions, songs, instrumentals & piano pieces, but sometimes I sing my favourite songs by other artists as well.
I've been an independent artist since about 2009. My early pieces were presented in the new age genre, but I broke with 'tradition' there by adding lyrics and vocals, and singing spiritual love-songs; songs of higher love.
The ancient Sufi poets like Rumi used to present love poetry as if from one romantic lover to another, as one might ordinarily find, but in truth they were secretly encoded as messages of higher love, where love, lover and beloved were one in God.
This was partly done to protect spiritual awareness from anti-spiritual political forces, who were intent on entirely materialising life and de-spiritualising it. This is still happening in a wider spectrum today, though we may not be aware of it. Religious groups are persecuted in various parts of the world, and evidence-based science is to the fore at the expense of spiritual faith, which in turn is even mocked or ridiculed.
Art is one arena where the higher heart truth can still protect, preserve and renew spiritual awareness.
When I sing songs by other artists, it's hard to say what my preferred x-factor is precisely; why I should like one song and yet not another. For example, the whole world seems to adore John Lennon's 'Imagine,' and his dream of one-ness, but it doesn't do it for me!
If I listen to what he's saying, he dreams that there will be no heaven, no countries and nothing to kill or die for. But heaven is a state of grace, not a place, and countries have their own unique folk mythologies that we eliminate at our peril. And for me, I would die for my faith. Not kill, for sure, but I would never renounce my faith, even upon pain of death.
I like a lot of Mark Knopfler songs. His Dad was Hungarian, and I live in Hungary. I've migrated here precisely because of the spiritual truth that radiates from this land and these people, and which is preserved in their shamanic folk mythology. It calls to me.
In many of his ballad melodies and understated humility of approach, I feel that his songs are heart-centered in ways that open us up to a kind of spiritual longing, and which release emotion. Mark Knopfler is a master at a kind of melancholy, with which I resonate.
I only heard this song for the first time recently, though. A friend in Holland, Mariet, shared a link where he sings it with Emmylou Harris. It immediately appealed to me, and that week, just back in November, I had a studio day booked. So I was able to record it straight away.
With songs I love I've no need to even learn them! They are already in my soul. I just intuitively knew how to play, sing and arrange this song spontaneously.
It's as if the angels willed it, to send this song my way, and for me to express it for my own healing and to share it with others. This is the power of music, as a universal healing agent.
So, it seems like a conventional 'goodbye song,' and no doubt it is. But there is another level of 'goodbye' to me, and that is our separation from God, which we all lament and long to recover. When we lose a loved one or say goodbye, we mourn the loss for sure, but that in itself triggers a lament for a deeper loss in the soul; the loss of spiritual connection.
By then expressing this in song, it draws spirit closer to us again, and begins the healing, re-connecting process. Singing such a lament with this awareness becomes like a kind of prayer which spirit hears.
In traditional shamanic cultures, when a child is sick the first thing the healer does is to get the child to sing, or maybe to dance. The idea behind this is that the child is sick because she's lost touch with spirit, maybe out of fear, trauma, depression or hopelessness, and by singing, spirit sees and hears her once again and comes closer.
I see this as my life task, to sing as a healing to call spirit back to the soul, in myself and in others.
The film here is of the tram-stop next to Origo Studio in Kőbánya, Budapest, where I record my songs. This was just last week, actually, on a freezing cold December evening, but I noticed how melancholy and yet cosy it seemed at the same time.
I have my own wounds around a lost love in Hungary, and this song hits the spot. These lyrics especially: "My famous last words could never tell the story..."
However the heart is broken, and however much support comes your way, no-one ever really knows the story, or can ever know the story. It is a mystery only between you and God, ultimately.
The Sufi's call it 'the stage of the broken heart.'
Leonard Cohen sang: "There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."