
Sister John is a nun with a brain tumor, which is giving her migraine-like headaches. On the plus side, it’s also causing seizures that she interprets as very spiritual moments because of the peace and beautiful visions that she experiences. These seizures have, in fact, rescued her from troubling doubts about her religious calling. She finds that there have been other historical figures, including Dostoevsky, that have also enjoyed their seizures. Therefore, she is conflicted about having
Track listing
All songs written and composed by Mike Oldfield, except “The Sailor’s Hornpipe” (traditional, arranged by Mike Oldfield) Side one
“Tubular Bells, Part 1″ 25:36 Side two
“Tubular Bells, Part 2″ 23:20 Personnel Mike Oldfield
Acoustic guitar, bass guitar, electric guitar, Farfisa, Hammond, and Lowrey organs; flageolet, fuzz guitars, glockenspiel, “honky tonk” piano (piano with detuned strings), mandolin, piano, “Piltdown Man”, percussion, Spanish guitar, “double speed guitar”, producer, “taped motor drive amplifier organ chord”, timpani, violin, vocals and tubular bells. Additional personnel
Steve Broughton percussion
Lindsay L. Cooper string basses
Mundy Ellis vocals
Jon Field flutes
Sally Oldfield vocals
Vivian Stanshall Master of Ceremonies
Nasal Choir
Manor Choir (Simon Heyworth, Tom Newman, Mike Oldfield)
Simon Heyworth – producer
Tom Newman – producer
Trevor Key – artwork Album artwork
Tubular Bells picture disc.
The cover design was by Trevor Key, who would go on to create the covers of many Oldfield albums, and was inspired by Magritte’s “Castle in the Pyrenees”.[citation needed]
The concept for the triangular bell on the album cover art originally came from the idea of a bell which had been destroyed. Oldfield had come up with this when he had dented the set of Tubular bells used to record the album when playing them.
The “bent bell” image on the cover is also associated with Oldfield, even being used for the logo of his personal music company, Oldfield Music, Ltd. The image was also the main focus for the cover art of the successive Tubular Bells albums. Tubular Bells has also been issued as a vinyl picture disc, showing the bent bell on a skyscape.
The album cover for Tubular Bells was among the ten chosen by the Royal Mail for a set of “Classic Album Cover” postage stamps issued on 7 January 2010. Significance Virgin
Oldfield approached (and was rejected by) many other established record labels. Some of the rejections were because they believed the piece to be unmarketable. Oldfield then played his demos to some of the Engineers at The Manor; they along with their boss, Richard Branson decided to give Oldfield a chance. Virgin Records released Oldfield’s debut album Tubular Bells as its first album; hence the catalogue number V2001 (although V2002 and V2003 were released on the same date).
The significance of this album to the Virgin empire is not lost on Richard Branson, who named one of his first Virgin America aircraft, 1973 VINTAGE FENDER TELECASTER NATURAL 1 OWNER USA OHSC an Airbus A319-112, N527VA Tubular Belle,. Prior to this Virgin Atlantic had named a Boeing 747-4Q8 , G-VHOT Tubular Belle, in 1994.
Virgin reissued the album a number of times including in 2000 for a HDCD release, and in 2001 for a SACD release. The HDCD release contained liner notes by David Laing, and the SACD release notes were by Phil Newell and Simon Heyworth.
The 50th Anniversary edition of the music magazine Music Week features the album in the official Top-Selling UK albums 19592009 at No. 35, noting it as the only entry that did not yield a hit single. In the Q & Mojo Classic Special Edition Pink Floyd & The Story of Prog Rock, the album came #9 in its list of “40 Cosmic Rock Albums”. The Mail on Sunday free edition
On 22 April 2007 a British newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, gave away 2.25 million free copies of the full original Tubular Bells to its readers; this came in a card packet displaying the original artwork.
EMI (owners of the Virgin Records label) earned between 200,000 and 500,000 from the promotion. The Mail on Sunday claimed that their promotion increased sales of the album by 30%; however industry sources noted that this was not a significant rise for the title at the time. This cover-mount deal came prior to the album’s transfer from Virgin/EMI back to Oldfield.
Oldfield attacked EMI in the press for agreeing this deal with The Mail on Sunday, not having been consulted about it. He also stated that he felt that it devalued the work. In a poll conducted by Music Week, to whom Oldfield wrote a letter about the situation, 89.9% of people supported Oldfield’s view that EMI and The Mail on Sunday should have at least asked him about the cover-mount promotion. Mercury reissue
In 2008 when Oldfield’s original 35 year deal with Virgin Records ended, the rights to the piece were returned to him, and were transferred to Mercury Records On 15 April 2009, Mercury announced the transfer of Oldfield’s Virgin albums to the label, and the first album, Tubular Bells, was re-released in June 2009. Tubular Bells was released on various formats, which include an original vinyl, a new remix, a 2CD edition and DVD. There were also bell ringing events on 6 June 2009 at 6pm (a reference to 666, the Number of the Beast). Overdubbing
Mike Oldfield played most of the instruments on the album (see below), recording them one at a time and layering the recordings to create the finished work. Many of his subsequent albums feature this technique. Though fairly common in the music industry now, at the time of the production of Tubular Bells not many musicians made use of it, preferring multi-musician “session” recordings. Reference in other Oldfield works
Tubular Bells is the album most identified with Oldfield, and the reverse may be true as well, as he has frequently returned to it in later works. The opening passage of the title track on the album Crises and the piece “Harbinger” on the album Music of the Spheres are clearly derived from the opening of Tubular Bells. The opening is also quoted directly in the song “Five Miles Out” from the album of the same name, and the song also features his “trademark” instrument, “Piltdown Man” (referring to his singing like a caveman, first heard on Tubular Bells). Charts and awards
Tubular Bells stayed in the British charts for 279 weeks. It climbed the charts slowly but steadily, and did not reach number one for over a year. In doing so it displaced Oldfield’s second album, Hergest Ridge, which had been at number one for three weeks. This made Oldfield one of only three artists in the UK to beat himself to the top of the album charts.
The album sold more than 2,630,000 copies in the UK alone (making it the all-time 34th best seller in the UK), and according to some reports 15 to 17 million copies worldwide. The album went gold in the USA and Mike Oldfield received a Grammy Award for the best Instrumental Composition in 1975. In popular culture
The opening theme, which was eventually chosen for the 1973 film The Exorcist, gained the record considerable publicity and is how many people have probably first heard the work. Along with a number of other Oldfield pieces it was used in the 1979 NASA movie, The Space Movie. The opening theme has been sampled by many other artists such as Janet Jackson on her song “The Velvet Rope”. The opening theme has also gained cultural significance as a ‘haunting theme’; partly due to the association with The Exorcist.
In television it was also used in several episodes of the Dutch children’s series Bassie en Adriaan, an episode (“Ghosts”) of the BBC series My Family and an episode (“Poltergeist III – Dipesto Nothing”) of Moonlighting. It was also used in a television advertisement for the Volkswagen Golf Diesel in 2002. It has also been used in other films such as 1974′s Black Christmas, 1985′s Weird Science, 2001′s Scary Movie 2, 2002′s The Master of Disguise and 2004′s Saved!.
The intro theme is frequently used during news
All songs written and composed by Mike Oldfield, except “The Sailor’s Hornpipe” (traditional, arranged by Mike Oldfield) Side one
“Tubular Bells, Part 1″ 25:36 Side two
“Tubular Bells, Part 2″ 23:20 Personnel Mike Oldfield
Acoustic guitar, bass guitar, electric guitar, Farfisa, Hammond, and Lowrey organs; flageolet, fuzz guitars, glockenspiel, “honky tonk” piano (piano with detuned strings), mandolin, piano, “Piltdown Man”, percussion, Spanish guitar, “double speed guitar”, producer, “taped motor drive amplifier organ chord”, timpani, violin, vocals and tubular bells. Additional personnel
Steve Broughton percussion
Lindsay L. Cooper string basses
Mundy Ellis vocals
Jon Field flutes
Sally Oldfield vocals
Vivian Stanshall Master of Ceremonies
Nasal Choir
Manor Choir (Simon Heyworth, Tom Newman, Mike Oldfield)
Simon Heyworth – producer
Tom Newman – producer
Trevor Key – artwork Album artwork
Tubular Bells picture disc.
The cover design was by Trevor Key, who would go on to create the covers of many Oldfield albums, and was inspired by Magritte’s “Castle in the Pyrenees”.[citation needed]
The concept for the triangular bell on the album cover art originally came from the idea of a bell which had been destroyed. Oldfield had come up with this when he had dented the set of Tubular bells used to record the album when playing them.
The “bent bell” image on the cover is also associated with Oldfield, even being used for the logo of his personal music company, Oldfield Music, Ltd. The image was also the main focus for the cover art of the successive Tubular Bells albums. Tubular Bells has also been issued as a vinyl picture disc, showing the bent bell on a skyscape.
The album cover for Tubular Bells was among the ten chosen by the Royal Mail for a set of “Classic Album Cover” postage stamps issued on 7 January 2010. Significance Virgin
Oldfield approached (and was rejected by) many other established record labels. Some of the rejections were because they believed the piece to be unmarketable. Oldfield then played his demos to some of the Engineers at The Manor; they along with their boss, Richard Branson decided to give Oldfield a chance. Virgin Records released Oldfield’s debut album Tubular Bells as its first album; hence the catalogue number V2001 (although V2002 and V2003 were released on the same date).
The significance of this album to the Virgin empire is not lost on Richard Branson, who named one of his first Virgin America aircraft, 1973 VINTAGE FENDER TELECASTER NATURAL 1 OWNER USA OHSC an Airbus A319-112, N527VA Tubular Belle,. Prior to this Virgin Atlantic had named a Boeing 747-4Q8 , G-VHOT Tubular Belle, in 1994.
Virgin reissued the album a number of times including in 2000 for a HDCD release, and in 2001 for a SACD release. The HDCD release contained liner notes by David Laing, and the SACD release notes were by Phil Newell and Simon Heyworth.
The 50th Anniversary edition of the music magazine Music Week features the album in the official Top-Selling UK albums 19592009 at No. 35, noting it as the only entry that did not yield a hit single. In the Q & Mojo Classic Special Edition Pink Floyd & The Story of Prog Rock, the album came #9 in its list of “40 Cosmic Rock Albums”. The Mail on Sunday free edition
On 22 April 2007 a British newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, gave away 2.25 million free copies of the full original Tubular Bells to its readers; this came in a card packet displaying the original artwork.
EMI (owners of the Virgin Records label) earned between 200,000 and 500,000 from the promotion. The Mail on Sunday claimed that their promotion increased sales of the album by 30%; however industry sources noted that this was not a significant rise for the title at the time. This cover-mount deal came prior to the album’s transfer from Virgin/EMI back to Oldfield.
Oldfield attacked EMI in the press for agreeing this deal with The Mail on Sunday, not having been consulted about it. He also stated that he felt that it devalued the work. In a poll conducted by Music Week, to whom Oldfield wrote a letter about the situation, 89.9% of people supported Oldfield’s view that EMI and The Mail on Sunday should have at least asked him about the cover-mount promotion. Mercury reissue
In 2008 when Oldfield’s original 35 year deal with Virgin Records ended, the rights to the piece were returned to him, and were transferred to Mercury Records On 15 April 2009, Mercury announced the transfer of Oldfield’s Virgin albums to the label, and the first album, Tubular Bells, was re-released in June 2009. Tubular Bells was released on various formats, which include an original vinyl, a new remix, a 2CD edition and DVD. There were also bell ringing events on 6 June 2009 at 6pm (a reference to 666, the Number of the Beast). Overdubbing
Mike Oldfield played most of the instruments on the album (see below), recording them one at a time and layering the recordings to create the finished work. Many of his subsequent albums feature this technique. Though fairly common in the music industry now, at the time of the production of Tubular Bells not many musicians made use of it, preferring multi-musician “session” recordings. Reference in other Oldfield works
Tubular Bells is the album most identified with Oldfield, and the reverse may be true as well, as he has frequently returned to it in later works. The opening passage of the title track on the album Crises and the piece “Harbinger” on the album Music of the Spheres are clearly derived from the opening of Tubular Bells. The opening is also quoted directly in the song “Five Miles Out” from the album of the same name, and the song also features his “trademark” instrument, “Piltdown Man” (referring to his singing like a caveman, first heard on Tubular Bells). Charts and awards
Tubular Bells stayed in the British charts for 279 weeks. It climbed the charts slowly but steadily, and did not reach number one for over a year. In doing so it displaced Oldfield’s second album, Hergest Ridge, which had been at number one for three weeks. This made Oldfield one of only three artists in the UK to beat himself to the top of the album charts.
The album sold more than 2,630,000 copies in the UK alone (making it the all-time 34th best seller in the UK), and according to some reports 15 to 17 million copies worldwide. The album went gold in the USA and Mike Oldfield received a Grammy Award for the best Instrumental Composition in 1975. In popular culture
The opening theme, which was eventually chosen for the 1973 film The Exorcist, gained the record considerable publicity and is how many people have probably first heard the work. Along with a number of other Oldfield pieces it was used in the 1979 NASA movie, The Space Movie. The opening theme has been sampled by many other artists such as Janet Jackson on her song “The Velvet Rope”. The opening theme has also gained cultural significance as a ‘haunting theme’; partly due to the association with The Exorcist.
In television it was also used in several episodes of the Dutch children’s series Bassie en Adriaan, an episode (“Ghosts”) of the BBC series My Family and an episode (“Poltergeist III – Dipesto Nothing”) of Moonlighting. It was also used in a television advertisement for the Volkswagen Golf Diesel in 2002. It has also been used in other films such as 1974′s Black Christmas, 1985′s Weird Science, 2001′s Scary Movie 2, 2002′s The Master of Disguise and 2004′s Saved!.
The intro theme is frequently used during news
What vintage tv stars WOULD probably utter these words?
1. “Margaret, where are the kids? Kitten! Princess! Bud! Where are you?”2. ” Theo, you have to buckle down and get better grades!”3. ” Matt, you can’t account for everything that happens to people who touch you. You know, I learned a long time ago, there are some things in this life that you just accept the way they are. “”That’s pretty 1973 VINTAGE FENDER TELECASTER NATURAL 1 OWNER USA OHSC deep for a redhead. “” I’m a pretty deep redhead. ” ( I LOVE this conversation.)4. ” Cliff, I love the way you beg. “5, “Let’s just hope for the best. ” Don’t worry, Fred, Ethel’ll come back. “” I said let’s hope for the BEST. “6. Mike: “That thing was over a thousand years old! “Peter:” Oh, well, thank goodness it wasn’t new. “7. ” I’ll swear you in. Do you?”"I do. “” You are.”And another one from the same show:”This isn’t any of our affair.”" We can’t ignore the rest of the world. We’re the only stabilizing influence in the country.”( This show ran from 1959 – 1973.)Hey “brilliant”…Nope. We did not. This is the opposite of yesterday’s fun. Maybe you should change your nickname!! ( Couldn’t resist. Sorry,friend.)And we have our WINNER. Your answers are Brilliant.
1. “Margaret, where are the kids? Kitten! Princess! Bud! Where are you?”2. ” Theo, you have to buckle down and get better grades!”3. ” Matt, you can’t account for everything that happens to people who touch you. You know, I learned a long time ago, there are some things in this life that you just accept the way they are. “”That’s pretty 1973 VINTAGE FENDER TELECASTER NATURAL 1 OWNER USA OHSC deep for a redhead. “” I’m a pretty deep redhead. ” ( I LOVE this conversation.)4. ” Cliff, I love the way you beg. “5, “Let’s just hope for the best. ” Don’t worry, Fred, Ethel’ll come back. “” I said let’s hope for the BEST. “6. Mike: “That thing was over a thousand years old! “Peter:” Oh, well, thank goodness it wasn’t new. “7. ” I’ll swear you in. Do you?”"I do. “” You are.”And another one from the same show:”This isn’t any of our affair.”" We can’t ignore the rest of the world. We’re the only stabilizing influence in the country.”( This show ran from 1959 – 1973.)Hey “brilliant”…Nope. We did not. This is the opposite of yesterday’s fun. Maybe you should change your nickname!! ( Couldn’t resist. Sorry,friend.)And we have our WINNER. Your answers are Brilliant.














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If you are interested in the space in which faith meets neurology, you’ll love this one.
LYING AWAKE is a very spare novel, yet a very luminous little book.
The story is set in modern day Los Angeles and chronicles the life of a Carmelite Nun who has recently experienced ecstasies which are unexplained until it is discovered that her “migraines” (which preceed the light) are in fact the result of a condition known as “temporal-lobe epilepsy.” She has become a copious poet and writer, even publishing a book that has benefitted her Convent. The other sister’s are in awe of her connection to God!
“…she learned that temporal-lobe epilepsy sometimes caused changes in behavior even when the patient was not having seizures. The changes included hypergraphia (voluminous writng), an intensification but also a narrowing of emotional response, and an obdsessive interest in religion and philosophy. The novelist Dostoevsky, who was epileptic, followed this model so closely that the syndrome was eventually named after him,” (pg 120)
“There are moments,” Dostoevsky wrote, “and it is only a matter of five or six seconds, when you feel the presence of the eternal harmony…a terrible thing is the frightful clearness with which it manifests itself and the rapture with which it fills you. If this state were to last more than five seconds, the soul could not endure it and would have to disappear. During these five seconds I live a whole human existence, and for that I would give my whole life and not think that I was paying too dearly….”
Others mentioned that were speculated to have this condition were Van Gogh, Tennyson, Proust, Socrates, St. Paul and St. Teresa of Avila.
The central question in the novel centers around having an operation to remove a small meningioma behind her right ear which would stop the progression of the disorder….but take away the high spirtual ectasies that she feels God blessed her with.
I won’t give away her ultimate decision, because some of you may wish to read it …it’s a very fast read., but rich with faith and hope
I read this book for a book club. Overall, the group gave it a thumbs down. I liked it more than most because of how the story stirred questions in my head and how it was a nice, smooth, quick read. There was so much potential for the author to dig deeper into characters and plot points; I was left with so many questions that could have been addressed. I guess the upside of that lack of content is that the story was not too long! I could see much potential for the story to go on and wear out the reader. The topics of faith and health and solidarity are so huge. I cannot imagine condensing them so much, but the author managed it, maybe too well.
Although simply beautiful at times, Lying Awake disappointed on several levels. The connection of the reader with the main character Sister John had potential to be much stronger. I felt the connection grow as the story progresses, especially when we learn more about Helen. Overall though, I was sad that so much was left undeveloped. I also found the titles, pictures, years, month and dates at the beginning of the sections to be a bit confusing. After trying to make sense of these details throughout the first few sections, I found it more enjoyable to skip the details. Even going back through after finishing the book, I felt these bits as a whole to be more of a distraction (even a hindrance) than an asset to the book. This is a good book. I don’t need all the questions posed in the book to be answered or all the loose ends tied up, but I do expect a book with such high praises to live up to the hype. I don’t think this one did.