Feb 26
seen from Australia
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seen from Jordan
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Sweden
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from United States
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seen from Poland
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seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany
Brian Ibbott (of Coverville fame) talked about this song a couple of times on The Morning Stream, which made me want to come back and spend a little more time with it.
It was a good idea. It's an amazing song. Insofar as I'd had any real sense of the song before last week, it was simply of it as part of the post-9/11 New York song canon. Osborne is famously one of the more embedded transplants to the city and the press she gave at the time suggested that it was at least in part based on that love for a city that was still healing. Even if Rome gets coequal billing in the song, though--particularly notable for an artist most famous for a song about God and other one that is named for Teresa of Ávila.
But that coequal billing gets to it, doesn't it? Jay Clifford (of Jump, Little Children fame) wrote it for an album that came out three years before 9/11. Lyrically, though, those lyrics hit a lot different now than they did in 1998 or 2008.
(While we're doing the YouTube thing, Rick Beato produced JLC's record Between the Dim & the Dark back in 2004)
The performance is very much a 2008 Early Show kind of read, but also deeper than you might expect from someone who often has a kind of nervous energy as a performer. I'm not sure that the funniest thing to me is that the video doesn't even mention Matt Morris and...is he more famous than Joan Osborne is now? He has certainly worked with several of the most famous artists of our time.
Let me also get off my chest: if you have Joan Osborne as a one-hit artist...just buzz off. It's kind of true, in that "One of Us" charted much higher than any song she's ever recorded, but that's awfully hard for my to reconcile with the career she's had. I don't know that I quite want to pitch it there, but she's kind of Johnny Cash, right? She's more an interpreter of other people's music, but when she has a hand in writing a song, it's a real banger. She's also got a voice that can cross over in terms of genre, and has a real sense of authenticity. Even in a case like this, where the performance isn't perfect, it's a beautiful, authentic imperfection.
another song for everyone.
and he’ll take her hand softly--the fight is over, the war perhaps not won, but at least at a pause--and bring her to him. the sound will fill the room. and slowly, they’ll dance, turning slow circles like a small universe in and of themselves.
A priest with a bull's head called you a liar.
"That's enough for me to know I'm moving in the right direction..." An Interview With Jay Clifford
“That’s enough for me to know I’m moving in the right direction…” An Interview With Jay Clifford
If you are really lucky, a handful of times in your life an artist or band sweeps through you and shines some real light on your humanity.
Music can do that.
It can shred you right down to your quietest place, where the atoms are interfacing. Call it coincidence or fate or even faith; the right music, at the exact right time in your life when nothing else could have found its way that deep inside…
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Taken by the ocean and the wind Procession of broken pieces What’s left now floating like a V of pelicans
Captured by the slowly falling tide Scattered drift wood A doomed armada now crossing in search of the other side
With the darkness eminent Everyone tries to find a way back home again
Nothing but a frame of skin and bone She takes a deep breath to drown Or baptize this river with the tears she’s never known
A shadow of a wolf across the beach Silver and black a guardian Over the chasm that keeps us out of reach
With the darkness eminent Everyone tries to find a way back home again
Hidden in a single grain of sand A numinous charge of light A sudden unveiling with a chance to understand
It doesn’t matter now just what she wants The messages drift across horizons Half under like a flock of cormorants
With the darkness eminent Everyone tries to find a way back home again
know when to walk
know when to walk away
