I got a piano! And this is the first song I wrote on it. I started with the first line and just tried to follow it through without too much analyzing. As I moved into the third verse (“she got lost to find her way”), I began to think about my grandmother who for the past few years has been living with increasing dementia. The song isn’t specifically about her, but in retrospect I think she’s there throughout. (Here’s a song I wrote for her 80th birthday if you’d like to see and learn a little more about her.)
So she sang to hear the tune
She waited all morning for afternoon
And now the evening is drawing soon
All in the twinkling of an eye
We are birds that none can tame
Wild-haired children lost in our game
Moths drawn to circle eternal flames
All for a moment in the sun
We turn on an axis of wishes and prayers
While we hope against hope for the best
We dance till we can’t keep our feet on the ground
Till we float like a very last breath
She got lost to find her way
Abandoned the order of yesterday
And left her memories as they lay
All in a jumble in her mind
Oh the wind is in the trees
She cradles their seedlings upon her breeze
And where she lays them there they will be
All in the dark before the dawn
In a very real sense we are shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet. Yet even in a shipwreck, human decencies and human values do not necessarily vanish, and we must make the most of them. We shall go down, but let it be in a manner to which we may look forward as worthy of our dignity.
The suggested theme for week 36 of #songaweek2018 was “strength.” I wasn’t trying to use it when I started writing my song. I started with a couple lines I had jotted down in a flash of inspiration a couple weeks before: “the first thing I can think of is the last I want to talk about / how whenever you walk in the room it turns me inside out.”
A favorite part of the writing process for me is feeling partially in control, and partially along for the ride as I work on (with?) a song and it takes its shape. I thought this was going to be some sort of love song, but it became more of a hope-in-humanity song.
It wasn’t till I was working on the third verse, at the line “so your heart won’t sink,” and I was thinking through the next line which became “even if we’re bound to drown” that I remembered the Norbert Weiner quote I had copied and pasted into my notes for later meditation. I pulled it up and let it guide me through the end of the song.
And so, I came around to singing about strength after all. The strength of being kind and decent human beings even if and when all seems lost. Our future – individually, as a species, as a planet – is and has always been uncertain, clouded in possible catastrophes. I hope we humans can be wise and motivated enough to do the good we know to do regarding environmental degradation, military oppression, human rights violations, racism, etc., etc. – all the problems clearly leading to a bleaker future.
And at the same time, I hope we can be good and decent people in our everyday interactions with each other and all living things, that we could take each moment as a gift and seek to live it as a blessing, no matter where we seem to be headed, no matter how grim the outlook.
I think a musical influence on this song is Patty Griffin’s “One Big Love,” which I had been listening to as covered by Emmylou Harris on her album Red Dirt Girl not long before I wrote it. And which is one of my all-time favorite albums, in case I haven’t mentioned it before! Oh, wait, I guess I have. Oh yeah, more than once.
As per usual these busy days of late, I would have loved to give this song more recording attention. But at least I was able to give it the writing attention it deserved. Maybe the future will hold enough space for a better recording.
The first thing I can think of
Is the last I want to talk about
How the ghosts of old romances
Can turn me inside out
I can’t recant my faith in
The way we used to be
Young and foolish
Starry-eyed and free
But it’s alright now
It’s okay
We’re alright now
For another day
You’ll never hear me disagree
That there’s no time like today
To do the good you know to do
And give your love away
Cause when you let it flow you’ll find
There’s more where that came from
Like a winding river
Like the shining sun
Down in the hollows of my heart
A thousand love songs ring
We’ll never finish everything we start
But we have our whole lives to sing
So tell me all your troubles
And I’ll pour you a drink
Something stiff and bitter
so your heart won’t sink
and even if we’re bound to drown
we can still be true and kind
One brilliant second
On the face of time
Today my youngest went back to school, so for the first time in months, it’s just the dog and me at home. Which means I’m looking forward to giving some more focused attention to songwriting and recording for the remaining weeks of #songaweek2018.
And it also means that for last week, week 35, in which only my son was home because his sister had already started at her school, I took the quick and easy route for my songwriting so I could spend more time with him. We played a lot of Doctor Who Fluxx and then on Friday we packed everybody up and drove out to North Dakota where we camped with family at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the badlands of NoDak, which is a long desolate drive from most anywhere people live but worth it. Beautiful and even on Labor Day weekend, not too crowded. (Also we witnessed a bison stampede while hiking, with wild horses just meters in front of us!)
But I digress. The quick and easy route for songwriting means I pick a public domain poem I’ve filed away for possible future use, and I write a tune for it. The title of this one by Thomas Moore made it the obvious choice! (If you follow the link on his name, you can hear a recording of another song made using the poem and recorded in 1914. Makes sense that I’m not the first to set it to music.)
Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone:
No flower of her kindred,
No rose-bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
Or give sigh for sigh.
I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one!
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go, sleep thou with them.
Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o’er the bed,
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.
So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Love’s shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie wither’ d,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?
If week 34 of #songaweek2018 hadn’t been during summer vacation, I would probably have taken the time to multi-track this song. Would have loved to get some juicy vocal layers in there, but instead I contented myself with wailing through a live take. It was enough, and left time to play games and go to the lake with my kids while we soak up these last days before school starts again.
The suggested theme was “verdict,” so that’s the title. Because the song is sort of about, “what’s the ultimate thing we have to say about everything?” Or if you prefer, “what’s it all about?” Or “where’s it all headed?” For a serious-minded person who spends a serious amount of time contemplating death and the cosmos, I have this inimitable weed-like hope. It’s a weed like some sort of wildflower, dying back and disappearing for months at a time, but then inevitably springing up again, even bursting into colorful flower when the season is right.
Autumn is coming, and I know my mood will deepen and darken along with the days. But hope, like all living things, needs to sleep now and then, and I’ll hold on and stand guard while she’s out cold.
And if I spend the end just running from the dark
And if I keep my deepest love choked in my heart
Why do the stars still shine at night?
And if I hold my cold desire like a curse
And shun the sunlight from my meager universe
What is this breath that fills my hungry lungs
This song that rises from my thirsty tongue?
Aah . . .
And when it all is bound to fall like dying leaves
And bonds we make are sure to break like brittle trees
Why do the seeds keep taking root?
And if these years will end in tears and certain loss
and when I keep the faith it leads me to a cross
What is this hope that grows inside my bones
This love that stretches out to the unknown?
Aah . . .
There is a siren in my mind compelling me
It’s like a word that I once heard –
before I learned to speak
Aah . . .
So it all started when my husband Nathan put on an album our daughter Luthien made when she was maybe seven, with her band “Luthien and the Awesome Band.” While now-teenager Luthien groaned with embarrassment, we her proud parents reminded her she was only seven and this was a very fun glimpse into the beginnings of her creative life (check out this song she wrote and performed entirely by herself last week!).
When the album was over, my younger child Silas said, “hey Mom, let’s start a band! I’ll sing and you can write songs for me to sing.” Realizing this could dovetail nicely with my #songaweek2018 project, I agreed.
I’m not sure I had ever written a song for someone else to sing before, and it wasn’t easy. I think I was too focused on Silas himself, his personality, his likes and dislikes. So I wrote a cheesy-silly song for him to sing about being a vegetarian (a decision he made on his own when he was five) with a little bit of running thrown in.
“Mom, I’m not going to sing that,” he responded.
To which I sheepishly replied, “yeah, I don’t blame you.”
Then I asked him, what if we write a song together? He wasn’t sure about that. Wouldn’t it take a long time? No, I told him, if you’ve got something good rolling, it doesn’t often take more than an hour, might even be more like twenty minutes.
“But I don’t know what to write about,” he sighed. “How do you get ideas?”
Just then we heard the ice cream truck coming up the street, playing “Lullaby,” its pitch shifting as it drove past and away. My kids (and probably most kids!) have always thought that Doppler effect makes ice cream trucks seem a little creepy.
“What about the ice cream truck? How about we write a song about that?” I suggested.
Silas looked at me a little dubiously and then almost instantly launched into, “here it comes, down the street, the demented ice cream truck,” to the tune of “Lullaby.”
“Yes!” I exclaimed. “That’s perfect!”
“But we can’t steal that tune,” Silas said.
Oh but we could. And I explained the glories of public domain to my middle-schooler.
So with the frame of an old tune, Silas set to work writing lyrics. He sat at the computer and typed in the lyrics while I sat behind him and played the song on the guitar to help keep him on track. I contributed some of the lines and ideas and helped massage some lines to fit, but the general thrust of the song and most of the lyrics came pretty directly from Silas.
And it all took about twenty minutes!
So here it is, my song for week 33, cowritten with my fun-loving wordsmith son Silas Bloom:
And here are the lyrics exactly as he typed them:
Here it comes down the street the demented ice-cream truck
Selling kids icecream shaped like cartoons. If you stray too close they will suck out your soul. But other wise it’s a jolly good time.
There it goes up the road making boat loads of money.
Be careful they’ll get mad if you stand there too long. Then they might leave the block cuz time is money and there rent on the truck is almost overdo.
It’s not even a truck it’s really more of a van
With some speakers and a freezer and a driver slash cashier you may call it what you like but you better beware they will catch your credit card and will make you go broke.
Julia Bloom 