XVIII.

THE FINE ART OF RAIN

"After the Rain" by Aydin Baykara

"City Rain" by Tom Shropshire

"Terrace in the Rain in Marquayrol" by Henri Martin

"Walk in the Rain" by Amare Selfu

XVII.

"It is one of the secrets of Nature in its mood of mockery that 

fine weather lays heavier weight on the mind and hearts of the 

depressed and the inwardly tormented than does a really bad day 

with dark rain sniveling continuously and sympathetically from 

a dirty sky."  ~Muriel Spark

"Suddenly all the sky is hid

As with the shutting of a lid,

One by one great drops are falling

Doubtful and slow,

Down the pane they are crookedly crawling,

And the wind breathes low;

Slowly the circles widen on the river,

Widen and mingle, one and all;

Here and there the slenderer flowers shiver,

Struck by an icy rain-drop’s fall."

~James Russell Lowell, "Summer Storm," 1839

XVI.

Séance on a Wet Afternoon

Full Movie from YouTube, posted by Gelyn Resuma

"Séance on a Wet Afternoon is a 1964 British film directed by Bryan Forbes, based on the novel by Mark McShane, in which an unstable medium convinces her husband to kidnap a child so she can help the police solve the crime and achieve renown for her abilities. The film stars Richard Attenborough (who was also the film's co-producer), Kim Stanley, Nanette Newman, Mark Eden and Patrick Magee."

PLOT

"Myra Savage (Kim Stanley) is a medium who holds séances in her home. Her husband Billy (Richard Attenborough), unable to work because of asthma and cowed by Myra's domineering personality, assists in her séances. Myra's life and psychic work are dominated by her relationship with the spirit of her son Arthur, who died at birth."

"At Myra’s insistence, Billy kidnaps the young daughter (Judith Donner) of a wealthy couple (Mark Eden and Nanette Newman), confining her in a room in the Savage home dressed as a hospital ward. Myra impersonates a nurse to deceive the girl into believing she is hospitalised. Myra insists she is "borrowing" the girl to demonstrate her psychic abilities to the police in helping them find her. Although they ask for a £25,000 ransom, they plan to return the money with the girl after Myra has become famous for helping find her."

"Myra's plan goes awry as her unsteady mental health begins to fray. She tells Billy to kill the girl, and he takes her into the woods and leaves her body under a tree."

"When the police ask Myra to conduct a séance to help them find the missing girl – as she had hoped they would – she breaks down during the séance and reveals, as if in a psychic trance, what she and Billy have done. Billy tells the police where he hid the ransom money and reveals that he did not kill the girl, but left her unconscious where she would be found by scouts camping nearby."

RECEPTION AND AWARDS

"Critical reaction in the British and American media was overwhelmingly strong. The London Express called the film "superbly atmospheric" while The Sunday Telegraph dubbed it "compassionate, intelligent and absorbing." The New York Herald Tribune called Séance on a Wet Afternoon "the perfect psychological suspense thriller and a flawless film to boot" while The New York Times stated "it isn’t often you see a melodrama that sends you forth with a lump in your throat, as well as a set of muscles weary from being tense for nigh two hours.""

"Kim Stanley won the Best Actress Award from the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review. She was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Actress (she lost to Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins) and the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress (she lost to Anne Bancroft in The Pumpkin Eater). Richard Attenborough won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor, while Forbes’ screenplay and Gerry Turpin’s cinematography received nominations. Forbes' script won the Writers Guild of Great Britain Award and the 1965 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America."

CAST

Kim Stanley as Myra Savage

Richard Attenborough as Billy Savage

Nanette Newman as Mrs. Clayton

Mark Eden as Charles Clayton

Patrick Magee as Superintendent Walsh

Gerald Sim as Detective Sergeant Beedle

Margaret Lacey as Woman at first Séance

Marie Burke as Woman at first Séance

Godfrey James as Mrs. Clayton's Chauffeur

Ronald Hines as Policeman outside Clayton's

Frank Singuineau as Bus Conductor

Source:  WIKI

XV.

Prayers For Rain 

The Cure

You shatter me your grip on me a hold on me so dull it kills

You stifle me infectious sense of hopelessness and prayers for rain

I suffocate I breathe in dirt and nowhere shines but desolate

And drab the hours all spent on killing time again all waiting for the rain

You fracture me your hands on me a touch so plain so stale it kills

You strangle me entangle me in hopelessness and prayers for rain

I deteriorate I live in dirt and nowhere glows but drearily and tired

The hours all spent on killing time again all waiting for the rain

You fracture me your hands on me a touch so plain so stale it kills

You strangle me entangle me in hopelessness and prayers for rain

Prayers for rain

Prayers for rain

Prayers for rain

Songwriters

SMITH, ROBERT JAMES / GALLUP, SIMON / O'DONNELL, ROGER / THOMPSON, PORL / TOLHURST, LAURENCE ANDREW / WILLIAMS, BORIS

XIV.

Strange Days

“There are a hundred things she has tried to chase away the things she won't remember and that she can't even let herself think about because that's when the birds scream and the worms crawl and somewhere in her mind it's always raining a slow and endless drizzle.

You will hear that she has left the country, that there was a gift she wanted you to have, but it is lost before it reaches you. Late one night the telephone will sign, and a voice that might be hers will say something that you cannot interpret before the connection crackles and is broken.

Several years later, from a taxi, you will see someone in a doorway who looks like her, but she will be gone by the time you persuade the driver to stop. You will never see her again. 

Whenever it rains you will think of her. ” 

― Neil Gaiman

XIII.

STILL FALLS THE RAIN
Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell, 1940


Still falls the Rain---
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss---
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.

Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat
In the Potter's Field, and the sound of the impious feet

On the Tomb:
Still falls the Rain

In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain
Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.

Still falls the Rain
At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.
Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us---
On Dives and on Lazarus:
Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.

Still falls the Rain---
Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man's wounded Side:
He bears in His Heart all wounds,---those of the light that died,
The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark,
The wounds of the baited bear---
The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh... the tears of the hunted hare.

Still falls the Rain---
Then--- O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune---
See, see where Christ's blood streames in the firmament:
It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree

Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
That holds the fires of the world,---dark-smirched with pain
As Caesar's laurel crown.

Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain---
"Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee."

Dame Edith Sitwell was known for delivering dramatics, the most notable of which might be her practice of lying in an open coffin to prep for writing. -mentalfloss

Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell DBE (7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964) was a British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells.

Like her brothers Osbert and Sacheverell, Edith reacted badly to her eccentric, unloving parents, and lived for much of her life with her governess. She never married, but became passionately attached to the homosexual Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew, and her home was always open to London's poetic circle, to whom she was unfailingly generous and helpful.