Song for Day 67 - "Shadows On A Dime" by Ferron

Day 67 - "Shadows On A Dime" by Ferron

Songwriter Ferron.

      A generation ago, especially in the Great Northwest, Deborah Foisy, "Ferron", was an icon in the folk and LGBTQ communities.  She remains the single finest confessionalist songwriter in recent history.  "Shadows On A Dime", from the 1984 album by the same name, is the third Ferron such contribution (after the eponymous "Testimony", sung by Marcelle Davies Lashley on Day 2, and "Cactus" on Day 12) to this series.

      "Shadows on a Dime" was released while centrists ("Reagan Democrats") were helping Ronald Reagan humiliate Walter Mondale by 58.8% to 40.6%.  This song is a panoply of perspectives, including many featured in both elections, 1984 and 2016 (and many since):  moving forward, labor, losing options, complicit crime, health, feeding dreams, and "selfhood" (i.e. duty, identity and destiny:  "Who would I be if I didn't sing?").  The more romantic second half can inspire some to think fondly of a recent Democratic candidate, especially at the end of the campaign.

     The New York train stops here.

Lyrics:

This window makes a perfect frame
For New England leaves like painted rain
They hold me as I hold this train
All shadows on a dime.
You move forward fast by holding back
You gauge your steps and you don't look slack
Me I'm looking backward down the track
To see us dreamers in our prime.

I poured my soul in Santa Cruz
I ached all night,
Next day I lost my shoes
It's so optional what you may or may not lose
in this pattern we call time.

Fifteen years ago I worked the line
With a thousand more all doing time
While a foreman smiled complicit crime
We were strangers to the plan.
An old old woman ran the gears
She couldn't move
They said she'd been there forty years
...I think that's rude...
'Cause forty years is forty years
And I was only fifteen then.
And the work waged war upon our backs
But we gauged our steps and we didn't look slack
One day the old woman didn't come back
I couldn't work so well and they let me go.

But I don't forget about the factory
I don't expect this ride to always be
Can I give you what you want to see?
Can we do it one more time?

Ten years have worn this guitar down
Its ivory whites are now mustard brown
Its face bears cracks from every town
Still it resonates with age.
Where would I be without its ring?
Who would I be if I didn't sing?
For half a chance you spare nothing --
A tethered bird to a tethered cage.

I sing to you to feed the dream
I call to you 'though it's a muted scream
We're one on one projected beams
Translucent future be our sage.

Five years have blazed since she warmed my side
She is my gift I've loved and cried
With her level look she is my guide
A spirit on the wing
Our love has jostled like this train
Or like the moon to wax and wane
But to know somebody worth the strain --
Me I have one gift to bring

I cried for her then I let her down
She let me go and then we came around
I felt us new and I felt the ground
And I felt myself believing.

And now a tired conductor passes by
He takes my ticket with a sigh
I don't think he meant to catch my eye
But he doesn't turn away.
He says "I have a daughter as old as you
And there's really nothing anyone else can do
Do you play guitar...well good for you
Me I play the violin"
I imagine him with his hair jet black
Does he hide his fiddle in the back?
He gauged his words as the train went slack:
The New York train stops here

But I don't forget the factory
I don't expect this ride to always be
Can I give them what they want to see
Let me do it twice --
The second time for me.

'Cause these windows make a perfect frame
For New York buildings like upright trains
They hold me as I hold the rain
All shadows on a dime.

Song for Day 12 of a 4 Year Funeral - "Cactus" by Ferron

Day 12 - "Cactus" by Ferron

Songwriter Deborah "Ferron" Foisy.

     A tree has fallen across the narrow road, blocking your progress.  Your first instinct is to:

a) look for a way to move it; or,

b) look for a way around it.

     Perhaps this songwriter should not be included in this series.  Ferron's work may be too personal and nuanced for us option "a)" activists;  she is very much a plan "b)" survivor.  Hers is a hyper-romantic solipsism-for-two that doesn't recognize a group larger than a lover's triangle, let alone the politics that might govern it. 

And the coldest bed I found does not hold one but it will hold three.
I hope you never have to know what that can mean.

     She doesn't speak of election day, but of every day.  Her focus is not the 54% who vote but the 46% who don't.  Her songs focus not on an optimistic future but on a poignant past that has brought us to an awkward present.  She doesn't write anthems, she writes narratives, more like Harry Chapin and Joni Mitchell than Bruce Cockburn and Buffy Ste. Marie.  Her songs are longer and less rhythmic than those by John Prine and Carly Simon.  Her verse is more like prose, new each time you hear it, than verbatim memorable poetry.  You will probably not sing Ferron songs in the shower.

"I read this book about how some scientists tried to get primates to paint. For 10 years they worked on it, and nothing happened. Then, one of the monkeys suddenly began to paint, and what it painted were the bars of its cage. So, in my writing, I believe I'm painting the bars of my cage so that I can get out. This is something you have to get done before you can meaningfully move on in any way." - Ferron

    Deborah "Ferron" Foisy rarely speaks directly about the sexual and physical abuse she suffered as a child and teen, but it's stitched into every line.  In the words of one critic, she lives and writes entirely in parentheses.  And somewhere there is humor.  We saw this on Day 2 with "Testimony".  We revisit it with "Shadows on a Dime", "Ain't Life a Brook?", "It Won't Take Long", "Girl on the Road", "I Never Was to Africa", "Our Purpose Here", "Harmless Love", the heart-wrenching, autobiographical "Shady Gate", and the visceral beauty of "The Cart".  Still, there is no better example of this than "Cactus":

Lyrics:

It's been a year
since you left home for higher ground.
In the distance I hear a hoot owl
ask the only question I have found
to be worthy of the sound it makes
as it breaks the silence of your old town
These letters are another way to love you.

It takes trouble, and it takes courage to be free.
But you 'll find, it you are soft enough, love will hang around for free.
And the coldest bed I found does not hold one but it will hold three.
I hope you never have to know what that can mean.

It's safe to say I took the long and winding path.
And were it not for loving friendships
who knows how long I would have lasted.
You're young one day but youth is rude
and while you watch it walks right past
and then...hey...you get your chance to think like me.

When I was young I was in service to my pain.
On sunny days you'd find me walking miles to look for rain.
And as many times I swapped it all just to hop a moving train.
Looking back, it was a most expensive way to get around.

And I found that all the world could love you save for one.
And I don't know why it is, but that kiss will be the haunted one.
You'll pine and weep and you'll lose good sleep
and you'll think your life has come undone,
until you learn to turn and spurn that bitter wind.

Because it'll probably be the one you least expect to,
who will wager through your storm with you,
who will give your fears respect...
who will melt your burden down...
though you probably don't want that yet,
still...the odds fall sweet in favor to an open heart.

Seems to me the tools for being human are wicked crude.
They're not so slick and smooth and shiny
as some stranger might allude.
And while your longest night might test you,
you don't be scared of solitude.
And remember what is shared is also true.

Because there's a place where the water races wide.
And you could be hard pressed (in the muck of time)
just trying to reach the other side.
You learn to find the only way, or you learn to say you tried.
It seems to me a lot of little towns were made that way.

Now while I'm at it...let me tell you about the moon.
Because I heard some people talking,
looks like we're probably going to have to move there soon.
All I know is the face it shows at midnight
is not the one it shows at noon.
But I bet it's a standing kind of wistful from over there.

In a word, I heard that life is a cactus tree.
And should you find a way to break it's skin,
won't you have a drink for me.
But if you're standing near a cactus,
you're probably where you shouldn't be.
Isn't this why you left your home, though you love me.

Now when I imagine life is only time and space...
then I guess I've seen the best of it upon your tender, loving face.
And the faith that you bestowed in me gives me a solid sense of place.

I learn to say...Fire, Water, Earth and Air...
I learn to say Fire, Water, Earth and Air...
I learn to say Fire, Water, Earth and Air...

I'll see you there.



Links:

Day 1 (The Inauguration) - "Hands" - Jewel

Day 2 (The Million Woman March) - "Testimony" by Ferron, sung by Marcelle Davies Lashley

Day 3 - "Ruins" - by Cat Stevens
 
Day 4 - "Eve of Destruction" (1964) - by P. F. Sloan performed by Barry McGuire

Day 5 - "Hypersensive Jester" - by Denny Guy

Day 6 - "Teresa" - by John Stewart

Day 7 - "Black Boys on Mopeds" by Sinéad O'Connor

Day 8 - "Burn, Baby, Burn" - by Bruce Cockburn

Day 9 - "Black Day in July" - by Gordon Lightfoot

Day 10 - "Democracy is Coming" - Leonard Cohen

Day 11 - "First We Take Manhattan" - Leonard Cohen

Day 12 - "Cactus" - Ferron