These lyrics really need some entirely different-sounding music, I’ve decided, after writing and recording and posting the thing in a couple hours this evening. With the mood of this song, I don’t think there’s much chance of anyone staying up for long. And it certainly doesn’t feel “highly caffeinated.” More like, I just finished weeding the garden in the hot sun and then had a beer on the patio and then cobbled together a song with little lyric idea scraps I had been saving.
Still, I made a song this week! Not sure I’ll be meeting the song-a-week challenge every week this summer, because we’re planning to do some more serious road tripping and fun-having with our kids before our oldest starts senior year (!) in the fall.
Let’s stay up all summer Let’s stay up all night You can be my lover We can kiss and fight There’s not a valid reason for holding back this time there’s nothing like this season To slightly lose your mind
Let’s stay up all summer You and me
I’m highly caffeinated Did you see my text? I’m fully vaccinated Ready for what’s next There’s lots of roads for tripping So many stars to watch There’s cold drinks for the sipping And loads of summer squash
“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
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?
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.
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
Julia Bloom 