Might As Well Love It

June 10, 2021 — 2 Comments

It’s always an extra-fun songwriting week when Nathan has time to join in the process! I had this song mostly written last week. On Monday Nathan and I spent some time with it, finishing up the writing and arranging, and the next few days we recorded bits and pieces as we had time. I sang and played acoustic guitar. Nathan did EVERYTHING else, which never ceases to amaze me!

This old world well it’s not that bad
I guess I’m not afraid to stay till I know it’s time to go
Might put down roots, put up my feet
Lower the lights, enjoy the show
Or what I can of it cause there’s a lot that I can’t
Unspeakable horrors, untouchable hurts
Some people talk about hell, talk about hand baskets
First world problems and last-ditch efforts

It’s a bright beach ball alone in the ocean
Have the time of our lives right here right now
It’s a disco strobe in an empty room
And we’re on it doggone it till the house burns down
And we love it we love it
We might as well love it

You and me dear well we’re not all good
Still we’re brave enough to stay till we have to let go
We’re digging out of old ruts, breaking new ground
Making glacial progress at taking it slow
We were drafted to fight in this eternal war
But conscientiously, I object
So damn the torpedoes and melt down the guns
And kiss me tenderly when I stick out my neck

On this bright beach ball alone in the ocean
Have the time of our lives right here right now
It’s a disco strobe in an empty room
And we’re on it doggone it till the house burns down
And I love you I love you
I might as well love you

I Am Love

June 3, 2021 — 3 Comments

“I don’t even know how to talk to people anymore,” I heard someone say recently. And I feel that so much too. Not that I ever really knew how to talk to people! But whatever progress I had made in 45 years feels stunted after one year of social distancing.

Emerging from pandemic life, I feel awkward and unsure and even afraid, a little like I did back in junior high – what will people think of me? What if I say the wrong thing? Practically any time spent on social media these days only amplifies those feelings for me.

There’s a lot more I could (try to!) say about how and why I wrote this song, but to sum up, this was one of the few songs I’ve written that felt mostly like a complete gift from the blue – the comforting words I needed just showing up in my thoughts when I most needed them.

You don’t have to be right, you don’t have to be smart
You don’t have to be what you are, you don’t have to be what you aren’t
You are completely loved, you’re forever forgiven
My great heart is enlarged by your wondrous existence

I’m the last to judge
I’m the first to love 
I always was, I always will be
I am who I am

You don’t have to make sense, you can tell me what’s on your mind
You can never offend one who sees you from every side
And I love who I see and you’re not the only one
Take a look around, oh I feel this for everyone

I’m the last to judge
I’m the first to love 
I always was, I always will be
I am who I am

In the end all that it comes down to is love in everything

And that’s what the world needs, that’s what everyone’s wanting
It feels impossible but with me nothing
Is impossible, no it’s never been easy
but it’s simple enough for a child to see

I’m the last to judge
I’m the first to love 
I always was, I always will be
I am who I am

New Again (collaboration with Rich Waring)

May 29, 2021 — Leave a comment

I got to do another cowrite this week! This time Rich Waring, a British friend in my song-a-week group, brought a more-or-less complete song and asked for help finishing it. He sent me the lyrics and a recording and I spent some time with it, then we Zoomed and discussed some lyric edit ideas and a plan for recording it. He recorded guitar, drum track, his vocals, then sent it to me. I added my vocals and sent it back. He added a little synth and mixed it all together and here we are!

Rich is a prolific singer/songwriter with a fascinating emotional range and deep creative energy to his music. You can hear much more of his work at his Soundcloud page – https://soundcloud.com/rich-waring.

I’ve been dead and born again
More times than I can count 
From smallest to the largest I have grown
The corners turned, the lessons learned 
but only to forget
In the silence of the falling snow

Summers come and summers go
And winters never end
until the spring awakens us from sleep
But on beyond the coming fall
I’ll never rise again
These bones will be the final piece of me

But oh – feel the life rising and I’m new again
Oh – does it really matter how it goes away?

I’ve been dancing skyward 
with the birds and all the bees
Spinning out the quivering strands of life
Weaving sound and colour til they’re free to be released
Miracles on miracles in flight

Inside the gene you never see
but feel at every turn
I’m the one who steers you through the dark
I’m the love and longing
That can bring you through the hurt
That makes the meaning pulling at your heart

Oh – feel the life arising and I’m new again
Oh – does it really matter that it goes

When there’s a love……
I feel a love that lifts me up and lays me down to my rest
I feel a love that lifts me up and lays me down to my rest

Feel the bees that tickle 
as they nibble at your flowers
Knowing how their kisses share your life
Though the birds may wound you 
as they’re pecking at your boughs
Only they can spread the seed so wide

Lovers come and lovers go
and wonders never cease
So we travel wide and travel far
Though they fade and fall away
like autumn’s changing leaves
love remains and makes us what we are

Oh – feel the life arising and I’m new again
Oh – does it really matter how it goes away?

Initiation (Rainer Maria Rilke) set to music

May 19, 2021 — Leave a comment

For week 20 of #songaweek2021 I turned to Rilke for my lyrics. I’d saved this poem with other song ideas I had but I wasn’t clear on its title. An internet search brought me to another WordPress blogger’s post about the same poem, from almost exactly a year ago! The blogger, Jeff Japp, gives two possible interpretations of the poem. And then a commenter asked if it might also be “the-end-of-quarantine poem” – and I hadn’t even thought of that but maybe that’s why I was drawn to this particular poem in this particular week as life around me starts to feel so much more opened up again (a year out from that original comment!).

Whoever you are, go out into the evening,
leaving your room, of which you know each bit;
your house is the last before the infinite,
whoever you are.

Then with your eyes that wearily
scarce lift themselves from the worn-out door-stone
slowly you raise a shadowy black tree
and fix it on the sky: slender, alone.

And you have made the world (and it shall grow
and ripen as a word, unspoken, still).
When you have grasped its meaning with your will,
then tenderly your eyes will let it go.

There’s a Story Here

May 14, 2021 — Leave a comment

This song started from my listening to a Radiolab podcast episode called “Kleptotherms.” The episode consisted of several stories and I think it was the second story, the one about a young man with schizophrenia named John and an old woman he met on the beach when he was having a bad day, who invited him to sit with her and eat his lunch. I can’t even tell you how much I loved this story and hearing John tell it himself.

And that feels like it makes no sense with the way the song played out. I wrote the first verse and then the chorus where the words “there’s a story here” tumbled out and brought with them “but it doesn’t need telling,” and I thought that was so strange until “at least not in so many words” helped to make a little more sense of the idea.

That night I went to bed and another verse came to me as I was falling towards sleep, so I put it all down in my phone memos to deal with the next day.

The next day – I had a verse with a lovely little story and then another verse describing something more sinister. I was having a hard time making sense of this song but it still felt compelling to me.

So I lived with it another day and night, played it a few more times, worked out the bones of a bridge and last chorus that helped me understand it a little more. This morning I walked the dog and got the lines that feel like a key – “you take it all in, you live it all out.”

Some things are beyond explanation, transcendent in positive or negative ways – beautiful or terrible or neither or both but just not put-into-words-able. These are stories that we probably tell better with our lives than with our words.

Or something like that. There’s a song here but maybe it doesn’t need all that telling, not so many words.

He was feeling so low
Couldn’t talk himself down
From the edge in the fog in his head
She was there on the beach
Asking him to sit down
And eat his sandwich instead

A young troubled man
An old placid woman
The sun and the sand and the birds
There’s a story here
But it doesn’t need telling
At least not in so many words

Under stained glass you see him
The man of the cloth
Pulling wool over sheep’s trusting eyes
While the wolves go on howling
Outside in the dark
And you still have to live till you die

The devil you know
The devil you don’t
The lies and confessions you’ve heard
There’s a story here
But it doesn’t need telling
At least not in so many words

And you know what you know
And you feel what you feel
And you wait till the moment is right
But it all stacks up wrong
On the tip of your tongue
And you swallow it back in one bite

You take it all in
You live it all out
The subject, the object, the verb
There’s a story here
But it doesn’t need telling
At least not in so many words