ORPHEUS ASCENDING

Bless the spirit that makes connections,
for truly we live in what we imagine.

Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, XII - Rainer Maria Rilke

It's my beloved mother's birthday today and I couldn't resist buying one symbolic present (among some less symbolic gifts) in the form of a bottle of wine for her. Two things instantly struck me about Woodchester Valley's 'Orpheus Bacchus' (2022) when I first caught sight of the elegant label in the 'Made In Stroud' shop window.

Firstly, it was the late Alec Lawless in collaboration with my late father, Peter Waller, who created a combined vision/project together for the Cotswolds that involved the Orpheus Woodchester Pavement replica pavement (which Alec owned for many years) re-constructed during the 1970s and 1980s by the Woodman brothers using 1.6 million pieces.

The central idea of my father and Alec was to create an international centre for art, philosophy and performance with the pavement as its centrepiece which would attract global interest and re-ignite (like 'Greek Fire') a relationship between the past, the present and the future.

There are approximately fifty Roman mosaic floors that illustrate the story of Orpheus (the Greek 'God of Music') taming the wild beasts and the elements with his divine song that have been discovered in all territories of the Roman Empire across the globe, dating between the second to fifth centuries

Secondly, Alec was a wine connoisseur himself and mentored Rickshaw's older brother in the art of oenophilia who would later became an elite sommelier in London. How Alec would have loved knowing that two of his passions would converge in the form of a Woodchester vineyard in the South Cotswolds where the dream of Orpheus laid buried for so many thousands of years.

And my father would, no doubt, have enjoyed a rare glass of 'Orpheus Bacchus' if he were here today to toast my mother's birthday and insist that I play his copy of Monteverdi 'L'Orfeo' (Archiv) which Alec had bought especially for him.