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Ghost on the Canvas - Share your thoughts!

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robduloc
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Re: Ghost on the Canvas - Share your thoughts!

Post by robduloc »

From early spring to late August tiny little tufts of Cottonwood float across the air, sitting in my car at an intersection, waiting for the light to turn green, you can not help notice them, they float across the air like little fairies, somewhere one of the seeds take root and a big beautiful tree will grow, that is the process why they are there, the song Ghost On The Canvas is like that, blossoming all around me.

Fare Thee Well Love, the counter melody for Nothing But The Whole World, it's in one of the guitars and Glen also sings it quietly under his breath for accent.

I was familiar with the words and main melody before I could barely speak, much like Brahms Lullaby, why is that.

It appears to be an Irish Canadian song by Jimmy Rankin, growing up I always assumed it was a cowboy free riding range song.

I never knew the exact name, I always referred to it as Fare The Well, I googled it the other day and discovered the exact full title is Fare Thee Well Love.

Jimmy comes from a family of singers, The Rankin Family.

I am unsure how old his song is but the main melody is there, the one that sticks out, heartwarming and touching, did Jimmy Rankin and his associate adapt the main melody from an older traditional source, I don't know but I wonder.

I really need help learning the background.

Fare The Well Love appears to be the counter melody for track 9 Glen Campbell Ghost On The Canvas.

Help me!

Thank you, Cowpoke! Dee, Jay and Randy.

Rob~


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Cowpoke
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Re: Ghost on the Canvas - Share your thoughts!

Post by Cowpoke »

Oh no I am so far behind. You guys are hard to keep up with. Thanks for all the great insights you all have brought forward! I am trying to fit them all in in my interpretation of this song.

This is what I last wrote:

So [a ghost on a canvas could refer to] something below the surface and probably a lot of the times hard to see, but people who pay attention can sometimes see these "ghosts on the canvas" and they tell something about what's on the other side...

And when I wrote that, the last part of the sentence struck me as essential. Some things "bleed" through from "the other side" and some times, if we have eyes to see, we can see them, even experience them. So maybe life is like a canvas. On the other side of that canvas (so on the other side of life... which is death) there is not just mere silence, there is "soul" and it can bleed through the canvas, half visible half invisible for the ones on "this side".

I agree with Rob there is so much hope in this song, sadness too but even more hope. These themes of life and death must have been the reason the song appealed to Glen... and his wife Kim who has repeatedly confessed her love for this album and this song. To know that there is a place between life and death for them must be immensely comforting.

I know a place between
Life and death for you and me

That first line of course also perfectly fits with the preceding song about A Better Place. Glen has already stated that there is a better place you'll see, meaning the persons he sings the song to, will one day be there with him too.

The second line states what this song is about, it's about life and death. Life connects with you and death connects with me. I have wondered if this song could also be seen as narrated by someone who is already on the other side, communicating to his lover over the air waves that they can still be together even through death.

Yes... I am ready for the next verse Dee! And thanks for all your great insights about Van Gogh and the Rosary. I will comment on them next time!


I'm a carefree, range ridin', driftin' cowpoke...
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Dee
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Re: Ghost on the Canvas - Share your thoughts!

Post by Dee »

Are we ready to move on to these lyrics in the song:

"In between here and there there's a place that we can grow"

and

"Spirits make love in a wheat field with crows"


robduloc
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Re: Ghost on the Canvas - Share your thoughts!

Post by robduloc »

I have spent the last year buying everything that I can get my hands on by Glen Campbell it has increased my respect and admiration for Ovation.

All my years of nightclubbing, I have found Ovation is a good instrument for soloing and to play above all the drunks*

Yes, maybe it was meant to be, a mystery how many guitarist lend their voice for the final curtain call.

And an indicator, Campbell's work lives on and will continue to inspire new generations of axe men, and axe women!

The great equalizer, yes?


robduloc
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Re: Ghost on the Canvas - Share your thoughts!

Post by robduloc »

Thank you, Jay, good save!

Ghost On The Canvas, yes, I think that is an original, it's why I love the album so much~


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jay
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Re: Ghost on the Canvas - Share your thoughts!

Post by jay »

"do people use the expression "ghost on a canvas", independently of this song"

Not to my knowledge. I have never heard or read it prior to the release of the album.

"ghosting" is used quite a bit, in different venues. Sometimes referring to something bleeding over, but not fully. I have had a gift card "ghosted" to where the money was taken off of it, but the item was not paid for. At least that is what the term the merchandiser used.


robduloc
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Re: Ghost on the Canvas - Share your thoughts!

Post by robduloc »

I'm sorry, the opening of the song Ghost On The Canvas has a morse code like motif, it always struck me as an interlude, but they would have given it a name if that were so, the album is full of them and Roger Joseph Manning Jr. gets the credit.

Perhaps the opening for Ghost On The Canvas is an interlude or serves as one. It is a very, very warm song. That is what I love about it. the main melody and arrangement conjures that delicious time of year, mid-Spring perhaps, where you take off your shoes to run in a meadow or barrel down a hill, pull off your top and jump into a lake, stream or pond, water warmed by the sun like drawing a nice bath.

There is a lot of hope built into the song, dreams fulfilled, prayers answered, an unforgettable love.

The campbell family made it so.

As a man of faith Campbell has deep convictions it is a better place that we all go, we need to give his family credit, right here, right now, is where we belong, an incredible feeling for Campbell to love and be loved and if one of us or family are stricken, care will be provided. That's what love is for. The guarding, attention, silent vigil in the lone hours and main part of the day.

Dee mentioned there are little snatches or bits of other songs all throughout the album.

None more powerful, than the counter melody of Nothing But The Whole Wide World. Fare Thee Well Love.

Home fires burning low, getting ready to go on an amazing journey, time to look into the eyes and heart of a loved one and know we are blessed by their presence, warmth and spirit.

Glen Campbell Ghost On The Canvas


robduloc
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Re: Ghost on the Canvas - Share your thoughts!

Post by robduloc »

All the things that I have been trying to say the last couple pages or express how I feel about the opening song, interlude and main title for the album Ghost On The Canvas can be summed up in this letter or message by Paul to a sector of the first Church, so it's better to just put it out there... my source is Through The Eyes Of A Lion Facing Impossible Pain Finding Incredible Power Levi Lusko p. 74.

For we know that if our earthly house, this tent is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house is not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed , but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now he who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has also given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not bu sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather, to be absent from the body and to be present with th the Lord. (vv. 1-8)

That is gospel, Pastor Levi cites another influence, a more recent one on the next page...

Charles Spurgeon once preached, "Death, as it pulls away our sackcloth canopy, will reveal to our wondering eyes the palace of the King in which we dwell forever, and, therefore, what cause have we to be alarmed at it"?

And in Levi's own words in the next paragraph.

The tent that you leave behind is not you. You are not your body. You will never be buried. There is not a single person in a cemetery. Those who used to inhabit those tents have moved onto eternity. Death is not the end of the road; it's just a bend in the road.

And so, I hope everybody can see some of the things that I have been exploring, how lucky we are if we find ourselves in a state of limbo in some well lit bar in the off hours of the afternoon in clean pressed pants and shirt and polished shoes with all access to the dressing room, waiter with full catering services and front stagelight. It is Campbell's territory. It is how he rides the range.

All the years of service recording and performing on the road should be good for something,

And the way the imagery for the Ghost On The Canvas official video is always moving, ever changing, our mortality swallowed up by life.

These are some of my impressions and I am thankful that you have always been so kind to receive them and welcome me.

I am blessed~.

Love,
Rob~


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Dee
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Re: Ghost on the Canvas - Share your thoughts!

Post by Dee »

Thanks for your last two posts, Rob.
I am soaking in everything you wrote and described; for example, the info about a rosary. Powerful!
So glad you are enjoying this discussion, too.
I have no vast knowledge on "Ghost", don't even have a thimble full, as my grandmother used to say, I am just scratching the surface at trying to understand it as a listener and as a fan. :)
Only the songwriter knows his intent. It's rewarding for me to try to understand writers such as Westerberg, Dylan and Webb.
It is a good exercise for us to face the canvas, so to speak, and share in some song analysis, we haven't done this sort of thing for some time on the forums.
The time is right for this challenge, don't you think? Since this album is Glen's portrait of a lifetime, then let's try to see and understand his soul that he is sharing with us now while he is living.
It has helped me to learn about Paul Westerberg first in order to understand the song that he wrote and first recorded.
In the past (and perhaps even now), he has apparently destroyed songs he has written, so, I guess in a way, he has ghosts of his own..."song ghosts" (my words) similar to Van Gogh's ghost paintings!
You wrote: "the album project is the perfect canvas or medium to paint and record incredible impressions or portrait".
Hadn't thought about the entire album being a canvas for Glen Campbell but now I get it!
Dee


robduloc
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Re: Ghost on the Canvas - Share your thoughts!

Post by robduloc »

There is a library of knowledge that you are submitting here for Glen Campbell Ghost On The Canvas.

Thank you, please keep it up, all time you have spent and sites that you have visited and vast knowledge on the subject here are a real treasure trove, microfiche!

I'm only recording my impressions, and so I really and truly rely on what you bring to light, all the people, quotes, cottage industry bounce and sear off the page and fill my head with real people and real life situations. The album just didn't come from anywhere it was forged and formed by some of the great voices and artist of our time, you led me to them.

I am not trying to save or convert anyone, I do care.

We all come from different backgrounds, it's just that there is so much about Glen Campbell Ghost On The Canvas that I feel is linked to his faith.

And yes, the album project is the perfect canvas or medium to paint and record incredible impressions or portrait. It is heartwarming to hear the composers and producer open up about the subject.

There are topics here from last year that I mention the telegraph motif, it is exciting to learn that producer's may have been thinking along the same, "line".

Joseph Campbell says that the root of the word religion comes from the latin religio, which means to link back.

From what I can tell, during the sixties men and women dropped out of college to form rock bands, and they could very well be the ones who turned that into a joke, "God is a verb".

Pretty brutal but necessary to learn, absorb or process.

That should be our faith, that we all have somebody or something to link back with.

Loved ones, divine help or intervention even, to restore us to our rightful place and standing in the thick of things.

As a child, it was very scary and beautiful to hear a morse code motif buried in the arrangement for Wichita Lineman, in my mind the main subject of the song is putting out a signal because the line stretches on forever or to infinity, and he needs to send a message to his love interest, "I'm here", the underlying tone his lady is listening on more than one level or another, pirate signal even.

I'm sure that you can relate, if your job requires to spend a lot of time on the road, you're bound to want to get a message back to your people.

Yep, if you are thinking about your mother, maybe you should call her, because she may be thinking about you, and if she is no longer able to pick up a phone, say a little prayer for her.

That's what opens me up to the wonderful first interlude between A Better Place and the next song, Ghost On The Canvas.

The morse code telegraph signal is still there operating in the background stretching across some formidable dark windy cold void gravitating to the warmth and light of our inner being or innermost nature.

After all these years, Glen Campbell is still asking, "I'm here, where are you"?

What an incredible arrangement to cross the void for us like that, with one of the most incredible, personal, intimate album projects to surface this decade or last two centuries~

Glen Campbell Ghost On The Canvas


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