Alma Drake: guitar and vocal
Sebastian Sauder: Cellos
Annie Savage: Violin and viola
String arrangement: Jean Littlejohn
Songs come from … who really knows? The sky? A muse? And muses can be nearly anybody.
I’d been working with a batch of Songwriting Mastery students, playing with chords a LOT. This chord progression came up for me after a lesson, and something in it really grabbed me. My soul sister Laura had been out walking with her (now former) squeeze one night, and he asked her, “Is that moon half full or half empty?” and something about the idea of a half-empty moon also really grabbed me. And now it’s a song. A half-empty moon feels like it’s at rest, quieting, spending its potential slowly and steadily.
Over my lifetime, I have noticed that comfortable silences are signs of deep trust. If you can be silent with someone, and neither of you thinks it’s weird, that’s a great big yes. There’s no competition between egos, no one is trying to make a point or prove something or dominate a conversation – and neither one is paying half attention to what you say while thinking about what they’re going to say next. You trust that person enough to be paying extra attention to them, or to be a million miles away in their presence – and both of those things are powerfully intimate.
My ex could not bear silence. If I wasn’t talking to him he thought I was mad at him. Okay, that was in fact frequently extremely true, but most of the time when i was quiet it was because I just didn’t have anything to say, and didn’t have the strength to flap my gums for no reason. Also a powerful sign from the Universe, only one that really should be flashing in hot pink neon – “GET OUT NOW.”
My dearest people are comfortable with silence, although we frequently just can’t shut up because we have so much to say to each other. Ain’t it the way.
This song is an ode to love and silence, and loving silence.
Sitting under a half empty moon
Watching darkness and shifting light
We don’t speak because we don’t have to
And there’s no pressure to fill the silence
I lose myself in my own thoughts
I imagine you’re doing the same
It’s too dark to read shifting emotions
And there’s no pressure to fill the silence
The everyday turns upside down
In the home of stars there is no sound
And what a gift to hold
The silence safe and sacred now
We’re holding space and we’re holding silence
We’re not afraid of the dark
All the chatter and the whine of the highway
Disappears in the wake of our silence
Come and join me on Substack at almadrake.substack.com, and at Bluesky at bsky.social.com @MusicMedic – where people like to read stuff and lies get called out and nobody gets banned or smacked down for mentioning that we might be in a global climate crisis or anything. Sanity is so refreshing.