Carrie Link

A STILL LIFE

A little birdy told me you are sick of reading lyrics on my blog. Same little birdy that bitched about gently mentioned being sick of reading about my dreams. Well, hmmm... that's a problem, isn't it, because I listen to a lot of great music and dream a lot of dreams, and if I don't blog about them, how in the hell am I supposed to actually integrate their wisdom? I'm an extrovert, that's what we do. We integrate our knowledge by sharing it with others. No need to thank me. Your own integration is all the thanks I need.

Well, I'm back on Lucy Kaplansky. She has one song that I'm particularly obsessed with right now, the one that speaks of a still life. A life that is still.

I want more stillness in my life.

I NEED more stillness in my life.

But a still life?

Not. So. Much.

Isn't the trick to find stillness within the ever changing circumstances of life, rather than to get the circumstances to stop and be still?

My dad lived a still life. He moved from bedroom to kitchen table and back to bedroom. That's it. He lived in a 2,500 square foot house, technically, but his life was spent either sleeping off a drunk in one room, or actively building one in another. Nobody called him. Nobody stopped by. He kept a fully packed suitcase in his closet but never went anywhere. His life was still. His body was still. Stillness, though, eluded him to his dying day.

That's no life.

At least not for me.


LUCY KAPLANSKY
Still Life

Sadness is a little boy looking
Out the window high above the city,
Counting statues of people on the buildings,
Thinking that the people are forever,

He wants his father to be a statue,
On the rooftop of his fatherless home,
So that he can always see him,
So that he will never leave him,

Late at night in the darkness of his dreaming,
His father's words fall down in a rainstorm,
And the words become hands that will guide him,
Through his life in the world just beginning.


You cannot live in bronze or stone,
Make your life in flesh and bone.


Stranded is a man no longer searching
For the life he had hoped for and imagined
Courting fear instead of a woman,
Holding sorrow as his only companion

Counting days like his money in the markets,
And watching life from the window in his office,
Maybe one day I'll have the courage,
Maybe one day I'll sail across the ocean.

But I feel safe in the light of my computer,
This is how I choose to live,
Fixed in stone a man will wither,
Running waters are the life of the river.

You cannot live in bronze or stone,
Make your life in flesh and bone
Remember me...

Frightened is an old man limping
Through the park on a dark December day,
He stands frozen at the base of a statue,
And he hopes for a warm hand to help him,

Tonight he will dream that he is flying,
Over banks of a river he remembers
His father's voice will echo all around him,
His father's hands will hold him in the sky,

Now I can sail across the ocean,
Now I will sail across the ocean,
Now I am sailing across the ocean.

I cannot live in bronze or stone,
I must live as flesh and bone.
Remember me, remember me, remember me...

*Photo of Renoir's "Still Life With Peaches"