Last week I had the pleasure of visiting family and other monsters on the Île d’Oléron.
When I spied these blackberries ripening defiantly in the cracks of the citadel wall, slightly above a hastily spray-painted English curse word, I felt something big. Was it recognition? Relief? Or something like hope? A mixture of all three, wrapped up in the joy of seeing an unarticulated notion taking physical form.
There are so many reasons to let expletives fly from our mouths. Inaction in the face of ecological breakdown. The amplification of discontent, unmediated by editorial thoughtfulness, and the interpersonal cruelties that criss-cross the globe, propelled by the algorithms of social media. The persistence of so many forms of oppression, as well as the allure and durability of ignorance.
A lot of things are breaking. We don’t know what will take their place. This is scary. So many of my songs are animated by this thrill of panic. As if Eden responds with a call to defiant action and the vitality of love, while also acknowledging the inevitability of death. Maple Seed is a gentler reply to the same fear of dissolution. Tender breezes – where might they come from? Where might they take us?
A breeze brought a blackberry pip to what might have seemed an inhospitable place, a crack in the face of a fortess wall. But it sprouted and grew of its own accord.
I, too, have new songs ripening in my mind. But they bristle at the thought of being rushed. They thrive on freedom and sunshine, which they are greedily soaking up this summer.
Sour or sweet, they never fail to surprise me.
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