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Krościenko

March 18, 2022 — 8 Comments

“Chocolate rabbit” happened to be the prompt for Week 11 of #songaweek2022. I wasn’t thinking about that when I wrote this song. I was simply captivated by this NPR article I had come across about men working to fix an 18-mile stretch of abandoned rail line in Poland near the Ukraine border, to allow for more refugees to enter Poland. It just so happened that there was chocolate in the article which made its way into my song too.

There is something so viscerally joyful and true about good hard work. That’s what I wanted to capture with this song. I wanted to set aside any search for meaning or profound thoughts or emotional expression, and just dig into the story of these men doing this job. As I reread the article with songwriting in mind, I was struck with how many of the details were numbers, so I used those numbers to help construct the lyrics.

I suggest listening to the song in my video while scrolling through the photos in the article. (Krościenko is the name of the nearest town to where this work is happening.)

Here’s a link to the article – https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2022/03/13/1086032747/russia-ukraine-poland-refugees-train-rail-tracks

Eleven men one hour forty feet
It’s good work
Eight-inch screws and twenty-six degrees
Fix the track
One point five million refugees
Have come to us

Coffee tea and cigarettes
Pastries, smiles and chocolate
Will keep us going, yeah

There’s eighteen miles of rocks we have to dig
It’s good work
Laid down in the nineteenth century
Fix the track
One point five million refugees
Was just the start

Coffee tea and cigarettes
Pastries, smiles and chocolate
Will keep us going, yeah

To get here it takes three hours driving
It’s good work
Each new tie takes two men to be carried
Fix the track
One point five million refugees
Is not the end

Don’t Go

March 11, 2022 — 1 Comment

I generated several song ideas this week and none of them would take. Then yesterday (Thursday) I sat at the piano and this one came out in one session.

There’s a lot of influences here. The most obvious – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The other things here are ruminations I’ve had from that news. Questions about when and how violence is justified. Fear about nuclear devastation. Jesus’s agony in Gethsemane the night before he was crucified. A hope and plea for renewed connections across the lines we’ve let divide us – and facing the important truth that we all have something to bring to the table, even as we are all part of the problem.

The title line, “don’t go,” is a call for us to be present for one another. There are so many ways we can check out, be distracted or busy, write people off, ignore the deep call of our own soul – and miss what really matters for much of our lives.

Who lets the madmen decide how the world turns around?
Who gives them permission to push big red buttons and blow up our home?
Now I’m sorry cause sometimes I keep to myself
The things that need speaking out loud

Couldn’t you be with me just for one last tortured night?
I need you to see me and help me believe there’s some sense in it all
Now I’m bleeding and nobody knows what to do
Oh can’t you just wait for one hour?

Don’t go
You’re the last light for someone tonight
Hold on
We are better when we come together

Who’s going to save us from what feels inevitable?
Why do we tell stories where everything comes out alright in the end?
Now I’m certain that nothing is written in stone
And you never know what’s to come

Don’t go . . .

I’ll keep on singing cause that’s what I know how to do
And I need you to be you and let your life speak what you know to be true
We’re all healers and heartbreakers in our own ways
Destroyers and makers of worlds

Don’t go . . .

Somebody Loves You

January 20, 2022 — Leave a comment

The crooners sang “you’re nobody till somebody loves you,” and that can sound really quite heartless when you think about it.

But I’ve been thinking about other things lately, things that have influenced the writing of this song.

“Nothing stands alone” is this year’s topic for Richard Rohr’s daily meditations, which I read most days.

“We are all in this together. We are all in this alone,” sang Pierce Pettis in “Just Like Jim Brown.”

Every morning I roll out of bed and spend about 45 minutes doing exercises for a slightly arthritic knee, while listening to James Finley’s “Turning to the Mystics” podcast. Probably most of the reason I listen is for Finley’s voice and presence, and I know that things he’s said and ways he’s said them have contributed to this song.

The music came from a melody and chord progression I had rejected on my way to writing “Remember December.” I liked it enough to save the idea for future reference, and this week that musical idea and the #songaweek2022 weekly prompt (“standing in the doorway”) gave me enough to go on to pull this song together.

Frustrating technical difficulties with sharing this video here, but if you click on it you should be able to watch normally. It is more than a gray screen!

There must be something I could say to you
There must be something more that I could do
After all we’re all in this alone
Standing in the doorway leaving home

Somebody
Somebody
Somebody loves you

You’ve got the freedom and you’ve got the right
So go on and be the one to shine the light
After all we’re all a little scared
Standing at the bottom of the stairs

Somebody . . . loves you

And you’re not going anywhere without that love

After all we’re nothing on our own
Everything keeps breathing through our bones

Somebody . . . loves you

Go Boldly Into the Night

December 30, 2021 — Leave a comment

This song started because I have theological issues with that old song “I’ll Fly Away.” And then in the course of being written, it picked up an allusion to that Dylan Thomas poem you probably read in high school.

It’s my last song for #songaweek2021. I did miss one week (or was it two?) because I was on summer vacation and I’m proud of myself for being okay with that (as opposed to being okay with being proud of myself for that).

I’m gonna fly but I won’t fly away
I’ll keep soaring over every blessed thing
And when you feel the wind in your hair
Remember I carry you upon my wings

I’m gonna die but I won’t die away
I’ll keep singing over every precious thing
And when you feel the music inside
Don’t try to keep quiet, let the anthem ring

Go boldly into the night
Death only takes your life

Go boldly into the night
Death only takes your life

Time’s gonna come for every last one
Finally forever to let our selves go
And when we feel our last breath escape
We fall on the grace of all we do not know

Go boldly into the night
Death only takes your life

Don’t worry when good stories end
Love always comes again

All of This Time

October 23, 2021 — 1 Comment

This is week 42 of #songaweek2021. Which makes this week “the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.” But not necessarily this song. It just gets to say it was born in a fortuitous time.

Oh, I must give some credit for inspiration – this post from The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings) discussing a book about trees called Old Growth, about how trees do everything, including living and dying, on a very different timescale from us humans.

And thanks to my daughter for letting me use her Sirius Black bobblehead, and my brother for the gift of the Ukrainian nesting doll many years ago. They were very cooperative film stars.

I remember my grandmother and the laundry on the line
But I feel it like a story from another space and time
Oh the sweet sting in the memories of the days we’ve left behind
Gone forever, come back never, nevermore

There goes the me I used to be
Here comes the one I’m setting free
All of this time it’s up to me to live with me
In peace

There’s a country undiscovered in each other who I meet
You’re a universe of wonders and you share this air I breathe
It’s a language only you know but I’ll listen when you speak
You mean more to me than anything you say

There goes the you I thought I knew
Here is the you I’m talking to
All of this time I’m only taking in a glimpse
Of you

I go dreaming with the trees while they are dying by degrees
Round my feet I feel their children rising up from broken seeds
Taking root, spreading out, bright sky, dark ground
Changing ever and forever, evermore

There goes the world we used to know
Here comes the one we’re making now
All of this time it’s up to us to live with us
In love