Progress!
Four months later, this version of “Rise” can spill out of Robbie.
The point is not to reach Eddie Vedder-level. The point is to get better–and look!
Month: November 2019
“Let’s Just Be the Moon”
The lyrics for this came partly from a poem I wrote in March 2018 called, “To Speak of the Day“.
The words morphed autonomously to the tune of the moment: namely, a way to escape feeling caged. This was catharsis. I found, as soon as I joined the ranks of “songwriters”–simply by having written a song–that I had gone beyond more than just one cage.
Out of the cage of “writing music is not something that you do.” Because it’s something I did and that counts.
Is this not just perfectly analogous to the cycle tour? Who am I to do this–me, who doesn’t know how to fix a bike beyond a flat tire (yet), who doesn’t have much money saved (yet), who doesn’t know any other language besides English (yet).
It is for me, because I will do it.
“Rise” — First Cover
Progress.
To make progress, one has to start from somewhere.
To start from somewhere, one has to start.
This version of “Rise” was recorded within the first weeks of getting my mandolin and beginning to practice it.
Up in the Clouds
Release me—
my mind is a maze of serpentine
storylines, bending and swirling
with the Kabul River, cuddling, carving
belting the Hindu Kush;
Hindu Kush to the Tian Shan;
Tengri Tagh or Tengir-Too, anything at all
to breathe in Mountains of Heaven.
Sharp, cascading inhales of the ice gods, the grins
I see in the snow lines, the dusk-shades cast by sunlight—
Yes, I’ve got the kitchen scissors left on the office desk
along with your note.
I’m standing, bareshod and slightly sweating
in the afternoon glare, trimming the ficus
that overgrows the pathway.
I trim delicately;
for with the coppery snips
I fall, more resolute
into each crispy step of the
Karakoram Highway, pedaling down from Kashgar
sweeping the Hunza, cycling with bird-arms
through Jamalabad, blowing a smooch at the violet-misted
Disteghil Sar, the back of my neck twinging from the elevation—
On afternoons such as these,
under the tropical breeze of the trade winds,
it’s only this ficus I’m snipping
that stands between
two wheels and the roof of the world.
originally posted to The Hydrogen Jukebox.
Mandolin Miles 