i first wrote and recorded this piece while i was working on the twin LET ME TAKE YOU BACK albums. performing the tunes of the 60s and 70s made me feel wistful; memories flooded every note. i’d remember dancing to a song at a prom or listening over and over to another in my room in the basement. they made me picture the windows rolled down in my little blue vw driving on the open roads out east on long island and they brought me the sweet smell of warm sand on crab meadow beach with my red round ball and chain transistor radio.
they had me thinking about the songs coming from my sister’s room and the songs my big brother would play on his guitar. so it wasn’t a stretch to write a piece that was all about longing and reminiscing and memories, stories that were deeply set in my heart, times that had gone by. later on we orchestrated this piece for the album AS IT IS. i still associate it with the twin retro albums; the cello line gets me every time. it makes me want to take out all my photo albums and set up a white sheet in the living room to watch the carousels of 35mm slides my poppo called “film funnies”. longing. indeed.
download LONGING track 13 from AS IT IS on iTUNES or CDBaby
read DAVID’S thoughts on this K.S. FRIDAY
LONGING from AS IT IS ©️ 2004 kerri sherwood
i stood on crab meadow beach, looked across the sound, and dropped to my knees to touch the sand on that very familiar place. i can’t count how many times i sat on that very beach…the wind has taken drifted waves of sand and moved them around, the waves and rain and erosion have changed the shape of the inlet, but i recognize it. deep inside me, i can feel it – from long ago. and still.
three weeks ago we loaded a 5 1/2 foot long piece of driftwood and more rocks and shells than we could count into the xb to drive home. with sand everywhere, we carried back to wisconsin with us morsels of my life on long island…pieces of the north shore and my beloved crab meadow beach, pieces of the south shore and the fierce atlantic ocean.
reverse threading 