Culture/society/politics

Nothing’s Wrong

April 8, 2022 — 1 Comment

I got through COVID and then was back on the couch this week with a stomach bug. So even thinking about songwriting had to wait until about last night (Thursday). I turned to a song idea from a previous week that I hadn’t finished.

This song had been insisting on its lyrical hook being “nothing’s wrong,” and I wasn’t convinced, which is why I didn’t use it the week I came up with it. Now this week I felt that continued insistence, and with enough other scrappy ideas worked in, it felt like it wanted to be called good.

One of those ideas was inspired by this quote:

But like you say, sticks and stones will break your bones, but words aren’t going to hurt. But they do stick to your head,” [Frank] Cruz said.

It was from an article where Cruz was talking about growing up Mexican in St. Paul’s west side neighborhood. I loved the concept that words don’t hurt but they stick to your head. I tried to work it in lyrically to this song – either “stick to” or “stick in” or “stick inside” your/my head. But I didn’t end up using this variation on the cliche at all. Still, it was reading that article – and copying down the quote – that led me to use the “sticks and stones” cliche in the song.

Overall, I know there’s something here about passive-agressiveness. And/or Minnesota niceness. Not necessarily based on personal experience, although I’ve experienced it – and given it out.

And there’s that wall we sometimes put up when we don’t want to talk about it, whatever it is – “nothing’s wrong,” we say. And also there’s gaslighting. And “don’t be so sensitive.”

And then the complete disconnect I often feel these days, in my comfortable, not-bombed-out, not-running-for-my-life existence, as the news is filled with the latest horrors in Ukraine. I feel like I’m living like nothing’s wrong.

I don’t want to sing this song
Hey nothing’s wrong
You don’t have to sing along
Hey hey hey nothing’s wrong

Sticks and stones
May break my bones

Stop me if you’ve heard this one
Hey nothing’s wrong
We were just having fun
Hey hey hey nothing’s wrong

Words will never
Hurt me

Nothing’s wrong
Nothing’s wrong
Nothing’s wrong

Everybody step in line
Hey nothing’s wrong
Everything is just so fine
Hey hey hey nothing’s wrong

Two Lost

March 31, 2022 — 2 Comments

This is one of those songs I don’t feel like saying too much about. It’s shaded with some personal experience but I was also thinking (feeling?) about lots of other things including but not limited to face slaps, cancel culture, love and war.

And if I told you all
What kindness could you offer me
Who caused you pain, me
Who you have reason to blame?

I’ve fallen far from grace
Misspoken, made mistakes that you
Can not forget, you
Have never wanted to yet

Try as I might I cannot
Make it right without you
And your heart in the game
Cause it takes two to win
And right now we’re just two lost

We’ve both been hiding from
The truth we can’t face up to here
Where we’re so scared, here
Where life’s pathetically fair

I’m thinking if I go
You might just think it over then
When I’m gone, then
When you’re old and alone

Try as I might I cannot
Make it right without you
And your heart in the game
Cause it takes two to win
And right now we’re just two lost

What if we start again
Who says we can’t imagine more
Than what we had, more
Than in and out, good and bad

Try as I might I cannot
Make it right without you
And your heart in the game
Cause it takes two to win
And right now we’re just two lost

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 . . .

Us For Now (A Sort of Fairy Tale)

February 2, 2022 — 2 Comments

This was one of those weeks (Week 4 #songaweek2022) when I used the prompt (“we win”) and it actually helped me get started on the song (thus the whole first verse with soldiers and a battle).

Playing with the wording of classic fairy tale beginning and ending phrases (“once in a while upon a time” and “happily ever after it all”) led me to write the whole song with a fairy tale kind of feel to it.

The first line of the parting couplet came to me in the middle of the night and felt right for this song (“that moment between letting go and hitting the ground”).

One thought, after I had already posted the song – I would change the wording in the last chorus to “this isn’t a story for you to tell on your own.” I noticed that there’s interior rhyme in the other two choruses (“this isn’t a BATtle you HAVE to worry about” and “this isn’t a SEcret you NEED to keep to yourself”) – so I wanted it in the last one too (“this isn’t a STORy FOR you . . . “). Which interestingly enough was my first draft of that line anyway. Hats off to the subconscious!

Oh, also I went with this “comic mono” filter in iMovie to add to the fairy tale feel. Not always a fan of the comic filters but it felt right here.

Once in a while upon a time
Brave little soldiers stand in a line
Armed to the teeth, hearts in their throats
Earth’s firm enigma under their boots

This isn’t a battle you have to worry about
We’re all on the same side and we win

Small ones are sleeping deep in the woods
Tall trees are dreaming over their heads
Fungus is feeding on all we forgot
Water is reaching slowly through rock

This isn’t a secret you need to keep to yourself
We’re all on the outside looking in

Now is the moment, here is the place
True is the smile creasing my face
I’ve struggled and suffered and still I recall
Happily ever after it all

This isn’t a story that you must [for you to] tell on your own
We’re all here deciding how it ends

That moment between letting go and hitting the ground
That’s what we call life, that’s us for now