Here’s a song for the beloved conflict-fearing member of a relationship. It’s not an anthem for the general public. We’re living in a moment that rewards or at least amplifies hostile venting in our public spaces, both physical and virtual, and that isn’t what I’m singing about here.
This is about the person who fears conflict, and so keeps to themself about difficult things, unresolved hurts, unrevealed personal truths, for fear of rejection or causing pain, or whatever other reasons. It’s about the value of opening up about these things in the context of a supportive relationship. I’ve been on both sides of this and I’ll bet most people have in some way, at some time. We’ve all been the person holding back an important but painful truth from a loved one, its persistent psychic presence growing heavier as we keep trying to manage it alone. We’ve all been the loved one who feels something is wrong and begs for openness, or has no idea something is wrong until the painful truth comes out in an often more painful and unexpected moment.
Also, would you believe it, I followed the prompt once again! (Week 45 #songaweek2021, “out of sight”). The video is a 1927 instructional video about using a dial telephone. I didn’t have much time for recording or filming this week but I much prefer posting songs to YouTube rather than Soundcloud so I wanted something visual to go with it. And the experience of talking on the telephone has always made me nervous, something like discussing difficult things with loved ones.
If there’s something you’ve got to say by God let’s hear it Chances are it’s not as horrible as what could happen if we don’t If you keep on trying to hide your troubled spirit It’ll cut you like a broken bottle settling in your soul
Out with it, out with it It’ll do you good Out with it, out with it It’ll do you good
I can’t guarantee that I’ll be understanding But you’ve got to give me something to go on if I’m going to try Time has ancient ways of making sense of The words we heard in ragged moments that have passed us by
Out with it . . .
Here’s the truth, I love you and I’m with you Nothing you can say hurts worse than finding I’ve been left behind I know it’s hard to bring out in the open But keep it out of sight, it might drive you out of your mind
For Week 44 #songaweek2021 I actually followed the prompt. I spent a good part of my songwriting afternoon working on a different song that just wasn’t coming together. Then I decided to set it aside and just try the prompt (“buy me a pink balloon”) and this song was written and recorded in about an hour.
Nothing earth-shattering, nice to have a light easy new song. Nathan has since come up with a nice electric guitar part so we’ll probably add this one to our performance repertoire.
If you are going to the fair Buy me a pink balloon If it gets dark out while you’re there bring me back the moon
I’m not the girl you hoped you’d meet But you still think I’m sweet Why don’t you come and see me soon And bring me a pink balloon
If you are feeling sad and blue You can call me up Maybe I’ll bring a pink balloon And that’ll cheer you up
You’re not the man I dreamed I’d find But you’re still on my mind I might just go and see you soon And bring you a pink balloon
I’m a little behind adding my songs to my blog. This one was written for week 43 of #songaweek2021, the last week of October, two days after my 46th birthday. At the very end of the video is a little clip from a walk I took on my actual birthday, in the woods at Murphy-Hanrehan Park Reserve. It was so quiet and solitudinous (if that’s not a word it should be) on a Tuesday afternoon. One of the few other people I saw that day was a woman riding a horse, talking on her cell phone and – would you believe it – singing happy birthday to whoever was on the other end!
I’ve always loved the woods. I wanted to name a band “The Woods” once. I said, “we could tell people, we’re lovely dark and deep!” This song is certainly a hat tip to Robert Frost (“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and of course “The Road Not Taken”) and Henry David Thoreau (Walden – “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately . . .”).
I do quite a bit of songwriting in the woods. I walk and think and hum and make little voice memos on my phone. It’s something about the full-body movement, the fresh air, the sense of passing through a different world or state of being. Most of my woods walks are on the same two trails in my neighborhood, where I feel deeply acquainted with individual trees and every turn of the trail – the sameness is comforting – and yet, the weather, the seasons, the wildlife . . . means it is never the same. I think it’s a multisensory reminder of so much that is true about everything in life.
I go out walking on a cloudy afternoon Under a gray sky but I don’t feel the blues I’m taking my wild soul to the woods
I’m gonna treat her to bright October trees She loves the sugar and spice of dying leaves I’m taking my wild soul to the woods
And you with all your cares You just might like it there
We keep on going though wind and winter come When all around us are silent skeletons I still take my wild soul to the woods
She feels the heartbeat of life in everything She hears the music and teaches me to sing She only asks I take her to the woods
And you with grief and tears You might find comfort here
Some sunny morning I’ll find the first green thing And hear a warm wind whispering of spring And my wild soul will take me to the woods
We’ll go on rambles that widen with the days Through the meadows and round ten thousand lakes But my wild soul and I I and my wild soul Will always and ever love the woods
And you with heart so true Might want to go there too
Oh, I must give some credit for inspiration – this post from The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings) discussing a book about trees called Old Growth, about how trees do everything, including living and dying, on a very different timescale from us humans.
And thanks to my daughter for letting me use her Sirius Black bobblehead, and my brother for the gift of the Ukrainian nesting doll many years ago. They were very cooperative film stars.
I remember my grandmother and the laundry on the line But I feel it like a story from another space and time Oh the sweet sting in the memories of the days we’ve left behind Gone forever, come back never, nevermore
There goes the me I used to be Here comes the one I’m setting free All of this time it’s up to me to live with me In peace
There’s a country undiscovered in each other who I meet You’re a universe of wonders and you share this air I breathe It’s a language only you know but I’ll listen when you speak You mean more to me than anything you say
There goes the you I thought I knew Here is the you I’m talking to All of this time I’m only taking in a glimpse Of you
I go dreaming with the trees while they are dying by degrees Round my feet I feel their children rising up from broken seeds Taking root, spreading out, bright sky, dark ground Changing ever and forever, evermore
There goes the world we used to know Here comes the one we’re making now All of this time it’s up to us to live with us In love
My great-grandfather Gus Dominguez was born to parents who had emigrated to the US from Cuba and Germany. Gus spent a decade in a Brooklyn orphanage and then part of his teenage years living on the streets. His daughter, my grandmother Hazel, had given me a copy of a typewritten transcript of some of his memories of those years, as told by him. I kept this transcript in a notebook and recently pulled it out to read to my children. I had remembered there were some pretty colorful moments in the story and thought they’d be interested to hear it.
After that reread I thought it would make a pretty good folk ballad, so that’s what I did for my song last week. I sat with Gus’s story and rhymed it into a song, trying to keep it as faithful to his telling (in content, style and wording) as possible.
Nathan generously contributed several hours of work adding guitar and drum tracks to help keep this long song musically interesting.
And I spent lots of time perusing the Internet for photos of 1900s Brooklyn and Philadelphia. And cats and cigar stores and saloons. This was such a fascinating way to feel more connected to my great-grandfather and the time and place in which he grew up. Many of the photos I found were from a book published by Danish immigrant Jacob Riis, called How the Other Half Lives. The typewritten words are from photos I took of the transcript my grandmother gave me. Incidentally, I learned that she was named Hazel after Gus’s sister Hazel (unnamed but mentioned in his memoir), who died from the 1918 flu, shortly before Gus’s daughter, my grandmother Hazel, was born.
Uncle Frank has a lot of nerve Coming to see me after all these years Since he turned us all out of his home And left us at the Home of Saint John
We weren’t even Catholic till he sent us there To keep four kids out of his hair I used to be Lutheran, not that it matters I’m just a poor boy, beaten and battered
Uncle Frank Uncle Frank
The laundry man took me when I was sixteen I saw he had four kids and seen what it’d mean To stay there washing all day and all night Keeping those children all in my sight
Laundry Man Laundry Man
So I went tramping alone on the streets Looking for food and a place to sleep I saw a stable and found nearby A covered wagon with blankets inside
So that’s where I slept, at the Navy Street gate Where I seen a man with a familiar face A sergeant Marine who was my brother Fred He took me on board and made sure I was fed
Brother Fred Brother Fred
I still had no room so I asked around And worked for a lady hauling milk around town It didn’t pay cash but I got a home And two meals a day and she got me some clothes
But then she took sick and she closed up shop And once again I was out of luck She gave me two dollars so I could eat And I headed back out on the Brooklyn streets
Brooklyn Streets Brooklyn Streets
I slept in hallways, got up at sunrise, Found some meals for a decent price My two dollars lasted for six more days I kept looking for any kind of work that pays
Inside a saloon on Fulton Street Was a lunch laid out with so much to eat I looked at that lunch, hungry as a bull Dreaming of feeling my belly full
The bartender said you look half-starved Help yourself, I thanked my lucky stars Twenty customers watched me eat Threw coins in my hat till I had tears on my cheeks
Kind Strangers Kind Strangers
They gave me eight dollars ten cents and their smiles And told me where I could live on that for a while Twenty-five cents for a night of sleep In a sailor’s flophouse on Tremont Street
Then a man took me in and I worked for his brother Scraping rusty pipes, sealing ships’ boilers It was dirty work but a decent life Till he came home drunk and started beating his wife
I tried to butt in and he smacked my face So I knew I had to get out of that place Next time he got drunk and beat her again I picked up his poor cat, and threw it at his head
Out the window went the poor cat I ran away and never looked back I’m sorry for the cat, I don’t know how it did But I had to leave if I wanted to live
Poor Cat Poor Cat
I found a good job as a captain’s boy The storms were rough but I was employed Near the Cuban coast I got drunk with a friend The captain hit me hard and said my job had to end
At least they paid me – forty dollars I was a rich man, I went to the track My bet paid off, I bought some new clothes Worked for a while as a stable hand
I started to look for the other kids Searching through all the Dominguezes I found the school where my sister was And that she was being well taken care of
I rented a room on Navy Street And then one day who should I meet My old man himself, waiting for me I greeted him as if he hadn’t left me
He asked me to go with him to PA Said he’d explain it all on the way He’d married again, had two more kids And changed his name cause of something he did
I said, what did you do? Did you kill or steal? Then he told me a story and it was all real He got engaged and then changed his mind Cause he’d found out she was the high-flying kind
She didn’t want to let him go But he didn’t want to keep her and so He threw acid in her face So now the police were on the chase
He changed his name to Frank Hidalgo And from now on I should call him Uncle
Uncle Frank Uncle Frank
He ran a cigar shop in Philadelphia My brother Fred came in and recognized him Fred sailed right at him, cussing and mad Frank ducked behind the counter and I got bashed
Then Fred started crying and I tried to explain But he just left and didn’t come back again
Brother Fred Brother Fred
I finally found Charlie, my other brother Through an ad in the New York newspaper He came to Philadelphia, turned out alright, And then our house caught fire one night
And who do you think started that fire? Yeah you got it right – that cowardly liar A lighted cigar, a hall filled with clothes Good old Uncle Frank, right on the nose
Uncle Frank Uncle Frank
My mother died when I was six This story shows how dear a mother is
Julia Bloom 