Songs

Fire Inside

April 8, 2021 — 12 Comments

One thing pandemic life has taught me is how to write a song at a moment’s notice. Today my afternoon brought me an unexpected two hours to myself, so I set everything aside and started writing just a few minutes after the door closed and I was alone in the house. It’s become almost a habit now, to sit down and write till I get stuck, then take the dog for a walk and try to work out the rest of it. Which is how I finished this one.

The prompt for #songaweek2021’s week 14 is “inside there’s a fire” which was in front of me as I was writing this one, and I liked it enough to take my title from it too.

This week I have a cold so I got to use my low notes. Also I’ve upgraded my blog so I can now directly embed audio files here, rather than linking to Soundcloud. I didn’t make a video this week since I’m not feeling the greatest, wanted the recording process to be low-hassle.

Oh, maybe you can tell I’ve been hearing a lot of U2 lately thanks to my daughter having newly discovered them and playing their music pretty much exclusively all the time. I think some of Bono’s vocalizing influenced me 🙂


I’m sitting on the back steps on an April afternoon
Just minding my own business, making up a little tune
Nothing’s wrong
In this song
Sun shining and the birds are singing and the rain falls now and then
Grass growing, little buds are showing on the ends of waking stems
Everything
Is breathing

My heart keeps beating at the bars
Of this bony cage

I’m lying on my back one summer night when I was young
Eyes gazing through the blackness at a million sparkling suns
Up is down
Lost is found
Hand of another holding mine and fingers intertwined
Just-blossomed lovers coming close in body and in mind
So damn true
So brand new

My heart is pulsing with the stars
Through this eager flesh 

I’m looking for the way back to the best that’s yet to come
I’m jumping in the river just to find out where it runs
Sink or swim
I’m all in
My heart perpetually starts
And starts again

Lamentation 21

March 24, 2021 — 1 Comment

Last night I turned off the news and played classical music while I made dinner. Sometimes no words, only music, is exactly what I need. This week, #songaweek2021 week 12, I wanted to make my own wordless music with the instrument I feel most proficient at, my voice. I used a black screen for the video so if you are so inclined, you may want to put the video on full screen – let your screen go black and feel the music. This is my cry of a song for this young year already freighted with so much grief.

Into Your Hands

March 18, 2021 — 2 Comments

Every year for Good Friday my church puts out a call to artists to choose one of the seven last words of Christ and share something based on the particular last words they chose. For now our church is doing everything online – mostly Facebook Live – including the upcoming Good Friday service. I was getting ready to sign up for “Into your hands I commend my spirit,” and started writing the words to this song, before I realized our family’s plan to go camping that weekend will negate my ability to do any livestreaming that day.

Still, I liked what I had started and decided to go ahead and make it my song for week 11 of #songaweek2021.

Every winter I think I’m dying
Come the spring I feel like trying
Trying again
In the summer I know I’m living
Go to fall it all starts giving
Giving out, gone
On and on and on and on

Chasing down the speed of light
Face pressed up to window staring out of my existence
Back against the wall of furious insistence
Into your hands
Into your hands
I commend my spirit

Every night’s an invitation
To a sweet obliteration
Of all that I think I should be
In the morning I remember
Dreams that fade like dying embers
Light as dry leaves
Leaving, left, and lost

Chasing down the speed of light
Face pressed up to window staring out of my existence
Back against the wall of furious insistence
Into your hands
Into your hands
I commend my spirit

All Our Living Lives

March 10, 2021 — Leave a comment

“A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do” randomly popped into my head this week, along with a tune. So I followed it out and wrote this song for week 10 of #songaweek2021. Recorded on a rainy day in March in my basement studio, the perfect kind of day to spend in a basement studio!

“A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do”
That’s what you said but i don’t think it’s true
Somebody somewhere’s been lying to you
All your living life

Drop what you’re fighting and give me your hand
Let’s just relax for now
Follow me down where the waves meet the land
You’ve been waiting all your life somehow

“The bigger they are the harder they fall”
But that don’t seem right cause I’m feeling so small
I don’t know if you can hear me at all
All my living life

It’s never been easy for me to explain
Let’s just go somewhere new 
Follow me hard like a runaway train
I’ve been waiting all of my life too

Out of the frying pan into the fire
Let’s just keep breathing now 
Over the limit and under the wire
We’ve been broken open anyhow

Something about you, something about me
Something about the wind in the trees
Nothing much out of the ordinary
All our living lives

Come with me, run with me, under the sun
Let’s just embrace the day
Follow me close and I’ll try to keep up
Life is for the living anyway

Matter of Time

March 5, 2021 — Leave a comment

We’ve been in a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers sort of mood around the house lately – Nathan and I just finished watching the fabulous Runnin Down a Dream documentary with our 17-year-old Luthien who is deep into schooling herself in the history of rock and roll, especially 90s music. (You can watch that documentary free at the Crackle link I attached to it!)

All that to say, I owe a good deal of the sound of this song to Tom and the band. The song itself came together surprisingly quickly; it felt as if I’d been carrying around this nebulous muck that got heavier over the winter, and somehow getting myself inside the head of the thing that was messing around in my head turned into this incredibly freeing, actually joyful-feeling rock song about aging and decay and everything as I know it falling apart.

Oh and Nathan added a plethora of guitar tracks, drums and bass (and he sang!) which certainly added to the joy for both of us in making this song! This is what being 45 feels like today, and I’m quite alright with it.

Week 9, #songaweek2021. I actually used the week’s prompt too, verbatim in the bridge (“you could turn back but why would you want to”). You can also download the song for free at our Cabin of Love bandcamp page – https://cabinoflove.bandcamp.com/track/matter-of-time

You’ve got sparkle, you’ve got spunk
You’ve got apocalyptic piles of pixie punk
I’m gonna dumb you down and lay you low
You won’t believe what hit you but I think you’ll know

Take it easy, it’s just a matter of time
Don’t take it personally, I’m gonna mess with your mind

Now you’re older, you think you’re so smart
You’re just a rusted cage around a broken-down heart
I’m gonna chill your bones and haunt your dreams
With ghosts of chances and washed-up schemes

Take it easy, it’s just a matter of time
Don’t take it personally, I’m gonna mess with your mind

You could turn back but why would you want to?
Nothing to see but visions of what might have been

So what you got now? What you gonna do
With whatever is left, is left up to you
I’ll keep right on rolling like I always do
And for a little while I might remember you

Take it easy, it’s just a matter of time
Don’t take it personally, I’m gonna mess with your mind
Take it easy, it’s just a matter of time
Don’t take it personally, nobody said I was kind