Autumn Day (live)
*Performed live by Collective Unconscious at the Pioneer Place Theater, St. Cloud, MN 2005
- Jeff Vee - drums
- Tommy Vee - bass
- Jeff Engholm - lead vocals
- Nathan Nesje - backup vocals
- Rich Witteman - backup vocals
- The Half Steps - backup vocals
- Muggsy Lauer - backup vocals
- George Maurer - piano
- Al Asmus - soprano sax
- Erin Vork - Hammond C3
It's Rilke speaking to us one last time, with this poem written in Paris in 1908. I've always loved Autumn Day for its imagery; darkened sundials, winds on meadows, the pressing of ripened fruit into wine. Its the harvest; the reward for a life fully lived, and brought to fulfillment. But Rilke is never one to write a poem without a little contradiction to it. Even as he says “it's time”, he also admonishes those who are slow to make something of the life that has been given to them; “whoever lives alone, will stay alone..wander restlessly”. Make something of the life and the time you are given, is what I hear Rilke saying.
This live performance by Jeff Engholm, with his band Collective Unconscious, captures the spirit of Rilke's Autumn Day with beautiful spontaneity. It's performance on this CD is dedicated to one who lived his life fully, with deep, relentless gratitude, my friend, Br. Dietrich Reinhart, OSB, past president of St. John's University, who succumbed to his struggle with cancer on the same day and at the same hour that Rilke died. May we all be richly blessed to have friends like Dietrich, or companions like Rilke, who remind us daily of what we really live and strive for.
