Yesterday my folk pop duo-sometimes-trio (aka family band) Cabin of Love released a new 7-song EP, CoL@home. It’s made up of songs I’ve written from 2016 to 2020 for www.songaweek.org. Three of them were written and recorded just this year, while we’ve been mostly staying home. The first track, “Slowly Exploding,” was specifically written about living in this new pandemic reality; and you can see us performing it in an upcoming TPT show set to air in September, featuring several artists and work they’ve made during this time of COVID-19.
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.
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
With over seven billion people in the world now and the Internet giving many of us instant access to publish whatever we create, it’s easy to completely ignore all the good work that’s come before us. That’s partly why I enjoy setting old poems to music. It’s a little like sneaking vegetables into casseroles for picky kids.
Another reason is because it helps me engage on a deeper level with a poem, because I’m reading and speaking and singing it over and over as I work out a rhythm and a melody. The words get to work on me more than when I just read them straight through.
And usually by the time I’m finished making a poem into a song, I also have it memorized – a mental exercise I don’t perform enough in my post-academic life.
Here’s Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, “My Own Heart,” with more or less the chords from that old favorite “Heart and Soul.” My song for week 18 of #songaweek2018.
My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst’s all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
‘s not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather—as skies
Betweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.
Julia Bloom 