in pondering what to write about this piece, i took out the jacket for the album RELEASED FROM THE HEART. my first full-length album, released in 1995, an hour of my original solo piano compositions, i dedicated it to my big brother wayne who i had lost a few years prior, but whose presence i could feel as i worked on this project.
in the jacket notes, next to this piece IN TRANSITION, i wrote “many changes for many around me. changes give us time and impetus to sort through (and feel) the stuff of our lives – the transitional time.” that would explain the minor, a key that invokes going inside.
i guess i will have to defer back to that. it’s no different now than it was then. there are still “many changes for many around me”. i would have thought that things would feather out on the change seesaw, maybe leveling out a bit. but now, 23 years later from those moments of recording remotely on stage in an auditorium at northwestern university, i see that life continues to be fluid, change continues to happen, we still have to sort and feel and go with the flow, we are still learning, growing, changing, we are ever on that seesaw. still in transition.
a number of years ago i planted a small seedling of lavender in my backyard garden over by the fence. i was wanting to tend this carefully and, eventually, be able to go outside and snip sprigs of lavender – for vases, for the pillows of visiting family or friends.
it was slowwww.
soon after, i found that the patch of black-eyed susans was entering the spot where the lavender was. black-eyed susans are beautiful and happy flowers, so i hesitated to do anything about this. i pulled the weeds in the garden and continued to hope for a flourishing lavender patch living side by side with what-would-be bright yellow blooms.
but then i talked to a friend. she told me that as diligent as i was about pulling the weeds, i also needed to pare back the black-eyed susans. she said the lavender needed space and air, its own dirt.
i followed her directions and carefully dug down to the roots of the black-eyed susans and transplanted them away from the lavender. i could almost feel the lavender breathe.
later, in the summer, with clippers in hand, i walked outside, over to the little garden by the fence, vase in hand, and, in the midst of a heavenly scent-cloud, snipped healthy sprigs of purple.
then i added this piece to the track line-up for the album RIGHT NOW.
i drove back and forth and back and forth to nashville when i recorded this album, each time returning with a cd of the work we had done on the album. i’d play it numerous times, taking notes to share with my producer, re-writing, practicing, sometimes sharing the songs-where-they-were-at-the-time with others.
joan was the one who told me i needed a “strong woman” song included on this album. so i walked across the street home, directly into my studio and wrote one.
now, this isn’t my favorite song – it’s a little kitschy if you ask me – but i have had many tell me how much they like it and one of my favorite performances of it was when beth’s students sang it. (i was long-term-subbing for her. she’s a dear friend and an amazing choir teacher in a middle school in our district.) those kids really rose to the occasion and kitschy fell by the wayside in favor of strength and power and belief in themselves.
recently d and i listened to some of my first recordings. they were from 1979-80 and recorded in a studio in a town called port washington on the north shore of long island. i had found a cassette (now isn’t that retro word dating me!) and we have a boombox (another retro word) that plays cassettes so we settled in to listen to the three songs on what would now be called an EP.
one of the songs is called leaving and is a song i wrote for my parents as they retired and moved from our long island home to florida. i remembered that song well.
the other two? well, it’s funny. i could sing every word, but i didn’t remember the intense emotion behind them. THESE were my #metoo songs, i discovered (rediscovered?) as i listened. one of these days i might share these songs, not because they are great songs but because they are truth and every artist has songs that are life-defining. not the ones necessarily that chart (although those are lovely, indeed!) but the ones that speak from deep inside, with lyrics or music that must be spoken. these two songs were written by a vulnerable (and pretty angry) young woman who wanted to unleash the power of her crayon and live out loud, who definitely wanted to live without fear, who tried hard to break away from an experience i still would rather forget and who prayed – alone at the time – beseeching words. all this is what i wrote about in this week’s melange.
my heart goes out to all those women who are also card-carrying #metoo survivors. the out-loud ones and the silent ones. my wish for each of you: unleash your crayon, live without fear, break away, pray with another, count on you.
from this song of today’s melange post COUNT ON YOU, which may be more #metoo and less kitschy than i thought, “just move forward and then believe – you gotta trust…in you.”
you can’t help but listen to country music when you are in nashville. there’s something about the storytelling in country songs that i can really identify with. i love telling a good story. ok, i even love bad stories. i’m sure there are a slew of people rolling their eyes around me most times i am talking. when i was writing for this album and traveling back and forth to the studio in nashville, i decided i wanted one of the songs to be a little bit of a nod to that genre, of which i am a big fan. i wrote this song on a single page of notebook paper on an airplane. some songs just show up. my favorite part is the happy ending. 🙂
reverse threading 