Swan song? Written mid-February 2013
As noted in this journal from a few days ago, I’ve been
inspired to look back at some of her old songs as if they are poetry.
If have, of course, listened to some of these songs
thousands of times since she gave me the CD a year ago, only to realize that
some the songs posted on some online accounts weren’t on the original CD, and,
and in fact, had been recorded much more recently than when the originals were
back perhaps in 2005.
These stand out partly because of the difference in
production value since the CD music was produced by her husband, a very capable
musician in his own right, while a few later pieces she apparently recorded in
her apartment, one using a piano she kept in her kitchen, the other using a
guitar she apparently received as a gift in late April last year.
The guitar work is simple, using minimal effects, perhaps reverb.
But her voice is so powerful, it gives the song its own sense of orchestration as
she raises emotions a lesser performer could not manage.
While all of her songs have an amazing haunting quality that
carries me along on their emotional roller coaster, the song recorded with
guitar in her apartment came at a particularly critical time, just as we were
hitting the skids, yet just prior to the real drama that happened later in the
month of May.
Like all of her songs – including covers – the real magic is
in her voice. So that her husband’s orchestration on the CD enhances only to a
certain degree the magic of the music. It is to her voice that I was always
drawn, a seductive arrangement that would entice anyone, even people who never
met her in person, showing a range and gift for phrasing that is remarkable.
At this point, the guitar piece may well be the last song
she recorded (I have no way of knowing if she has posted anything since) and
may well be a musical and emotional swan song since it comes at a time when she
was on the cusp of change, although still held out hope for the future. A month
later, after all the drama (I helped inflict on her), this song might well have
been impossible for her, because she could not with the same confidence believe
in it.
In some ways it seems to be a throw back to her days
following high school when she seemed more like a folk singer than the talented
jazz singer she became, although this song is much more complex in music and
meaning. It comes at a time when things seem to begin to crumble, and she seems
to be looking for answers in the wind, the blowing leaves she sees as being
free (when she clearly was not), somehow symbolic of her life.
“But I can feel it, each time they touch men, they touch me
even when I’m turned the other way,” she said, going on to say she feels it
even when she is sliding, she is still bound to believe – at a time when it is
still possible for her to believe.
The song seems to reflect the emotional fog she was then
going through when somedays all she saw was a blur in front of her and was
forced to be in a state without grace.
This last is a curious phrase that suggests something I don’t
know enough about to go into here.
But the song suggests a certain speechlessness, or perhaps
helplessness against fate, and yet even then, she feels the sense of potential
freedom, the blowing wind, the clinging leaves, touching her, feeding her even
when she is sliding – as she appeared to be early last May.
Her voice rises and falls in pitch and volume, suddenly
floating well above the music, then falling into almost a whisper, powerful
verbal devices that seduce the listener, forcing attention on where she will
take us next.
Her voice is clearly full of the grace her lyrics claim she
lacks, as she takes us on an emotional ride, going up and down octaves with
such ease as we cling to her wings to follow, there is huge power in this vocal
vehicle that keeps you clinging, and as she touches themes she would later
embrace in her poetry, such as thoughts coming into her head, drawing her out
of bed reluctantly, part of that ever problematic early morning conflict she
later called hamster thinking, then something small pulls her free, reminds her
of the leaves in the trees – and in one passage about their dying, and yet she
gets to live another day, again feeling the power of this freedom touch her,
feed her.
Again, she refers to facing reality without grace, almost as
if a Garden of Eden tale, in which some temptation has severed her from what
she wants and needs, and yet as with those Biblical characters, she is still
bound to believe.
As pointed out, this song comes before the full fury of the
spring and summer, at a time when she still holds out hope for salvation, even
though some of her relationships have just gone sour.
Her remarkable vocal talents elicit incredible feelings, not
the subtle lust of some of her other songs, but in this case, real passion as
if this is an anthem to what is possible, something she might not later be able
to recreate. In that moment of time, however, in early May she still clings to
hope the way dead leaves cling to tree branches, still feels the touch of wind,
feels a sense of what might be possible.
Looking back, this strikes me as her swan song and makes me
wonder if she will be able to create on this level again. Listening to it, also
makes me feel a bit ashamed for the part I played on dimming the lights on this
amazing talent.
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