Asha ~ Never give up

Asha (aka Asher Quinn & Asha Elijah) sings ’Never give up’ from his album “Calvary Hill.” CD & download available here ~ http://ashaquinn.com/calvaryhill.htm

’Never give up’ was partly inspired by the ordeal of recovering from an unlikely summer pneumonia. I didn’t really know I was ill, until I couldn’t breathe very well and felt rather shaky and disembodied. I had no fever and so carried on being active, but with a cough I couldn’t shake. I didn’t think too much of it until it all began to turn weird. I'm sure that the pneumonia was grief-induced, because of the loss of a relationship, but I see the crisis now as a mercy rather than something bad. The illness was a purification.

On impulse at the worst moment, I managed to reach Margaret Island, in the Danube, reached by steps from the Margaret bridge. There I found two stones and two trees. The stones I used as a kind of rosary, and the trees served as meditation points. Feeling acutely disembodied, I walked between the two trees with the stones in my right hand, for over four hours, repeating an impromptu mantra; Mária, Jésusz... Mária, Jésusz... Mária, Jésusz.

In my imagination I saw myself on an operating table, but in heaven, being healed by angels! I felt like I was in a holding bay filled with light. I felt I was at Heaven’s Gate.

This was friday, and I stayed in the 'holding bay' atmosphere until sunday morning. Then I awoke, and within a few hours I felt the first hint of an appetite returning. I had not eaten at all for several days, and had lost 8 kgs over those days and weeks in which my cough had worsened.

And so ‘Never give up’ came through as a song of thanksgiving! I filmed for it up on Calvary Hill (Kálvária-hegy), in the Buda hills just outside Budapest, where I had been living. I spent virtually the entire summer of that year up there filming, composing, exploring and communing. In the film I notice I have a lightness of being, not entirely explained by my weight-loss.

And then a friend sent me this:

"The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom stands by and listens for him, and is overjoyed to hear the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must increase; I must decrease."

~ John 3:29-30