how many times can sage and sadie drive over the pass in a crazy snowstorm in 48 hours? i think i am going for a record. between that, getting the house ready for the in laws to stay with us for christmas only to find out this evening that they are canceling, getting the x mas shopping done for the extended family, there wasn’t much time for music today. except to wonder at how fucking awful the contemporary xmas music is that they play at the bank and everywhere else i had to stand in a long line today.
i did get a new song written a few days ago though. it is one of those that i like, but don’t really know how it might sound to other people. i have wanted to write a song about this topic for awhile but have always run into the ‘way too much cheese’ problem. some topics carry a lot of risk in the cheese department… only john denver seems to get away with singing about things like the joy of camping and smoking pot around a campfire with friends can bring. generally songs like that make me want to vomit. i don’t want to write songs that make people want to vomit.
in the move i found a sheet of paper with some song lyrics. it was High Country by Bob Wagoner. i like the feeling of the lyrics which is probably why i wrote them down in the first place but i couldn’t remember anything about where the song came from. i did a search for it on the internet to no avail. nothing.
these last two summers that i have not gone up to the lookouts have made me crazy. i miss it terribly, especially in the summer. there are certainly things i don’t miss and the reasons i have not gone up have been good ones, but it still sucks. sadie can’t go into the high elevations till we get this asthma thing figured out and the summers have just been crazy. but i have always gone into the mountains in the summer. always. when i was little girl my whole family would go up into the high elevations for weeks and camp to escape the summer heat. when i got older i worked with my dad and lived in the logging camps. anyway, summer is ‘go up into the mountains’ time, and i haven’t been able to do it for two years. but you see how this is slightly dangerous song lyric material. but like i said i liked the feel of these lyrics. so i let them inspire me, kept a few lines. i have been singing down in the valley with sadie….anyway here are the lyrics
my home is down in the valley down in the valley so low but the high country’s callin me callin me tenderly
it whispers my name in the breeze on those long cloudless days i recall the hours of sunshine and daydreams high above a timbered sea
take me up to the mountains my love take me up to the sky take me up through the trees up where the breeze sings that lonesome lullaby
so that’s it. dave says i am goin to be able to post rough audio files on this thing. i hope to be able to get input in my song writing, you know…”like this part but that part sucks” kind of thing. i do a lot of revising and it seems like it might be cool to get other people involved in that.
posted by sage at 11:20 pm
today started with me gathering me and baby up and rushing us over the siskiyous pass in the beginnings of a big storm. it was definitely good that i left when i did. the snow was just starting to get that mean look. baby girl was tired but of course terribly unwilling to fall asleep. she sits right next to me in the front of the pick up so i can stop her from itching. (she has allergies and has suffered dreadfully from rashes, so when she is at all unhappy with her situation in the world she itches by habit) so there i was driving through the snow over the pass trying to get baby girl to go sleep. luckily she likes music, so i tried her latest favorite twinkle twinkle little star, but that only brought on cries of frustration. down in the valley did about as much and even this old man was a flop. i decided to try an old favorite, the wind and rain. her head collapsed to the side and i could finally concentrate on keeping us on the roadway. whenever i start singing that song to her i laugh. it is so morbid. although i guess most of the children songs are pretty morbid, ring around the Rosy and the like. i first tried it cause it is a song that i have sung before with my good and terribly talented friend miss sarah mitchell and have never truly learned the lyrics. it is also repetitive which is something i thought the baby would respond to, and she did and always has. sadie likes to hear things over and over again. she has gotten to the point now that she can communicate that she wants you to sing a certain something again and generally she wants it again and again and again. i always end up rolling my eyes, god not again. and wonder at her hunger for the repetition of things that are already so repetitive in nature. but really do we change at all. i still listen to a newly discovered album until the speakers on my stereo are likely to go on strike. i think i listened to jolie holland’s escondida everyday, all day for a week when i first discovered it. on my road trip with pookie the last three months of it we listened to Lucinda Williams Happy Woman Blues the album every single morning. we would start the car and play it immediately. it was like the coffee we couldn’t afford. There are albums that are i listened to till they fell apart in high school, cat stevens: mona bone jakon, paul simon: graceland, tracy chapman: fast car, van morrison: moondance. i would love to hear other peoples albums. these albums are like the pair of corduroys i still keep in my drawer that i wore till they just disintegrated off my body.
so anyway, can’t say i blame the baby for wanting me to sing the same songs over and over again
posted by sage at 11:11 pm
i have been talked into starting a blog. i have to admit that i have been contemplating it for years. i have always had a journal but have never been terribly comfortable writing for other people. therefore, i am pretending that this is a personal journal, otherwise i don’t think i would get anything posted.
like countless other people in this world i am cursed. cursed with a obsession. it has so taken over my life that i wouldn’t be a surprise to hear certain people say it has led me to some questionable decision making over the years. music controls everything. music is like nothing else in existence. it is simultaneously generous and cruel. what is it really? art, mathematics, philosophy. its true power is its ambivalence. can you touch it? sometimes it feels like you can and then you try and it wiggles away just as you think you have it. it exists in that place i call the river beneath the river. its that place that drives your car when you start thinking about tomorrow and all the sudden you can’t remember driving the last 2 miles. sometimes i start telling someone a dream and its gone. it tickles with images and emotions, but its gone, never to be recalled. how do you work with this sort of medium. my favorite philosopher Eric Hoffer says in the Art of the Notebook, “A Matter of Moments: Actual creativeness is a matter of moments. One has to piece together the minute grains to make a clump. and it is so easy to miss the momentary flashes. It is like sluicing in placer mining. He who lets the flakes float by has nothing to show for his trouble.”
this is how i have approached my songwriting and music lately. i have realized, in surviving a writers block of 4 years, the burn out of performing the same songs in the same place with the same people for years, the university break down of all confidence and ego and relocation of music to the back burner in my life since the conception of my baby girl 2 years ago, that feeling satisfied creatively is like capturing that elusive dream you can’t quite remember. the only way i have found any success is through old fashioned diligence. like mining or being a fire lookout (both familiar professions) the point of your endeavour is rendered pointless without a constant focus of effort and energy. this blog is a new place for me to mine. i hope by writing about writing it might help me write, that you might help me write. we’ll see…
posted by sage at 8:19 pm