Future of Forestry

I love sharing music.  I am generally drawn to music that is not wildly popular or steeped in shallow lyrics. The more thoughtful lyrics, the better. The more creative sounds and arrangments, the better. So to share musica (as my little brother and I always call it) is part of the enjoyment of discovering deeply talented artists.

Part of my joy in music is watching the musicians play their instruments. I am fascinated by how fingers can fly over keys or strings or how much emotion can be heard by a stringed instrument. Since I don't have much musical talent (I sang in youth choir and I play a little piano, and I think deep down I long to learn how to play a stringed instrument like violin or cello) I cannot fathom how a musician knows how to find the right chords without looking or can play so many songs by memory and sing at the same time.

I had heard this group, Future of Forestry, years ago, and liked the few songs I knew, but for some reason I never explored their music until recently. Now I am hooked. Their name drew the curiosity out of me so I dug a little bit (okay, I Googled them) and discovered that their name comes from a C.S. Lewis poem called "Future of Forestry". Of course!!!
Click on the titles, below, for live studio performances of these songs by Future of Forestry. 
Song #1 Close your eyes
Song #2 Slow your breath down

I have a book of C.S. Lewis poems that I happened to read last year, so I course I had read "Future of Forestry", but I re-read it a few times. C.S. Lewis was concerned with the way the world was heading, both with modern thoughts and with modern methods of destroying the land he loved. He frequently took long walks around Oxford, and had walking adventures through the countryside with friends. He obviously loved the land and being out in nature, and he was concerned with concrete taking over where beauty of nature should be. And what if some of our nature was lost and our children's children never saw a tree? Here is the poem "Future of Forestry" below so you can read it:

How will the legend of the age of trees
Feel, when the last tree falls in England?
When the concrete spreads and the town conquers
The country’s heart; when contraceptive
Tarmac’s laid where farm has faded,
Tramline flows where slept a hamlet,
And shop-fronts, blazing without a stop from
Dover to Wrath, have glazed us over?
Simplest tales will then bewilder
The questioning children, “What was a chestnut?
Say what it means to climb a Beanstalk,
Tell me, grandfather, what an elm is.
What was Autumn? They never taught us.”
Then, told by teachers how once from mould
Came growing creatures of lower nature
Able to live and die, though neither
Beast nor man, and around them wreathing
Excellent clothing, breathing sunlight –
Half understanding, their ill-acquainted
Fancy will tint their wonder-paintings
Trees as men walking, wood-romances
Of goblins stalking in silky green,
Of milk-sheen froth upon the lace of hawthorn’s
Collar, pallor in the face of birchgirl.
So shall a homeless time, though dimly
Catch from afar (for soul is watchfull)
A sight of tree-delighted Eden.