The following is written by Umur Sadico the Oud player and writer of the song:
What exactly is the burden of the butterfly? Every life is inhabited by something forgiving, delicate and handsome that is cherished - a butterfly; yet, there may be an unwillingness to witness its course of fruition, its emergence and its passage, for it is potent in something harsh. Beauty is a terrifying thing. The Butterfly’s Burden is one of two pieces composed on A Delicate Procedure as a musical interpretation of poetry. The title of the song was inspired by Fady Joudah’s translated works of Mahmoud Darwish, who had a sublime ability to depict the condition of exile and longing for a situation beyond limits and endless bifurcation. The butterfly that inhabited the life of Darwish was his homeland of Palestine. The unremitting deaths and rebirths he experienced during his lifetime, his exiles and homecomings - what he called “the phoenix” - was always in search of the butterfly. The “selves” in the poem - the mother, the student, the soldier - are no longer content with what they had once sought, a state of affairs almost everyone faces at some point in life. This is the interval when one faces self-exile, and encounters the potential phoenix-moment; self-obliteration. It may lead to resurrection and expansion into the next station or to unresolved ruin. The mother’s son whom she prizes is no longer with her. The student of archaeology sought the face of humanity in the vestiges of artifacts, and finds sparseness, impersonal stone. He questions his own identity. The soldier sought peace and security, but realizes the ghost of war can never be overwhelmed. I imagine Darwish himself, like all the banished and exiled, passed through various stations and experienced such turning points in life. In due course, every life must find respite, as in the final words of the poem. The Butterfly’s Burden is a requiem for the resolve of abode and home.
lyrics
The poem in 'The Butterfly's Burden' read by Monti Karus is an adapted translation of the poem 'Nothing Pleases Me' by Palestinian born poet Mahmoud Darwish:
Nothing pleases me
Says the traveler on the bus
The radio doesn't say it
or the morning paper
or the citadels on the hill
I want to cry
The driver says to me
Wait until you get to the station
Then you can cry alone all you want
A mother says, I agree, nothing pleases me either
I guided my son to my grave, he made a home there and slept
and then left without a goodbye
A student says: Nothing please me, I studied archaeology but I did not find my identity in stone
Am I really me?
The soldier says, me too, nothing
I always end up besieging a ghost that besieges me
At last the driver says:
Here we are, almost at our final stop
Get ready to leave
Then together they exclaim
We want what's beyond the station, keep going!
As for me, just let me off here
I am must like them
Nothing pleases me
But I am tired from travel
Kelebek Evrimi is a progressive ethno-western folk fusion with members hailing from Istanbul, Bulgaria and Perth Western Australia. It is an experimental traditional music project bringing the beauty of the east to the shores of the west.
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