you are the water so deep
I remember a time when I would playfully entertain new songs on a daily basis. I always made time in my day for tinkering on piano, harp, or some other instrument as accompaniment for voice. The human voice. As a listener, I love the tones, the layers, the vulnerability, the unpredictability of the human voice and how it can reach and move me in unexpected ways. And as someone who sings, I am intrigued by the process of sound moving through me – like a thread that is pulled from the dark depths of an inner chamber and is drawn outward, to the outside world. How blessed to be able to sing. And when I write of being ‘able’ to sing, I’m not writing about the technicality of pitch or tone, but about the simple joy of having a voice – my own natural voice that allows me to speak, to shout, to whisper, to sigh, to make percussion, to make sound, sometimes pretty, sometimes not, to express in some way that connects the inside and outside worlds of my embodied being.
“Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.”
This endeavour to share a song every two weeks for the next year is my way of getting out into the morning to sing! My haphazard piles of songs – both finished and not – have been gathering dust for a long time, too long. It’s time for me to shake off the dust and breathe new life into them, into my voice, and into me.
I wrote ‘you are the water so deep’ in 2013 partly as a pleading to myself, then in my mid thirties, to stop worrying about whether I would ever become a mother. Either I would never have children and would have made myself an unhappy old woman from all the worrying; or I would one day have children and the worrying would have been for nothing.
you are the water so deep
come here, my baby
take all the time that you need
what is a day or two
to a wise elephant?
these days are a wave or three
and you are the water so deep
listen, my baby
take all the time that you need
you won’t keep me waiting
‘cause inside you’re already here
come here, my baby
I don’t care if your skin is of snake
what is a drop or two
in the ocean deep and blue?
these days are a wave or three
and you are the water so deep
listen, my baby
I don’t care if your skin is of snake
I couldn’t love you more
every scar, every freckle misplaced
