A little goofy, a little sparkly-dreamy, a lot of synth for week 35 of #songaweek2016:
singer/songwriter
You’d Be
My parents have a garden, a sort-of hidden garden, a sort-of other world tucked behind their rather normal-looking split-level house in a rather normal-looking small town neighborhood. And every summer when I pack up to go visit them, I daydream about that garden, about myself sitting in it with a cup of coffee, about the birds and the bunnies and the chipmunks and yes, even squirrels, who will be busy all around me.
Or I remember this moment from last summer, the light on my girl’s golden hair, my mind gently rocking with the rhythm of her swinging, and yes, even my boy begging me to be done with my coffee break.
Sitting in the garden this summer, in the same spot where I recorded that little video last summer, I wrote the first few lines of what became my song for week 34 of #songaweek2016, which you can hear here:
You’d be swinging with the breeze
shaded by the breathing leaves
if you were the garden’s child
drowsy as the birds and bees
you’d be singing newborn songs
with the water swept along
if you were the river’s child
you’d be flowing ever on
you’d be life you’d be breath
you’d be sleep and dreams and death
peals of laughter pools of tears
flights of joy and jolts of fear
you’d be climbing on the bones
of a long-forgotten poem
if you were the mountain’s child
patient as the ancient stone
you’d be diving in the dark
far beneath the crowded ark
if you were the ocean’s child
throbbing siren, silent shark
you’d be light you’d be sound
you’d be caverns underground
ceaseless waves of navy blue
reaching for receding moon
Could This Be Happily?
A little dreamy ode to the simple life, here’s my song for week 33 of #songaweek2016. With Nathan Bloom on harmonica. Would’ve loved to add more instruments and fill it out a bit, but it was an extra busy week with a real live gig and kids going back to school. (That toddly baby in the picture is now a tall, soccer-playing fourth grader!)
There would be raspberries in our little yard
the sun would shine all the time
except when the rain came to help our garden grow
then we’d be snug inside
could every day be like a holiday?
could this be happily? (ever after)
We’d keep some chickens in a little coop
we’d thank them for the eggs
maybe a baby, maybe two
toddling on wobbly legs
some nights there might be tears on our pillows
some dreams just won’t come true
but all these broken parts of our hearts
make spaces for the light and air and rivers to flow through
out on our front porch we’d pass the evening hours
watching the branches sway
We’d smile at neighbors and strangers passing by
until we call it a day
Fertile Soil, Brittle Seed
For most of my life I’ve lived hundreds of miles and multiple states away from my grandparents, and for most of my life I’ve gotten back to see them about once a year. A relationship kept like that, in one-year snapshots, has a different sense of time and life passing. One year I’m a mousy elementary-school kid watching Hanna-Barbera cartoons and eating Honey Nut Cheerios with my cousins at Grammy‘s coffee table. Three visits (years) later, I’m an awkward junior-higher playing Grammy a song on the baby grand piano in that same living room. Click ahead a few more frames, and I’m a newlywed bringing my new husband to see the one constant physical place I’ve had in my life, Grammy’s house.
Then there are children to show her, my tiny branches from the family tree. They snuggle on her lap, then toddle on the floor, and they begin their own year-by-year memories of their great-grandmother, the only great-grandparent on my side of the family who they will remember. The other three died before my children could know them.
For many of the years past, Grammy has felt like the unchanging one, solid, always there, happy to see me, excited about all of the changes happening in my life. And always, every time since I showed her the first poem I wrote in junior high, asking me, “are you still writing? Are you still singing?”
In more recent years, Grammy has changed more noticeably. She remembers less, confuses the generations (my son is my brother, her grandchildren are her children . . .), talks more about the farm she grew up on, wonders where her parents are, can’t walk so well, doesn’t feel like eating . . . is generally growing out of life, “not long for this world,” as the old books used to put it. And still, each year when I visit, nearly the first thing out of her mouth when she sees me is “are you still writing? Are you still singing?”
And so I sing for her, and for my mother, for myself, for my children, because we are all not long for this world. We are all and each of us touched by every year, every age, but never held in its grasp. Always moving on . . .
Here’s my song for week 32 of #songaweek2016:
Fertile soil brittle seed
Tender shoot luscious fruit
Fading flower falling leaves
Grieving ground resting roots
This is happening
These seasons turning to years
These years laying down marks
Uneraseable
Furrows plowed in flesh
Memories scattered like stars on the night sky of my mind
Every age may touch me
None will keep its grasp on me
I go on I go on I go on and on
Till I lay me down at last
In the great one’s arms
Trouble
Oh this one was fun to make! My amazing daughter Luthien, with her dad’s help, worked out a cello part and recorded her first-ever cello track. And then Nathan threw in all those sweet guitar tracks, in just a few hours! Visions of a family band are most certainly dancing in my head.
Here’s my song for week 31 of #songaweek2016:
Julia Bloom 