The sun seems to tumble forth these days, spilling past the confines of the day. There is a spiral towards to the summer solstice, that feels as if I just fall into the light, and am buoyant upon it's diffuse waves. This is my favorite week in Calgary. It is a different week every year, but it is always when the crabapples explode into colour and the air is sweet with the fragrance of Maydays. The lilacs are waking and the new leaves still that sticky green that is never more brilliant than in the moment of their unfurling. What beauty surrounds!
I am looking forward to heading Northwest to Water Valley in just a few weeks. The festival has an colloquial feeling to it. It is all sunshine and the strands of music encasing this small town in a joyous mood. It is an easy going festival, that invites both listeners and performers to relax into a shared love of music. It truly creates this magical vibe. I am practicing these days for that, letting my fingers find their place on my violin, while the leaves rustle outside my window. Occasionally I will see a hare bound by as I practice, at which point, I am always running for my camera, and trying to get outside before the hare disappears. I am as Alice constantly falling down the rabbit hole ~laugh~. Still, I find myself enjoying the chase. There is a certain harmony to following the birdsong and hare tracks, it mirrors in some way my lyric chasing. I often find words placed within my head after walking amidst the trees and watching the cloud prints in the sky.
It has been in my head to write about Rapunzel for a long time. There is so much rich imagery to be found within it, but it was difficult to find my way into the lyric of the song. I started it a dozen times, from all different perspectives, but nothing was settling until it all came crashing into me while playing and daydreaming one day. I have known many teenagers in my life, and so vividly remember being one. It is as yesterday to me, all the drama, the struggle for independence and sense of self. Most of all I remember the yearning, oh how I yearned. It is a time as if possessed, highly emotive and bewitched almost. Somehow it just all makes sense to me that Rapunzel is the one to give voice to such longing to become.
Rapunzel, Rapunzel let down your golden hair
Tumbling, fumbling from your fairytale
Hold through these witching years
A tangle of fragile tears, so lost
You thought that I could not hear
Your lonely song, oh I know your fears
For you're locked in this tower of feeling
No key, no door
You've waited all twisted and plaited
To become so much more
You hope for a prince to come
Who shall he save you from, yourself?
No one can gift you freedom
It's a cut you make through beauty's ransom
Oh you're locked in this tower of feeling
No key, no door
You've waited all twisted and plaited
To become so, oh so much more
