Sometimes our students are our best teachers.
A few years ago, I had a guitar and violin student (I love a multi-talented kid) that was one of my favorite people ever. One afternoon, they said to me in a voice filled with wonder, “Music is the wind, and we are the willow tree.” And I was just gobsmacked. I googled the saying, and it wasn’t a song lyric (at least not that I could find) or a line from a book or another poem (at least not that I could find). And it really gave me a lot to think about.
I tried to write a song around it, and was never happy with the result, so I let it go. For a while.
Then this former student reached out to me and I was reminded of that amazing line, and decided to ask one of my favorite collaborators, Susan Stamnes, to take a run at it and see if she could winkle out whatever it was that I was missing. And of course, she did, because she is mighty.
Susan wrote most of these words (I added a couple lines, maybe three tops), and wrote a melody and some chords. She sang it for me, but didn’t give me a recording so I didn’t remember the melody, which she said was totally her intent. I took her chords and … mucked them about hard, because … me. And then I came up with a melody, and sent her a recording. She made a couple very good suggestions, I adjusted, and here we are. I love the whole vibe of this, and the way it reminds us that singing is a way through nearly every hardship we face. Thank you, Susan! As always.
Enjoy Music Is the Wind.
In the deepest canyon
Where rivers rage and roar
There’s a song that calls us closer
To harbor on the shore
In the fury of the storm
Where lightning splits the sky
We stand against the discord
And with a song we cry
Chorus
Music is the wind and we are the willow
Sway with the rhythm to bend, not break - oh
Music is the wind and we are the willow
Dance with the rhythm and the world makes a way - oh
In the hush of twilight
Where shadows start to fall
Songs will whisper secrets
In corners dark and small
In the murmur of morning
When the world begins to wake
There’s a symphony unfolding
In the choices that we make
In the deepest canyon
In twilight’s shadowed hush
Songs will whisper secrets
That live inside of us
Beneath the weight of mountains
Where glaciers carve the way
We endure the crushing pressure
And rise to sing with each new day
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