As a songwriter, it’s important to me to talk about more than just love in the romantic sense, though it could be argued that everything is about love. I didn’t just want to write about the back and forth, the comings and goings of lovers, which is another reason I left the more commercial business of music back east. I wanted to bite into bigger subjects sometimes. I wanted to talk about life, the universe, and everything; talk about my lifelong walk of spirit…without preaching a path to follow.
I love lyrics that can be understood in layers, for those who care to. As a performer it’s important, first and foremost, to entertain and not weigh down your audience with a lecture of life as you see it, or a sermon. That having been said, we all know of songs that managed to produce books in our minds, inside the slim four minutes they played.
Coyote Waltz can be seen as a nonsense performance piece. I often sing it straight after “Twisted” for a crazy little set-ender, the stand-up bass bringing in the jazz waltz. It can be left to enjoy just like that (I’m not selling anything, honest!) or the words can be heard with a mind to looking for and finding one’s spirit, within indigenous connections and the major religions. In these lyrics and the music sits my four-minute Theosophy Doctorate Thesis. First Nation stories talk of the coyote as a trickster, a teacher, even a creator…so he was perfect for a song…a waltz perfect for the twirling constancy of movement…the dance we are all caught-up in. What do you think it says?
Coyote Waltz copyright 2001 Lorraine Hart
Sometimes I dance with coyote
And fall on my ass…laughing
He’s a wolf
He’s a fox
He’s a dog
Oh my my my!
Sometimes I dance with coyote
And rise on my toes…gasping
He’s the truth in a lie
Such a fool
Ah…but who am I?
The fool is a wise man
And the wise man’s a fool
Our biggest lesson
Is our greatest tool
Every dance documents
The golden rule
That coyote can show me
Oooh…the jewel of cool!
As soon as he says it’s this
Baby…you know it’s that
Three hundred and twelve
Personalities…
All of them under one hat…
Oooh!
About Me
- Lorraine Hart
- A middle-aged native of my planet...still truckin' on. I believe in self-responsible freedom...Honour, Respect, Humility and Love. Live to write...write to live!
2 comments:
I love these lyrics; it reminds me a lot of myself. But in my mind, it reminds, that everything is going to be okay. No matter what. No matter how. It's okay.
Does that make sense?
Now, if there's a way you can put the tune on here, it would be AMAZING to hear the music to accompany the lyrics. If that looks too "selly" well, that's okay. See, 'cause everything is going to be okay, right?
Do you like your 312 personalities? I have many, too. I like all of them (for better or worse). I like the images in my head that happens with this song, in that, they all dance together. I suspect that's quite a party.
That's the whole idea...yay!...in loosening-up and allowing ourselves the freedom to be comfortable in our own skin, with its many personalities. Whoot!
Often, in the dance of learning, we fall...it can make us confused...or we can laugh and begin again...knowing a teacher can appear in any form. Then, sometimes, you grasp the idea of life in a split-second epiphany and all is gaspingly new...when viewed as the spiritual, it says that even within religions we don't understand...there's a core of truth to be found...and it can be most easily found by allowing oneself to be the "fool"...as in, happy acceptance of at least the core truth. That's why the fool is a wise man...and the wise man's a fool...and the meek shall inherit the earth. It's in NOT grasping, we gain. To connect with our own spirit, through the difficulties of our own egoes...well then, our biggest lesson becomes our greatest life tool. Every major religion has the same golden rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," but often people don't practice that in their everyday, even when they recite it in church...the jewel of cool is going to the mountain-top...alone, to find this truth...and hold it in each day.
Everything is always okay...at the same time as it's not...that's the crazy coyote, oxymoronic life we live...and we can worry it to death...or we can dance it to life.
Isn't it funny how human beings try often to define themselves and others in static moments...put this one in that box...stick that label on. Every human is a dance of personalities, complex and unique in blend. Labelling one another, as we try to have conversations that will move us forward as a society, stops the conversation's real flow and begins to lead us down the bumpy road of assumption.
I love my 312 personalities, as the co-creator of them...though there are a few I wrestle with alone, so as not to inflict them on others!
Hopefully you'll get to hear this one on June 29th. at Jazzbones!
BTW...we're trying to figure out how to make my camcorder videos into a different form to be accepted by youtube...technology thumbs its nose at me!
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