Page 2 - The 17th Percy French Festival: The Quest for Authenticity

Front cover

*
The front cover embodies the themes of the last two festivals, Does the Soul have
a future? and Our Great Disconnect. Here we see a lonely !gure etched into the
landscape of a typical rural Irish setting, drawn by the blue light on the horizon,
representing the world of smart technology and pcs. The man is on an existential
journey in pursuit of the authentic or real, his back turned (or he’s walking away)
from the only life-giving source available–water. His agitated state encounters
only a desolate landscape.

Head bowed in determination to plough on, the desolate landscape represent ing
his state of mind, it seems serenity and tranquillity has and is eluding him. Brow -
beaten steadfastly over time where the language, expressions, utterances and
images of a society he grew up in, have ‘changed utterly’ and has now become
vacuous, empty, impolite and meaningless. A once carefree land of time, friendli -
ness, welcomes, jocularity and prayer, and even though it has enriched itself
beyond measure, has become fraught with unease and anxiety resulting in
discord and short-tempered ness almost everywhere.

Language and utterances that in themselves have very low vibrational levels,
as distinct from the sensitive, imaginative, poetic and musical language of the
thoughtful, attentive and re"ective person, where consideration and prayer
has resonance. We are human, of both matter and energy where our emotions
and thoughts exist on different vibrational levels, fear and anger being linked
to a much lower vibrational level than positivity and higher states of conscious-
ness and where like attracts like, the man goes down to the river.

As in Psalm #$, the front cover too re"ects its central tenet: ’Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, He leads me beside still waters,
He restores my soul, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days
of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever’.

Maybe all we need to restore order amidst chaos is a simple prayer and if we
all began to pray again the vibrational level across our society would increase
exponentially and Time would return to and for us all.

Kevin Finnerty

*The image was used in the poster for the Abbey Theatre’s !"#" production of Eugene Mc Cabe’s King of the Castle.