Timothy Nancarrow's Blog

Liminal, transitory, the yawning horizon beckoning,
Purposeful strides and winter climes, carrying aloft,
Whisper-mute; ever urging onwards,
In the heart of Skaði’s wilderness
Three shadows coalesce, to redefine

Subliminal, unconsciousness, to transgress what is known, to see,
Wilful smile dreams worlds all nine; the raven, Be-Named-Not,
Ancient lute; the Skaldic musing prospers,
On the paths of snow and silver trees,
allowed One attests, “This Day, You Must Die”

Tangential rumination, and constraints, the binding threads,
Existential excoriation; the once great debt, must now collect,
All spans left dusty and relegated to songs and tales,
All deeds wrought and renewed by arctic, gusting gales

The last home of the Gods, to seek, and unfurl hidden wings,
A Heartsong to the Gods, to heed, and cast off, That-Which-Is-Not,
Primal howl, cheerful maw, blooded, the eye beholds,
A corvid’s truth, deep memory, to rise from whence it fell

All in fullness of Nornir tongues, scream joyously to the dark,
None but the silence welcoming, to wild, sacred love,
Unburdened paradise of broken land and peaceful emptiness,
Until the Jötunn-spell subsides, spirits eager for one’s death

Stars unfamiliar, with strange delight they scintillate
An unknown sky before, behind
Yet in the heart, to recognise this home

No footsteps ever again shall tread,
‘Cross sands of black and frozen loam

Astride the cavernous worldling-roof
A disconnect from all that once, no longer now, was sought
The Twins playfully regale,
She rises briefly; her greeting whispered softly

The tide, she sweeps and curls, and sighs,
Mercurial in her delight.

I’ve never been acutely engaged with self-promo, and I hazard like many people who adore creative ideation and art but none of the commercial aspects, I’ll never quite have a comfortable relationship with it. Rather than waffle perennially and perpetually about it though to myself in self-reproach and rebuke, instead I’ve decided to try an alternative perspective, and simply annotate and collate whatever bits and bobs of writing I put my squirrels to work on.

A little while back I was very warmly invited to contribute to a musical project by a dear friend, who is one of the most skilled musicians and composers I’ve ever encountered. He dabbles across many genres, though primarily within inflections and hues of metal, but as far as metal goes, his work is superb. In that vein, I want to share a a few lyrics that I cultivated for his project.

Emissary is the project moniker; highly polished and skillfully composed melodic, modern metal that I should expect any fan of the genre would derive much joy and satisfaction from. Aside from Bandcamp, Emissary is also on Spotify. The lyrics to Apotheosis are below for those who would enjoy; another song, Vessel, I merrily contributed guest vocals to. Happy listening!

As to updates, after cancelling my publishing contract a little while back, I’ve been contemplating the best way forward, and have, like many other small, fledgling authors, decided self-publishing gives me the optimal control over editorial choices and content – and as such, allows me the freedom to include such arguably unforgivable omissions as the much lamented glossary cut from The Starfall, along with maps and other peripheral things for nerds like myself to sink their teeth into. So, work on the sequel continues, and I hope to have the E-Book completed and published by year’s end. Finally, a realistic target

Apotheosis

Anoint in propitiation
Brethren chrysalis yearn in fertile soil
Subsumed to cast ourselves infinitely
Monophyletic, all as one and none

Clades exalted, to extol, exanimate condemned
Our ruptured kingdom lingers still
In threnody we soar

Unbecoming as the interstitial
Cadence-wrought, the harrowing depth ascribes
Celestial spirit-breath and brine
Death propagates our life

Ascension in declension,
Aphotic, the Diophantine stem
Promulgation of archaic sacraments
Patience, Millennia’s stolid grave

Unbecoming, the Winnowing tides
All as one and none
Our desiccated and sunken eyes
Beholding a burnt-out sun

All as one and none
Beholding a burnt-out sun

Mantle of aeons, draped in the passage of countless moons
Harvesting un-life, marrow of the cosmos and infinite beyond
We, the Unbecoming, polynomial dissenters, the Warden-Tombed
Thrice-wrought, none as none and one.

Exhortation in twelfth-mired tongues of icthyous solitude

In fathoms deep, the Unbecoming, timeless decrepitude
Harrowing beneath the surging spume

Incantation roils the groaning squalls across the seas
Unfurling the Aeonless maws that, Timeless and Always, we shall spawn

In Ninth and Light
The Unbecoming
We, formless, primordial

Awash, a stream of mysticism,

Steam curls from the rocks at river’s edge,

Hollow dark and muted dawn befall,

And broken boughs; a garland, of silver splendour cold,

Crackle, footsteps bare, pace the mount-trail floor

Sway, gentle, sway,

The russet, loess and snow,

Grey cape and temple-scape of veiled emeraldine,

Campfire smoke, a hearthen invocation,

Milder timber, mottled stone,

Winter-chill the soil, moist beneath

A place where home perhaps once was,

In the Heart-song’s call, a quiet joy,

The spirit knows the fountainhead

From which the spanning rivers flow

And all those years and memories bold,

And subtle smiles, in radiance hold,

Such treasures of magnificence and delight,

As to remind each pebble in the river thus,

Why they are alive.

In raiment long, antipathy bewildered,

Light subsumed, beheld,

Shores deeply fractured, the salt-spray frost beyond,

Life-cry rising, Sjirna Cjoinen battered down,

And sharp in stolen breaths,

Of breaking heart be-crowned

Countenance pinched ‘neath pitch and Woad,

Of Summer-blighted storms as lingering ashen flare,

Stone begets stone, the Mountain’s law,

In silence and in stirring howls

Path, to tread once more

Sacred peaks, azimuth scorned and shorn,

There lay all that must be known,

In this I hear them singing thus,

In this, their Heartsong roars

Shiver spite, forsake not the driven winds

The beckoning enfolds, in blooded snow

Ethereal shades of dying blue,

In flame and soil the waters run once more

To fractal solemn respite, cold

Keenest ear, to sighing screams that chase the curling sky,

Valley endless, Mountain’s tomb,

Thrum the pulse beneath

Stone infinite

Dauntless one

Alone

Vjardal token, sigil-swept, semiotic restlessness,

Comes the pillar emeraldine and strong,

A wrack of reckoning ruin thus

Deterred, forestalled, forsworn

In this I hear them singing thus,

In this, their Heartsong roars

Ashen tower, mighty earthen spire

In thirds, all Light is sought,

Of chaos wrought and pyre-born,

No axe to steel the shoulder,

No ship to clasp the shore

A longing, withering spirit tossed

In rolling squalls and embers cleft,

Wander, ever-seeking, thus bereft

There only lay the answer, finality entombed

An Eye to see beyond the sight

And scream the secret names

They, in deathlessness endure,

In them, my Heartsong roars

Quiet plays the irony of the sunlight’s lingering warmth.

Sighing ocean’s breath,

Fleeting cadence of sunlight,

Clouds sprawl over sand.

Timeless current, aeon-deep, an undertow in seasons all,

The shoreline swollen, washed away,

No footprints linger neath the tide,

And glass once cast upon distant shores,

murky, blind-wrought, the harbinger subsides.

Ancient grains of yester-life and never-now, to be,

Fractal strains, the annals plight, of severed memory.

Where now lay that life once lived?

What stolen futures cannot speak?

And comes the tide perennial

The coiling of the light that cannot see.

Spire-thorn and ashen bone, charnel sinewed sward

Tattered flags and rictus plates, desolation, cadence-wrought

Withering granular chasm-spite midst rusted dolmen-shale

Whispered shards of wrathful salt and sullen, hollow eyes

Burdens mighty and morose,

Carrion servants’ thankless toil

Ruins and shades, benighted, all

A fugue of dying suns and blackened soil

Cries for dawn once lashed to stone, embalmed in bitter rot

The Work That Must Be Done

Wakeful not, the pulse not stirred,

Spared from Life above

Tomb-guilt spurned, crepuscular malice,

Harrowing blooms of thistle-cairn and oak,

In corpse-warmth gloom the ancients shift

Restless

In breathless sleep

Wither the heart, in furloughs of chastened brooks bespoken,

The runnel’s mouth rimed and mute,

And downs of fallow, amber, tawny, fawn, caressed, windswept; forlorn.

In muted skeins drawn from Lady’s shuttles, ever running on,

Unburdened now the petal-brows, the eye resiled inward,

Snares of warmth in lightless earth until all life returns.

Charnel-wooded, winter-damned, of quiet contemplation,

In whispered spring beneath the snow, the guttering fire-hearth burns low,

Idle not the sacred spark to animate, dutiful once more to thaw.

Chartreuse and Laurel, Olive-preened, lurid hope condemns,

Vestige of the frosted landscape corpse, twice-doomed,

Lingering yet, looming gallows braided,

Errant dreams of timeless, silent slumber.

Life demands the Awakening forestalled.

Death seeds the Reckoning foretold.

The cold soil trembles between them.

Ever is the quiet humility of contentment, the paradox of life’s simplicity; the pulsing intensity of the frenetic and the soothing inevitability of the receding tide. And as a wanderer marooned on the island of mine own choosing, it is a rare paradise, a fleeting union ensconced in all the happiness and purest of joy that eternity can yet offer us in such a small, self-contained fragment of a lifetime inconsequential in the aeons incalculable before and beyond.

To merely hold it is to watch the immeasurably precious granularity of life’s most wondrous punctuation and memory-echoes dissipate, borne aloft by the four winds. To soar and seek some enigmatic destiny unknowingly yearned for in the sprawling expanse of another Far Away. And there upon that promenade, so vibrant, luminous, and dazzling as only the briefest of scintillating star-light can be, the new self looks back upon you, That Which Once Was, Now Never To Be.

Such relief to embrace the unbridled challenge of creation, the defining struggle and perennial tribulation of one’s self-concept; the journey, the meaning and purpose resonant and resolute, the impassioned howling, inward and outward, that such vitality is warranted; earned in every measure of spirit-breath our mortal lungs exude. That whatever life this is, we fight and love and rejoice and stagger onward, defiant in ebullient hope and wonder as stumbling infants before the harrowing dawn.

Defined not by the oppositional nor the inverse of the Other, Adversarial; rather, the purest sentiment of undeniable truth and indomitable will that “I Am!”. Scream to the sundering chasm and the towering monoliths that silently demand capitulation of this proud little creature balanced between, a mountain upon the shoulders, a yawning abyss beneath the feet.

 You already know exactly who you are, and the laudable and mythically obfuscated Once I Shall Become is the illusory champion of ambition enthroned: nascent, nurtured, needed.

A smile found as one turns to the night-dark sky, and the blossoming reverie of the ethereal sun woken from somnambulant journeys. A satisfaction in treasured moments that succour and unfurl the balanced paradigm of sovereign self, and discourse internalised finally heeds the heart unspoken, unburdened. Whisper-light and aspirate-soft, a wish never pledged yet granted. A boon, a bountiful grandeur. Years fall. Autumn sheds her skirts to embrace the falling snow. And I am content.

Men trade their own potential for reputable greatness,

To carry the name of another and another there upon their backs,

Like the leering sneer of the master’s lash,

To temper the will in servitude beneath another’s yoke,

And every redoubt of a man’s soul that once was staunchly fortified now lay rent and ruined,

A corroded dilapidation of the heroic vigour once held in great store;

Equals amongst our brothers with whom we might have shaped the world.

And in my quiet heart, know I the vile seeds that have taken root lay there still,

And affixed within mine own person a most ignoble, wretched blossom;

That I should find fault with much, and by misdeed and poorly cast word,

Succumb myself to no great or effectual change for the better,

But contribute in my own dismal way to the repudiation of all,

In all that I would otherwise seek and hold to firm in steadfast, earnest acknowledgment.

A better life, and purpose grander, a dream for my brothers and I to weave,

Though shamed I am to know not how to guide them,

Nor in myself a man worthy to see, to helm the righteous ship and steer such ailing souls,

Myself and brothers all, towards the dauntless goal.

Simple comforts, hubris, both; shackled and bound to ease and ignominy,

We can but dream empty and hollow,

For the world we leave to our sons.

No great shadow shall we cast, and but a minor ripple in the roiling currents of eternity,

To spur our progeny to an excellence beyond our own reckoning.

Like a hellion’s wrath,

the clarion call to worthy action resounds with stultifying castigation,

And I am laid bare upon all my faults, excoriated.

And in the bitterest valleys of despondence and recrimination,

For myself and those brothers who have served beside me, in a life of idleness;

Of adventurous spirit for knowledge and far-ranging travels within and without,

I find a small, solemn whisper; a promise, that shall not go unfulfilled.

It little profits an idle king to hold a throne in dotage and senescence.

So let the winds carry us forth, brothers dear,

If to no great action or memory at all, but even small and forgotten,

A minor measure of our own greatness,

Be it humbled by withering years and ignorance,

And misunderstanding of our peers and womenfolk,

That the fleeting raiment of our flesh, yet unbuckled from the fiery spirit within,

May work to some noble, permanent satisfaction.

To scale a mountain tall, and as we fall,

We relish the final rays of the old morning’s dawn,

Hereafter.

Let our empires collapse into worthy ruin,

Of memories lost and sundered to all but a few,

And give truth to the lie of Triumph,

that only we shall carry forth,

And recede as the ebb tide.

To cast the gauntlet aside,

And strike with knuckles bared to break upon the perennial stone.

No heed of tribulation and pain,

Exultation, alone.

Gladly, we march to our doom.

Thinking of aquatic leviathans; Krakens mostly. And yet, mirthful imagination aside, I cannot conceive of anything so utterly alien and inhuman as the fathomless depths and the cyclical, carnivorous maw-threshing of the ancient things that still hunt the seas. Mechanical apparatus and countless treasures sink along with entire empires and their peoples beneath those voracious waves, and I wonder how those black, lifeless eyes beneath mark the passage of time in the crushing depths of the void.

Seven bells and seven hells, damnation, thus benighted,

Shellback hoary, the eye a-grizzled, on high the skipper’s perch,

Becalming grace, tempest clear, maddening souls consigned,

Ocean’s creed, the prophet-spurned, rum-sprawled circumlocution

Unfurls the weight of silent-song, cetaceous doom-rhyme aft,

The mid-bells chime but once and none, constricts the bunk-roused lumber

And clad in ancient, cloying shapes of sundered-swept and sunken wreck,

The bladed light on prow unsheathed, a pall on fretful slumber

“Icthyous ruin!”, the flailing curse-afflicted cry aloft,

Fervent hope constrained, the squall-hewn biers descend,

Lagans laden, flotsam hurled, the jagged thundering howl,

Graven mass, ominous, a judgement shorn of warmth