'Worries'

snippets and things

hi ❀

i think this will be my last newsletter at least until the new year. i like the three that are available for you to read, and to listen to the attached songs. it has been nice to develop my songwriting practice this year, and this tiny portal of accountability has been good. going forward this may become more of an official channel for updates.

I also want to share a couple of poems i’ve been liking recently. The first is by Mary Oliver.

I Worried
Mary Oliver

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?

Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

~~~

The second is by Laura Villareal:

My Worries Have Worries
Laura Villareal

so I built little matchstick houses
with large ceilings, a garden for them to grow

tomatoes, cilantro, & carrots
their worry babies will eat

but they chew on the henbit of me anyway
both my past & future entwined into disasters

I tell them I worry about their health
that they’re not eating properly

I mother them
the way I do anyone I love

they ask if I love myself
I tug the sleeves of my sweater

begin thatching a leaking roof
water their garden
at night

I can hear them
dancing around a bonfire

all I’ve built burned
down, a soot snowfall

tomorrow they’ll wait for me
& I’ll reconstruct their home
anyone would do the same

i recommend listen to the Poetry Unbound episode for this second poem (if you haven’t already). Poetry Unbound is a really wonderful podcast. Padraig, the host, talks about having an “over-abundance of attention" towards the worrying part of ourselves, and how we often might not know what we’d do were that worrying part to go away, or were we to pay less attention to it.

my song ‘Worries’ started as an exercise in a ‘School of Song’ class that i took, which is a wonderful online resource, with Taja Cheek. the excersise was to stitch together a song from fragmented ideas. here’s a snippet.

lastly, while i am sharing poems and other things that i like here, i also want to say that Florist released a new song recently called ‘This Was a Gift’, and I love it a lot.

that’s it for now. thank you for being here with me if you are :) ~❀