Some of you may remember the piano piece: Christmas Carol Draft Project and the lyrics which were from 12/13/2020
Well, I’ve gone and done it – here’s a version of the lyrics with the original piano (some editing and arranging)
May your holidays be peaceful, your friends and family kind and loving, and may your slide into the New Year be easy and relaxing.
January 23, 2021, I wrote the poem: At the Water Met
The poem is a story about awakening, and the longing to rest easy in a disconnect from the world and the events in it. It is a cry for peace, as well as an answering to the call that is life and responsibility. There are dragons and aliens – symbols of power and otherness indicating a universal connection to energies we don’t fully understand which support humanity’s growth (we hope!).
For a while now, I have been playing with this -trying to get the music just right, and testing this kind of vocals or that kind of vocals, and I just couldn’t get it the way it needed to be until recently.
Here’s the spoken word with soundscape version of At The Water Met which will be on the someday forthcoming collection of pieces called Mixtures Poetica which is the follow up to the EP Poetic Mixtures, available on streaming platforms globally.
(Verse 1)
I gave all my words to you
The wind took them
Blew them through the leaves
The rain made them fall
Puddles became streams leading
To the ocean
We all return to the sea
(Verse 2)
I gave all my words to you
Letter by letter
Page by page
And stood quiet before the trees
As they sang them back to me
Next to the stream they babbled
I followed them to the ocean
(Chorus)
To drown there
In the love of ages
Wave after wave
We return to the sea
Wave after wave
We all return to the sea
(Verse 3)
Coming back to life
With love’s return
The clouds carrying us
To dream of blue skies
Rustling branches
In a free fall with each droplet
We follow them to the ocean
Drowning in the Ocean of If Only
Summer breeze is rustling in these trees
Whispering of things that cannot be
Too hot here to think about it
My mind still turns it over
If only I had minded more
If only I had been lovelier
If only I had given you what you need
I’m drowning in these memories
Drowning in the summer lands
Oceans in the summer lands
Drowning in the lost and lonely
If only
If only
The tears are sliding down my cheeks
My heart grows heavy even in the light of the warmest sun
The rains are falling in my spirit
As I wonder
If I had been more mindful
If I had been more humble
If I had been more everything you like
Would you still be seeking
A place beside me
Would you still be needing
A space next to me
Would we still be we and not alone
If only
If only
If only I knew just what to do now
If only I could bring you back to you now
If only I could mend all that went wrong
I would do that
That’s what I’d do
I’d find a way to get somewhere you could love me
Again
I’d find a way to be someone you could love
Again
And I wouldn’t be here sitting in this shade under these trees
Swamped by the ocean and drowning in the if only
If only
If only
Song: A truth and a Lie
They say guns are not the problem
And it’s true another black man died
60 bullets in his back
And it’s a lie mass shooting at the mall
At the school Uvalde where they hide
They say guns are not to blame and it’s a truth
Domestic violence and some 80 proof (whiskey) one could admit
No protection from the paper that was writ
Guns are not to blame and it’s just another lie
When youth can walk into a store, no training and walk out again he’s armed
Guns are our constitutional right it’s not untrue that there’s a clause for the population to have an excuse to bear
But it’s a lie that there should be no regulation or oversight
About the babies they say they they are pro-life up until they’re born or to save a mother’s life and so it’s the god forsaken motherfucking truth and it’s a lie
And the one side dithers righteously about how they’re better than the other and it’s a truth
And it’s a lie
They refuse to take a deeper look in their closets where they hide
The reasons that the other side can and do entrench and build and gain
And they comb their cocktail hair and put on their cocktail gowns
They all strut before us in a line of union and union-busting clowns
Like the boyfriend or the girlfriend or the theyfriend who will do no more than be just slightly better than your ex
And expect your full devotion knowing well the slim prospects
And the climates heating up and they say they really care
But when it comes to changing
point the finger over there
And I finally understood
That I finally know the truth
That it’s a lie
And it’s the truth
They’ve buried and they’ve hidden all the truth under the lie
And the lie upon the dung hill sipping wine and eating pie
And sell us all the same old shit
We’ve been hearing all along
And shrug and say it’s true that it is wrong
And it’s a lie that they’ve told us and they tell us
And that why the feeling people
The empaths and the impoverished have to cry and weep
And gnash the teeth worn down from the gnashing and the bearing and the injustice of it all
Because justice is a truth that in America’s a lie
Another lie painted over the motherfucking truth
But I don’t have proof
No I don’t have proof no
Nor an alibi
So when they serve the shot of silence
Force it down my throat
Just know that I’ll be grateful when I die
Justice gets us all alive in the end
And that’s the truth
But I don’t have proof
Unfettered from the past
We walk and run and play
Moving towards that which we desire
Love or success or contemplation
In stillness we gather
In movement we release
The spirit soars and crashes
Moods shift like a storm front
Hot and slow
Rainy and cool
We meet on the edge
Of brilliance and disaster
Taking and giving and taking
It will come around again and again and again
Indecision before deciding
Wretched agonizing and cool clear certitude
Don’t hold back
Don’t give in
Don’t be bad
Don’t do it again
We are run away horses
We are the windblown plains
We are the sky at dawn
We are the Milky Way
With the sky on fire
With the burning earth
We are turning over
We are turning in
We are rounding the corner
We are about to begin
All that we hoped to become
All that we longed to know
All that there is to accumulate
We let go and let go and let go
For in an instance
Eternal illumination struck sizzling
For an instant
We held all we desired in our hands
And let go
We let it go
To walk and run and play
Unfettered
“‘It Don’t Matter To Me’ was originally written as a poem, yet the music behind it stayed lodged in my head for years. I believe the words in this song were the first song lyrics I put to music. However, composing the piano accompaniment didn’t happen until recently when we recorded for the album “Patchwork Blue”. Oddly, when I retrieved this poem from an old notebook, I found other poems that also spoke song and will use these poems to create new songs.
Rosalie Robison
The theme, obviously love won/lost, is universal and would appeal to that mindset. It is a song tribute to how we lose love, then find it, then lose it again, and find it again…a love song, a blues song, a heart breaker, a plea breaker. We can deny it doesn’t matter one way or another, but it does.”
Patchwork Blue has been variously described as a smoldering fire (I am assured this is a good thing), Avant Garde, Soundtrack music, and as defying expectations (some people liked this, and some did not).
This collaborative album I did with my friend, Rosalie, was born out of free form improvisation with jazz and Blues influences. The album is out on major digital markets. There are 10 songs on the album, 2 are instrumentals.
We had a request for the lyrics, and so I’ve posted them, and thought you-all might like to read them. 🙂
Also, I posted this new work on SoundCloud. It’s a sad, gloomy, and makes you wonder why I’m still breathing kind of song, but it captures that moment when I quite seriously felt that my existence here is just plodding on to the end, because what else am I going to do? Some losses can feel like that…but that feeling lifts eventually, maybe showing up in waves, each time a little less severe, a little less sad, a little less lonely. And if you’ve lost someone, and grieve so deeply, I’m sorry.
Grief is a difficult companion, but no one walks without it unless they cannot love. So, you loved well, and will heal in time, building the strength to carry it.
I took this song off of SoundCloud to rework it. So this is a dead link:
