This week’s song came together from so many influences. Here’s a non-exhaustive list:
Peace, please, peace.
Afghani woman on BBC Newshour, 13 August 2021
Won’t you knock down all the walls that we built stable? / Tip them over and restore them to sturdy dinner tables
Nate Crary, Messy Mass liturgy, “Only By Our Lonesome” song
“Once There Was” – a song and an album by Carrellee. It’s really only that phrase that influenced the line in my song, “once there never was.” Just playing with words.
“Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” by Pete Seeger
Blessed are the poor in spirit . . .
Jesus, Matthew 5:3
You think you know all the right things to tell a fool like me But I won’t hear you at all as long as this wall stands where a table should be
I am not so sure what we’re fighting for Where have all the poor in spirit gone?
Once there never was all that we tell ourselves there was back then Now is right where we are and right where we can begin to be again
I am not so sure what we’re fighting for Where have all the poor in spirit gone?
“Peace, please, peace . . .”
We are stars and mud, spirit and spit fire and flood, brawn and brain Ours are oceans unknown, deserts that patiently await the rain
I am not so sure what we’re fighting for Where have all the poor in spirit gone?
Time is a funny thing. I would say this song was inspired by my reading of this Brain Pickingspost detailing a letter Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his brother, except that I read the post after I’d already written the song. Here’s an especially relevant quote from it –
What moulting is to birds, the time when they change their feathers, that’s adversity or misfortune, hard times, for us human beings. One may remain in this period of moulting, one may also come out of it renewed, but it’s not to be done in public, however; it’s scarcely entertaining, it’s not cheerful, so it’s a matter of making oneself scarce.
Vincent Van Gogh
I don’t want to say a lot about this song. Just that in my 45 years I’ve come to know firsthand the immense value of the pause. Time truly can heal – but you have to give yourself to it, and sometimes that means removing yourself from the rushing river where everything else purports to be happening, and everybody expects something from you.
How long how long can you hold on to the pain? When when can you let go and open up again?
Can you go the distance with these rocks inside your shoes? Is there ever space and time to stop it all for a while? Life is bright with colors but you only feel the blues And everyone keeps telling you to smile
How long how long can you hold on to the pain? When when can you let go and open up again?
Everyone’s a critic, every dog thinks it’s his day Every day’s frenetic and a rest can feel like a crime You rest easy honey, feel the cosmic cradle sway Something good will happen in good time
How long how long can you hold on to the pain? When when can you let go and open up again?
“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
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
There’s pits you never might get to the bottom of There’s rivers flowing any which way but love There’s words nobody with breath ever should have said Reverberating inside your head
All is falling, falling down Falling down on the ground of God
There’s peaks you never might wish to descend from There’s roads going every direction home There’s songs of healing and joy about to be sung Vibrating on the tip of your tongue
All is rising, rising up Rising up from the ground of God
Be still children be still Breathe the breath of life Be not afraid To give it back
There’s no beginning or end to the question There’s battles around you and war within There’s hope that hits you like a bolt from the blue Obliterating what you thought you knew
All is falling, falling down Falling down on the ground of God All is rising, rising up Rising up from the ground of God
Julia Bloom 