singer/songwriter

Let Love

July 31, 2018 — 2 Comments

H.G. Wells wrote more than sci-fi novels. I’ve been working my way through a free Kindle book I downloaded that contains 27 of his works, and the book I just finished reading is a novel called The Secret Places of the Heart. It’s about an Englishman in charge of the government’s fuel commission who feels like he’s lost his edge and goes to see a psychiatrist, who proposes they both take a holiday and go on a road trip together.

Sir Richmond, the patient, proceeds to fall in love with a woman he meets along the way, after having discussed with the psychiatrist his loveless marriage and his strained relationship with his current mistress. Archaeological ruins are visited and utopian dreams for society are discussed, and infatuation for the newly-discovered woman sneaks up on Sir Richmond and puts him into a restless half-dreaming state where he considers love.

The suggested theme for week 30 of #songaweek2018 was “love,” so as I finished reading this nearly-100-year-old novel, I decided to draw from it for my song. It being a work in the public domain, I really could let Wells be the main lyricist. I was especially drawn to this idea that love can create love, that love is not just a fleeting emotion but an active choice, a force that can work for our good if we make a place for it; that can cultivate love in us when our good intentions, or youthful infatuations, fail.

Below are the direct quotes from which I wrote the song, and after that the song itself.

“Love was music and power. If he had loved enough he need never have drifted away from his wife. Love would have created love, would have tolerated and taught and inspired. Where there is perfect love there is neither greed nor impatience. . .

“‘Flimsy creatures,’ he whispered. ‘Uncertain health. Uncertain strength. A will that comes and goes. Moods of baseness. Moods of utter beastliness . . . Love like April sunshine. April? . . .’

“. . . there is something about human beings – not just the everyday stuff of them, but something that appears intermittently – as though a light shone through something translucent. If I believe in any divinity at all it is a divinity revealed to me by other people – and even by myself in my own heart. . .

“It’s only through love that the God can reach over from one human being to another. All real love is a divine thing, a reassurance, a release of courage.”

Let love make love
Trust love to hold on
Love is music
Love is power
Love tolerates, teaches, inspires

Flimsy creatures
A will that comes and goes
Love like April sunshine
April snow

Let love make love . . .
Love is patient and generous

Uncertain health
Uncertain strength
Love like April sunshine
April rain

Let love make love . . .
Divine, a reassurance

Moods of baseness
Moods of utter beastliness
Love like April sunshine
April mud

Let love make love . . .
Love releases courage

No Strings Attached

July 24, 2018 — 2 Comments

These days it feels like everything’s for sale and getting more expensive. Even as some things actually get cheaper financially, we’re all paying higher prices with the health and well-being of our shared life on this planet.

But that’s not entirely true. So much around us is just given, generously and constantly, day after day, night after night. No strings attached. And yet we would benefit by paying something for these gifts – attention.

This song (for week 29 of #songaweek2018) was partially inspired by my reading of Elizabeth Kolbert’s book The Sixth Extinction, as well as Episode 313 (“Right to Roam”) of the podcast 99% Invisible.

The sky’s all yours for the looking
The birds all round you are singing for free
No strings attached
No strings attached

The ground’s all yours for the walking
and running and jumping and kicking up heels
No strings attached
No strings attached

Fly . . .
Fly . . .

The night’s all yours for the dreaming
The moon and stars keep shining for free
No strings attached
No strings attached

The rock’s all yours for the climbing
The trees and mountains and fences and walls
The world’s all yours for the wandering
Your life’s all yours for the living
No strings attached
No strings attached

Another Spring

July 17, 2018 — Leave a comment

“Sex” is the suggested theme for this current week, 29, of #songaweek2018 (the song I’m working on writing this week). Wouldn’t you know I already hit that theme for week 28! Not that I meant to. I didn’t even mean to use week 28’s actual theme, “anniversary.” But it does seem to all relate.

I started with two lines I had saved as a random idea earlier this year (in the spring, of course). And just let it unfold from there.

A little glossary in case you need it – “hygge” is one of those newly-discovered old ideas that’s been all the rage in recent years, especially in the winter. And “alohomora” is a spell in Harry Potter books that opens things (the “unlocking charm” according to Harry Potter Wiki).

I didn’t want to take the time and effort to film myself recording this week, so I dug up a “strange little newsreel” on publicdomainreview.org. For added entertainment value, go watch it at their site with the original audio intact.

Let’s go at it now with another spring
Pull the earth closer, waken everything
Let the water fall, let the pollen fly
Let the stars get in our eyes

We’ve been keeping our happiness on ice
Frozen fantasies of life
Numbing out with chocolate and wine
Excusing it as hygge, hygge, hygge, who?

Let’s go at it now with another spring
Pull the earth closer, waken everything
Let the water fall, let the pollen fly
Let the stars get in our eyes

Throw the covers off boats and motorcycles
Dodge the dropping icicles
Everything feels magical
Hello, alohomora, more and more and more-a

Let’s go at it now with another spring
Pull the earth closer, waken everything
Let the water fall, let the pollen fly
Let the stars get in our eyes

We’ll dance ourselves dizzy
Under the rising moon
We’ll sing hallelujah,
La la la la la la, la la la la la

Let’s go at it now with another spring
Pull the earth closer, waken everything
Let the water fall, let the pollen fly
Let the stars get in our eyes

 

It’s Your Turn to Live Now

July 10, 2018 — 2 Comments

This song came together quickly, and I didn’t feel very deliberate or in charge of its construction. Somehow I had this phrase “it’s your turn to live now” in my head, so I started there. I got the bones of the chorus down, and then felt compelled to look up the end of 1 Corinthians 13. The words in the NIV version flowed so well I used them mostly verbatim for the verses.

I think this is a bit of backlash to the trendy term and idea of “adulting.” Also to the longer-held romanticism with childhood and childlikeness – Peter Pan never wanting to grow up, because growing up means selling out, losing your imagination, diminishing. I’m sure I’ve used this idea in my own writing from time to time, because I can empathize with it.

*But* this song is exploring the beauty and power of a person fully grown and fully alive – and in that very reality, forever continually unfolding, becoming, changing. Because that’s what living is – a process, an active evolution, an ever-reaching-forward, a dance, a song, a story. Now that does sound a little childlike – and I guess that’s why Peter Pan didn’t want to grow up, not because he saw maturity at its best, but rather what happens to too many of us when we “finish” childhood – we settle, harden, start to die instead of continue to live.

Here’s my song for week 27 of #songaweek2018. Nathan played along so it’s a Cabin of Love song. With an exciting photobomb by a cute kid.

It’s your turn to live now
Your time to breathe free
Your moment to walk in the sun
And stand on your feet
On top of the mountain
Of all the fears you’ve outgrown
It’s your turn to live now
Inhabit your home

When I was a child
I talked like a child
I thought like a child
I reasoned like a child
But when I became a woman
I put childish ways behind me

It’s your turn to live now . . . creeds you’ve outgrown . . .

Now I know in part
Then I shall know fully
Even as I am fully known

It’s your turn to live now . . . dreams you’ve outgrown . . .

And now these three remain
Faith, hope and love
But the greatest of these is love

The Lake Where the Loons Are Laughing Low

July 3, 2018 — Leave a comment

My father-in-law’s cousin owns a cabin on Lake Vermilion in northern Minnesota, not far from the Boundary Waters and the Canadian border. It was built in 1932, which seems a strange economic time to build a vacation home, but reminds me a bit of the Civilian Conservation Corps projects that began the next year.

This past week twenty of us – my husband, his parents, his three brothers and their families, and his honorary sister – all gathered at the cabin, converging from California, North Dakota, Ohio and Minnesota for four days together at the lake.

I love seeing and hearing the loons on the lake – in the day you can hear them laughing, at night their mournful calls float through the windows while I fall asleep.

I wrote week 26’s song for #songaweek2018 in the gazebo behind the cabin one afternoon while the cousins played in the water. The first lines came from the weekend before we were at the lake, when we took our kids sailing for the very first time, and I pointed out the sunlight glinting on the water. No camera can do it justice. The same is true of the sunsets over Lake Vermilion (or anywhere really!).

That evening I played the song a couple times for Nathan and his brother Micah while we sat around before dinner, and then asked my daughter to record us playing it.

Don’t take my word for it, you should go and
see for yourself how the sunlight glints on
waves of the water all around
your boat on the lake where the loons are laughing low

Breathe with the trees and the birds and the insects
so many creatures you never noticed
different from you but all the same
it’s life on the lake where the loons are laughing low

You can’t stay forever but you can drink it
deeply enough that you could keep it
down in your soul where you can always
feel the lake where the loons are laughing low