SADS

If I Go On / In Western Lands Beneath the Sun

December 16, 2023 — Leave a comment

Here is my last song for #songaweek2023. This year I slowed my songwriting pace from weekly to monthly, and it has felt right. Next year I will probably continue with this pace.

The first part of this song drew inspiration from some painful news my faith community received last week, that our 15-year-old church’s founding pastor is moving on to a new church call. When you’re part of a good thing that’s become an anchor of peace in your life, it’s hard to lose its leader and wonder what comes next, and if you have the fortitude to keep going now.

This personal grief comes amid the deeper, wider sorrows spreading from two wars in the news and the insistent vague consciousness of suffering all over everywhere and everywhen. It’s December and it’s raining as I write this (a localized pain of global warming here in Minnesota where it should be snowing), and in this northern land we’ve been swiftly plodding towards the longest night. So it feels like the dark is never far.

I couldn’t write a hopeful part for this song, but I turned to a song that Sam Gamgee sang in The Return of the King. So once again, thank you Mr. Tolkien. In the lyrics posted below the video, Tolkien’s words are set in quotation marks, and I am happy to give him the last word in this last song of 2023.

If I go on then why can’t you?
Can I believe the words you said
The songs you sang
The hope you spoke
The better day you thought you saw?
And if I fall then have I failed?
Can I be down and still be true
True to you
The you I knew
When you knew all would come out right?

“In western lands beneath the Sun

the flowers may rise in Spring,

the trees may bud, the waters run, 

the merry finches sing.
Or there maybe ’tis cloudless night 

and swaying beeches bear 

the Elven-stars as jewels white

amid their branching hair.”

The day is dark the night is long
It’s stolen land I’m standing on
From hand to hand
From name to name
We pass it down, we shift the blame
The water’s wide, I can’t cross o’er,
The day is bruised the night so sore
I’ll dig my den
and lay me down,
bear my heart to the wounded ground

“Though here at journey’s end I lie

in darkness buried deep,

beyond all towers strong and high, 

beyond all mountains steep,
above all shadows rides the Sun

and Stars for ever dwell:

I will not say the Day is done,

nor bid the Stars farewell.”

Save Your Sadness for a Sunny Day

April 3, 2018 — 2 Comments

I feel a little like a cheater. And a lot like privileged. I spent Easter Sunday afternoon stretched out in the sun on my brother-in-law’s deck in Denver. No jacket, bare feet. I got a sunburn, so I guess there’s some justice for you.

But now, I’m dutifully back in Saint Paul, under gray skies, watching snow pile up outside, thankful for a few sunny days stolen in Colorado, where some of my March-in-Minnesota melancholy did indeed melt away.

My inspiration for writing this song (for week 13 of #songaweek2018) was taking a walk on a gray day, thinking about the cliche “save it for a rainy day” – and how that doesn’t make much sense here where gray/snowy/rainy days can be so common, so maybe it’s better to save up something for a sunny day – and since lots of gray days can bring on sadness for me, maybe I could save up that sadness, push off the full feeling of it till a sunny day when I could let it all hang out and see it melt away. (I think I sort of inverted the idea of the Jayhawks’ song “Save it for a Rainy Day”!)

Save your sadness for a sunny day
Hang your heartache out in the breezy blue
Let the melancholy melt away
Lift your lamentation off your chest

Whiteout
Hard-nosed ice
Steely sleet
Driving rain

Save your sadness for a sunny day
Hang your heartache out in the breezy blue
Let the melancholy melt away
Lift your lamentation off your chest

Gray skies
Paralyze
Heavy light
Leaden limbs

Save your sadness for a sunny day
Hang your heartache out in the breezy blue
Let the melancholy melt away
Lift your lamentation off your chest

Birds sing
Anyway
Branches reach
Treetops sway

Way of the World

March 27, 2018 — Leave a comment

“A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away…to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing.” — The Empire Strikes Back

Probably restlessness is part of our human DNA, which is why our species has spread out and found ways to live all over the world. My problem is I have a hard time staying in one place for too long. Maybe restlessness is part of my personal DNA too.

And –

It’s been persistently gray and chilly here in Minnesota in March. I asked for this. I chose it, from my little sunny backyard with the mountain view, last year. It was a good choice, but this time of year in this place, it can be a hard one to live with.

This is the time of year when sadness inexplicably seeps into me. Or probably more truly, it seeps out of me – the weight I’ve been carrying surfaces and I must face it.

These were some ideas influencing me as I wrote this song for week twelve of #songaweek2018:

I don’t know why the river makes me cry
I left the west cause I was thirsty
after the years the desert drained me dry
it’s just the way of the world
just the way of the world
it’s the way of the world
in me

I don’t know how these clouds got in my eyes
I shunned the sun cause I was burning
Too much light can leave you hypnotized
It’s just the lay of the land
Just the lay of the land
It’s the lay of the land
I see
It’s just the way of the world
Just the way of the world
It’s the way of the world
and me

It’s just my heart on my sleeve
and my head in my hands
it’s the way of the world
with me
It’s just the way of the world
just the way of the world
It’s the way of the world
For me

The Dark

January 13, 2011 — 3 Comments

Time for some poetry.

the dark
© 1/28/09 Julia Tindall Bloom

here comes the dark
warm and womblike
out pop the stars
above our heads
we sip our wine
sing a little more
kiss and settle in

here comes the dark
a blanket wrapped around us
we light candles
around the room
make hot cocoa
read stories with the children
drift drowsily to dreamy sleep

here comes the dark
a hungry wolf outside these walls
i plod to bed on heavy feet
weary of all these clothes
escaping to dreamless sleep
holding out

in my mind’s eye
sunlit green
in the earth’s heart
wrinkled seeds
kept for the moment

here comes the sun
a little earlier each day
lingering longer every night
i hear a low far-off train whistle
remember robins
and smile.