1. Ghostdance

Song Notes

THE WARS WRIT LARGE – UNSTABLE FOUNDATIONS; A LEGACY OF WOUNDS; INTERGENERATIONAL HOLES IN OUR SOULS: YOU CAN’T PASS ON WHAT YOU DON’T HAVE–
How does a child learn that it is ok to be happy when all those around them have lost the ability to feel joy and experience pleasure? I gave my sister a copy of this song and she thought it was
about our mother – the mother she grew up with: the mother I never knew. I think it is about all our mothers, and, all our fathers. It is the legacy of war – big and small, dislocation and the learning of how to accept shame as if it were healthy and normal. This song is a punch in those beliefs while honouring the sadness.

Ghostdance

he moves down the street in a windswept ballet,
to the sound of the mariner’s rhyme
Porcelain skin etched with old pain,
heart in her hand pantomime.
Gone is the safety and gone is the saviour,
and gone is the light in her eyes
She never quite found her way back from night
He was lost in that crimson washed tide.

Springtime would come and she’s find herself,
waiting for summer to fade
For hours and hours it seemed she could kneel,
her own pleasure she’d learn to delay
Brocaded satin and vows sworn in Latin,
stained yellow and spent with old time
Haunted by shadows of ghosts of
commanders: her threshold a family line

I felt sorry echo through each word she spoke,
I was helpless to this killing despair
She said: “Life’s a rehearsal for the next time around,
my shame is a pain I can bear”
The embarcadero’s ghosts, would beckon,
once she thought her prince had been saved
But there was nothing there, when she reached for his shoulder,
so she withdrew from all those who cared.

For 35 years she tried not to pretend
that the man she was with was the one
We’d hold on tight on those rides to the
station, “In time you learn to care”
Oh, the more he was gone, the more she’d return,
and then never again his sweet rage
Now she burns sacraments, and salutes the men,
for their part in this evil charade.

I refused the divide; I would not take sides,
I’d be honest as both of them taught
Touched by the lives of the times that they’d lived,
but for me, their dreams: they forgot
For what they believed, for their wish that I be,
I will dance this one serenade
For where is the line between sadness and madness,
and me, and the part that I played?

And, where will I be, and who will be near,
when it’s time for me to take leave?
Will my ghosts take their seats, when the curtains come down,
and my flash becomes my conceit?
She spoke with acceptance at a holiday breakfast
that her ashes be scattered at sea
And how will it feel, that moment revealed,
will I learn before then to be free? Ahhhh!

2. Minuet For The Staircase Children

Song Notes

THE WAR WRIT SMALL – One little girl sits on the stairs looking through the spindles of the staircase hoping against hope that her mommy and daddy will stop screaming at each other, and doing what all children tend to do – blaming herself. She is left, like many of us, trapped in the prisons of our parents’ broken dreams while our parents mute their brokenness with addictions. And, governments continue to raise nearly half of their revenues from alcohol, cigarettes and gambling. “… faith is our fear of death wrapped in a party dress” – Mohammed Hanif, from Our Lady of Alice Bhatti. The “joyful noise” of this song is my “party dress”.

Minuet For The Staircase Children

She imagines herself, light-years ahead, asleep with her memories and grey in her hair
Just another seasick sailor clinging to the side of the bed
And they keep on smiling in that old photograph high in the wall overhead
She just like she remembers for they surrender for a few on the steps of the shed.

Oh, they’re down I the kitchen, their liquored up words spin, like needles into her hears
It’s ok if the kid hears, it’s the neighbours you fear, as her best friend her dog, licks her tears
When the whiskey wears off, they’ll still have their pride, and she’ll feel guilty for wishing they’d died
She’ll be kissed on the forehead. They’ll thank God he’s not dead and leave on the damned bathroom light.

Oh, Mama said, “So, and Papa said, “No”, and Grandma said, “Come let’s play tea dear”.
And holding the lid as she pours for the kid, “They don’t mean it, it’s only the booze”

She’s bombarded with curses, commending she’s worthless and this time she’s just gone to far
There’s somebody pushing, and somebody pulling, in a world that assumes there’ll be scars.
And Mama sits smoking, saying, “Daddy’s just joking. He’ll do nothing he’ll ever regret.
Get closer, what’s the problem? Hug your father, be a daughter. And don’t you ever forget”

Oh, Mama said, “So, and Papa said, “No”, and Grandma said, “Come let’s play tea dear”.
And holding the lid as she pours for the kid, “They don’t mean it, it’s only the booze”
Oh, Mama said, “So”, and Papa said, “No”, and Grandma said, “Life isn’t easy”
And stroking her head, she tells the kid, “It’s gonna’ be better for you”.

She covers her head, and hides in her bed, and says she’ll “Keep quiet, if you don[‘t make me dead”
And it doesn’t get better, before it gets worse; she retreats to a world in her head.
It’s a bloody Mary, it’s a bloody sin, it’s bloody on bloody all over again
Like caught on the side where the waters run high and it’s filthy and stinking with dread.

What does it mean, to be part of a dream, that’s a nightmare most of the time?
Why do you say that’s it’s only a phase, are you confusing your life with mine?
And Father has spoken, “You bitches, you broke it. You’re why I get half-coked and tight”]
And some learn to fight, and some take to flight and some pray to Jesus with all of their might.

Oh, Mama said, “So, and Papa said, “No”, and Grandma said, “Come let’s play tea dear”.
And holding the lid as she pours for the kid, “They don’t mean it, it’s only the booze”
Oh, Mama said, “So”, and Papa said, “No”, and Grandma said, “Life isn’t easy”
And stroking her head, she tells the kid, “It’s gonna’ be better for you”.
Oh, Mama said, “So”, and Papa said, “So”, and Grandma, said love isn’t painless
And rubbing her neck she says, ”It’s just that I cannot accept you as you”.

3. Safe & Sound

Song Notes

WOMAN – LOVE THYSELF! Audre Lorde (born Audrey Geraldine Lorde February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was a Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist. She wrote of Eros in a piece that has left a beautiful mark on me as much for its beauty as for how much it confused people. This song is simply a poem set to music that celebrates the female life-forces that still exist despite misogynist patriarchal institutional demonising of female sexuality.

Safe & Sound

My need, you found, I came, a sound, electrified my skin
Entwined it echoed with the wolves and carried on the winds
Outside your door a tempest roars, you take me to your side
In tenderness we take the night back to the sirens pleasured cries.

Up your magic staircase into a cloud we flew
Behind us came a dragon breathing fiery “What-to-do’s”
I came without instructions, well honour and desire,
And a wish to taste the secrets of a passion I won’t hide.

No, not to us will sleeping come, luscious, ripe and sweet
We howl aloud with moans of joy and carnal ecstasy
I reach out to your soul that I may open with my tongue
And, wide you spread your meadowed gates –
I come to where I’m from.

Oh, gently, oh, gently, let me hear my name
As choirs of angels explode in my brain
I completely surrender to Sappho’s refrain
Hotter and hotter, again and again
The soft blazing oceans, the flames that our sighs,
The fires of lust, the pull of the tides
Vesuvius quivers and laps at my thighs…

Out into the wilderness, the Moon a holy light
An illuminating darkness, a ruby cast with light
It guides us to abandon all the fears we’ve learned too well
WE rise and fall in waves of trust caressing every cell.

My heart is beating “one” again it’s happy with its work
Bathed in calm and kindness we have satisfied a thirst
We are born here where we lie and in the moment of this spell
How sweet our breath and pure our flesh, How magically filled.

4. Shaking The Foundation

Song Notes

PHOENIX RISING: AND WHAT IF YOU KILLED YOURSELF AND EVERYTHING WAS THE SAME EXCEPT NOW NO-ONE CAN SEE YOU? – I tried to figure out why I felt like I never belonged; why I felt like the “ugly duckling; or, the “black sheep”. My adopted mother and grandmother kept saying to me: “I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Why can’t we have a normal mother/daughter relationship?” In hindsight – there was nothing normal about our relationship.

Shaking The Foundation

You lie in bed, you close your eyes, you hear the sirens
You hold your own, your own is all you’ve got
Time is in torment; its pendulum is moving oh, so slowly
Look out! The sky could fall on you without a warning.

You cannot sleep, you watch TV, you get up early
What’s gone before, you don’t wish to recall
It will be better, a new day begins and with it new dreams
Yet you tremble like there’s a rumbling in the walls.

You look for work. You take a train. You find a paper
You watch the floor, it opens up on you
Among the strangers, you holler,
“Please, don’t let them take me!”
But if there’re saviours on this train they all forsake you.

And is there something shaking your foundation?
Is there something stirring in your soul?
Is there something got you hesitating?
Is there something, something blowing in your soul?

It could just happen
and you will not be the one left laughing
This time it’s real, and it’s cutting into you
It’s slicing through you,
you who have always been a winner
Up until now when what you’ve had to lose has mattered.

Some days some days are better, some days are easier to wake to
And then some days you could die before you start
You’d swallow poison if you thought it would be painless
But you did not come with guarantees,
it may not mean changes.

So, you must make your peace and be your own wings
And fly as high, as low has brought you down
Then you will rise up and feel the joy in your own living
And set the voices in your soul free for singing.

6. Mr. Businessman’s Blues

Song Notes

Prophets not profits! There’s lots of charity but not BIG PICTURES, JOSEPH AMEDEE, SPEAKING TRUTH – When I started my healing journey my guide told me: “Someone really loved you for you”. I remember watching the dogs attack people in the south in 1959 on Joseph Amedee’s lap in front of the little round faced black and white television and asking him why people were so mean to each other. He said: “It’s the system. It makes us all sick”.

Mr. Businessman’s Blues

Tell me Mr. Businessman, how does your money grow?
How much sweat is on your brow? How weary are your bones?
How much toil to dig this Earth, to slash, enslave, control?
When you’ve used up our great resource do you plan to work your gold?

Tell Mr. Businessman, is business going well?
Can you put your best foot forward as you walk your Earthbound hell?
Dreams are caught and muscles knot and wishes don’t come true.
You get rich upon my back and say it’s what I choose.

Tell me Mr. Businessman; tell me what’s so rough.
What is it that you’re giving up that seems so mean so much?
How many dollars can you spare? How many acres will divide?
How many will be sacrificed before you’re satisfied?

Tell me Mr. Businessman; tell me what’s so hard.
Do you have to pay an army to guard the defence around your yard?
Or are you innocent by scale, you’ve only gardeners for your lawns?
Can you make it right ‘cause it’s the lesser of the wrongs?

7. A Little Bird Told Me So

Song Notes

I couldn’t listen to music for a period of two years – it opened me up too much. I began writing again after the following incident. I had tried to save a little bird that had fallen out of its nest. I couldn’t find the nest. So I took it home and ground up worms and fed it water. The water suffocated it because baby birds don’t drink water. Do unto to others as you would have them do onto you. So many people try to “help” without asking what people need –with this song I try to ask.

A Little Bird Told Me So

It was a simple thing, a slight,
a “but” not an “and”, and then
one slip and she felt like a bug on a pin,
a tiny thing…

It had a harmless ring, a lark,
a ball on a string, too far
and tighter, and tighter and tighter, or like it or not
she was caught,
she was back there again.

So, tell me, what are you going to do with that pain inside of you?
What are you going to do? What are you going to do?

It was a pretty thing, a tune,
a song in her head, it went,
around and around and around like the wind,
A precious thing…

It’s such a careless world, one shift,
and the next thing you know, there’s that hole
oh, the world’s full of lost and bruised souls,
I ought to know, a little bird told me so.

8. Fear & Hunger

Song Notes

DYSFUNCTIONALITY’S JUST NOT PASSED ON – LIKE A CARCONOGENIC IT ACCUMULATES HARM:
Co-dependency – not an overused term. I had developed a pattern of trying to fill my hole with something outside of me. This was just another form of denial and addiction, very primal, pervasive, that I assumed was “normal”.

Fear & Hunger

You’re hungry again, I can’t satisfy you.
Pointing your finger at what is denied you.
Hungry again, out in the street.
You think ‘cause you’ve had me that I’m something to keep.

Come on, tell me! What do you want?
Is it something, something I’ve got?
Tell me; tell me, what do you need?
Ain’t I someone?…

You’re thirsty again, I can’t mollify you.
Leaving us both dry with me stuck inside you.
Wanting not willing it’s the chase that’s so thrilling.
Ready, set, get out of here, this is so unfulfilling.

Come on, tell me! What do you want?
Is it something, something I’ve got?
Tell me; tell me, what do you need?
Ain’t I someone? What about me?…

9. Letter From San Francisco

Song Notes

ACCEPTANCE – It took me a long time to finish this song. The “fall” was hard and I survived it. Now the sadness is just part of who I am. I am reborn in this knowing; faith is more than a “party dress” – it’s a wardrobe for my spirit as I cross my River Jordon.

Letter From San Francisco

Half read sonnets and moss upon the columns
The CD’s programmed old and blue love songs
A line so fine is redefined
What is yours is yours and what is mine is mine
I lay frozen in this room of shifting shadows
Uncertain past the point of no return
My mind? A spider’s web fevered churning
Alone here in this night I must let go.

Chorus:
And it’s so clear and concise and out of phase
Like the photographs of us together in the lion’s cage
Between the ash and the bone drink long and hard
Into the bottom of the well into the flood.

Up to the sun we flew passions laced to fury
Dispensing with the lessons we had been learning
The borrowed wings of Icarus have let me hanging
I guess I got too close and I got burned
I didn’t need to need to run away
I felt shame and cursed myself, “Oh, not again!”
I looked for wrong that was wrong and now that hounds me
Into this steamy night where choice has found me.

A harvest moon lights an asphalt river
Soon we’ll be up to here in winter
Love will come again like the seasons
But memories need heartaches to grow cold.
Gently there are no accidental warriors
There are incidents and words that haunt and form us
Bruised we are and sad that it’s been spoken
Peace be with us as we cross our rivers Jordan

10. Where Are All The Children?

Song Notes

WE WERE ALL CHILDREN ONCE, EVEN LAWYERS (Charles Lamb – preface from To Kill a Mockingbird) – Perhaps we should all read Alice Miller’s Thou Shalt Not Be Aware. In this great connectedness we are somehow connected as children of the wars. We can also be children of peace.

Where Are All The Children?

Many miles from home we are taught in your fine schools
That a history book’s a weapon not a tool
In many voices we try to understand, what has come upon this land
Many good intentioned Christians tell us, “Children you must listen!”
Oh, they kill us with their kindness; in God’s name they terrorize us

On a starry night in a Central American town
Loved ones pray their loved ones won’t be found
While in the deepest part of a silent night, shots ring out in the dark
The missing ones will not be found, their killers never caught
And in the paper there’s a caption GUERILLAS KILLED IN ACTION
But they were children, they were only children, and how their mothers cry.

On a dusty road by an olive grove they rest
Young women with babies at their breasts
Upon the souls who went before them who lay beneath the earth
An earth made rich with bloodshed, blood shed before their births
And on the TV’s there’s a newsflash “MORE VICTIMS ON THE HOLY LAND!”
But they were children, they were only children, and how their mothers cry!

And it goes on and on, we see it everyday
We don’t need the papers, we don’t need the news
We all have the answers, we all share or we all lose…..

In the capitals of these places they call nations
There are papers pushed and proud congratulations
And while the victimized are criminalized are laughed at and are lied to
More plans are made by the death machine, will these madmen never tire?
No, they kneel and they pray to a materialist Saviour
And they were children, once they were children, what made their mothers cry?

And where are all the children? Where are all the children?
Where are all the children? What makes your mother cry?

11. Scary Intro (No Lyrics)

12. If They Take Us In The Morning

Song Notes

WHATSOEVER YOU DO TO THE LEAST OF MY BROTHERS/SISTERS THAT YOU DO UNTO ME – when they came for me there was nobody left. Courage is one of the Seven Grandfathers;
Seven Fruits of the Spirit; Seven Blessings; and, Seven Virtues. What would Jesus do if they came for you?

If They Take Us In The Morning

Henry didn’t make the list and neither did his “Rose”
And Gabby didn’t know that she shouldn’t wear boys’ clothes
And Caruso played the violin with his family’s travelling band
And Gina, blessed Gina, like and angel sang.

Chorus:
And if they take us in the morning they may come for you tonight
If you know and you do nothing you as good as take our lives
Oh, I will not lie nor compromise, my love to you my soul
And if they take us in the morning it’s not quietly I’ll go.

In candles’ light his dance of death in his sweet brother’s arms
Side by side they dance the dance of love that knows no harm
No more, no more these dying waves these quintessential costs
No more these chains on lives and dreams let no more love be lost.

Last night I held you close to me, today I went downtown
And I rode the escalator and got off at the top
I saw the eyes that Schindler saw, my childhood corner store
I dropped a quarter wept and said: “We’ll make it through the war”.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray, I pray my soul to keep
And if they come before the morning, I’ll be here in your arms.

13. In From The Cold

Song Notes

THE KEEPERS OF THE FIRE – In the teachings of my mothers’ ancestors: “white people” are the keepers of the fire; red people the earth; yellow people the air; and black people the water—and we’re all connected. Many years ago we were burned as the fire rolled across the back of the turtle. In the process of grieving, when there is a supportive and validating environment – there is place when one starts to “move on”. We have joy and we can own the sadness. Blessed are those who mourn for they should be comforted.

In From The Cold

Took the hard road
To a time where worlds forget what they can’t see
Took a rough path to a promised land
I never knew I’d always been
All the time a stranger in a stranger’s land
All the time a prisoner of a false command

Mother I have been gone a long, long time
Mother I have been gone a long, long time
Mother I have been gone a long, long time
I have been lost, in the fire

Great Spirits come
The rivers rise the mountains fall
We are all connected
And all those pieces I had learned to master
and to fit – My own dissection
All the time a stranger in a stranger’s land
All the time a prisoner of a false command

Mother I have been gone a long, long time
Mother I have been gone a long, long time
Mother I have been gone a long, long time
I have been lost, take me, take me

In from the cold: Out of the fire

14. Peggy’s Waltz

Song Notes

LOVE OF LIFE – We are here as bodies for the spirit to pass through. In the big, big picture – we are, in relation to the universe, infinitely smaller and smaller grains of sand. This melody with these arrangements went through my head since I was 8 years old – it was God whispering in my ear.