The True Story

Between 1978 and 1980, when I was a young man, I wrote the 25 pieces on the “Spring Water” double LP and 16 of the 18 tracks on the “From Stone” CD. However, the seed for this project was planted when I was eight or nine years old.

We were neighbours, cousins, brothers. We were young and passed all our summer days in the woods that ran through the town at that time, free as conquering Vikings. At the back of our house, in a cool hollow, there was a rock cliff, the stone forming steps that climbed the face of a stone wall. At the top, you crossed through a curtain of cedars onto a plateau of oaks, maples and sunshine, the realm of hares and crows.

At the foot of the cliff, a spring flowed winter and summer, its clear water gushing from the stone floor, delicious and almost too cold. This spring was our treasure, the center of a perfect world full of open spaces that lived in our hearts like a secret.

Brought up in the mysticism of the catholic faith, all living things in this mysterious world seemed akin to me. The oak was my grandfather Villeneuve, his skin like bark, his silence, his wisdom and his strength. And since the children in our home kept a respectful distance from the intimidating presence of my grandfather, I compensated by trying to circle that oak in my small arms, hoping and praying that this wisdom and this strength would pass through my veins like sap.

And in the silence of the night, a few hundred yards from our beds, the spring flowed while we slept.

At eight, my faith was that each living thing in our world had a spirit that occupied the same space, but a different universe. When I wrote the pieces that make up “Spring Water” and “From Stone,” it was as if I was translating the spirits of these things into music, allowing them to pass from their universe to ours.

Today, I still believe that all living things in this world are related : the oak and the maple, the hare and the crow, the water and the stone.