ben wakeman : : Journal

8 Years Old

May 10, 2004

I cannot believe that my boy is turning 8 years old today. I don't think you can really have a concept of the passage of time until you have a child. I know I didn't before, but now, as I look at him and talk to him knowing that just eight short years ago, I could hold his tiny body in my hands, I am overcome by the miracle of time.

Yesterday, for mother's day, we hiked around Amicolola Falls in North Georgia and it was so beautiful. As always, it was a contant reminder to me of how much I need to be outside. I spend so much of my life being radiated by the light from a computer monitor rather than the sun. Below is a picture I snapped of Ian at the bottom of the falls.

I spent much of my free time last week working on a Mother's Day gift for Catherine. I put together a Flash-based movie with pictures of the boys and quotes on mothering set to one of her favorited Cat Stevens songs. I think it meant a lot to her which pleased me. She is an amazing lady.

Things are beginning to look up for me musically. The band has a nice cluster of bookings coming up, so it's gonna be great to get out and play in front of people again. In spite of all my bitching, I have not stopped writing and collaborating with Tom. I feel happy with the new stuff, though it is all pretty quiet introspective material and not suitable for a Screen Door record. I am thinking of putting the collection out on my own and distributing them solely on the web.

The songs come to me these days in their own simple certainty. I don't have a lot of control (did I ever?) of what will come. I have some ability to shape them once they find their way out, but for the most part they already know what kind of song their going to be. Each song reveals itself to me in a slightly different way, but it always just a partial view, a tease that makes me search for the rest. I liken it to what an archeologist might do after discovering the tip of a fossilized bone. You don't know what manner of beast it is until you get out your tools and begin to excavate it.

Some lyrics for the newest one, which came to me in a quiet moment are below (there's another verse that I don't have commited to memory yet). I love songs like this because the melody is completly married to the words. To clarify: I did not start with non-sense words in the melody and find myself searching for something sensable. The sound of the words and the rhythm of the rhyming scheme made it all fall into place.

Somewhere I know birds fly north so
they can feel the wind blow so cold
Somewhere babies cry for their Daddies
when they're hungry in the middle of the night
And someday, you'll come back to me

Somewhere boys cry and don't feel ashamed by
the tears in their eyes when the world knocks them down
Somewhere flowers bloom for endless hours
And never cower to the passage of time
Someday, you'll come back to me