Many kinds of beauty
To go with the song Heavy Woman, here's a quote from from Clarissa Pinkola Estes' book Women Who Run With The Wolves. I think I must have found this before I wrote the song, because see the resemblance:
To take much pleasure in a world filled with many kinds of beauty is a joy in life to which all women are entitled. To support only one kind of beauty is to be somehow unobservant of nature. There cannot be only one kind of songbird, only one kind of pine tree, only one kind of wolf. There cannot be one kind of baby, one kind of man, or one kind of woman. There cannot be one kind of breast, one kind of waist, one kind of skin.
...
A woman cannot make the culture more aware by saying "Change". But she can change her own attitude toward herself, thereby causing devaluing projections to glance off. She does this by taking back her body. By not forsaking the joy of her natural body, by not purchasing the popular illusion that happiness is only bestowed on those of a certain configuration or age, by not waiting or holding back to do anything, and by taking back her real life, and living it full bore, all stops out. This dynamic self-acceptance and self-esteem are what begins to change attitudes in the culture.
Hurrah!
Out of the game: origins
A bit of the story of how this song came into being.
In early January 2002, my friend Shaun died suddenly. We'd first met in 1994, and he'd quickly become one of my "best people".
The original version of this song came to me in the aftermath of Shaun's death. I remember being on a platform at the old St Pancras station, by myself, some time between his death and the funeral, singing bits of it when it was only partly written.
In 2008, the song came to the forefront of my mind again when poet & craftsman Andy Postman died.
Andy was married to my friend Dee. I felt the loss, but I felt the waves of Dee's much greater loss more than the ripples of my own. So when I was going around singing the song to myself & thinking of Andy, in its original version which was more specific to me and Shaun, it didn't entirely fit.
A digression about songwriting
In general, I like my songs to fit multiple lives and events. I like to write so that a lot of different people could sing along and it would be just as true for them. E.g. I don't like to write things like "I drove my Chevy" because, you know, what if the person singing along to it doesn't drive a Chevy? or doesn't even drive!
When I'm the person singing along, I always like to get to the bits where the song words are true for me, and I find the intrusion of other people's Chevys slightly unsatisfactory.
That doesn't mean I won't be specific where the subject warrants it. I've got songs which would be true for some people and not in the same way for others. But the point is I like the words to set out the essence of the situation, not arbitrary details. The inclusion or deletion of a particular phrase can narrow or widen the category of people for whom the song's all true, and that's one of my criteria for what gets in.
Back to this song in particular
After Andy died, I rewrote some bits of Out of the game - partly just to make it better, but also to home in more on the essence of what it's like after someone dies. I began to imagine playing it live, and people hearing it who were grieving for friends and partners I didn't even know. So then it became about anyone who leaves a gap in your life, not only one of your best closest people.
In July 2011, I heard of the death of Kay Dekker. (I'm writing a separate post on my other blog with more thoughts about Kay himself.)
As regular readers will know, speedy recording of my songs has historically not been one of my strengths :-) Before Kay's death, I hadn't yet done a version of this song that was meant for release. So I wanted to name Kay here too, even though it isn't a song that I wrote about him originally. I was thinking of him as I sang it this time, and of other people grieving for him.
But really it's for anyone grieving for anyone, now and in the future. Hope it helps.
(If no playback button appears, you can still play the song back from its Bandcamp page.)
Yes, it's a blog
Well, the beginnings of one, anyway.
As some people know, I already have a blog at my Uncharted Worlds site. But this one will be specifically for music-related thoughts/musings/stories, and in particular for things connected with Single Bass. The other one's wider-ranging, including a lot of things not especially much to do with SB.