Empty Sound

The summer hung like a fragrance
On the sweet air all around
Swore to God I would die
Before I left this town
Like the vandals, and the vagrants
And the Indian boy who drowned
Last thing you're gonna hear from me
Is bound
To be just another...

Huckleberry Island, you're still always on my mind
Can't believe I ever left this place behind
I hid my heart in the Hole in the Wall
And I still hear it pound
A never ending echo of that empty sound

Sun sank like an anchor
Rope slipped through my hand
God knows if I should drown
Or try to make a stand
If you see my girl please thank her
She was only trying to bring me around
God knows how I ever got so unwound
Tried to walk on water over...

(chorus)

Behind the big red boat shed
I took a notion I should wake the dead
I couldn't think, I took another drink
I fell asleep behind the hockey rink
Woke up to my bottle clinkin'
Empty...

Bike wheels on the gravel
Moonlight on the bay
I swore there was nothing that could tear me away
I took off to travel
Now I never touch the ground
Pretty soon I'll be an old loon
Flapping around
And I'll sing another...

(chorus)

I wrote this one when I started putting together songs for a live recording in Parry Sound, Ontario - my hometown. The predominant geographic feature of my childhood was the Sound itself, also known as The Big Sound, and Huckleberry Island was what I saw out the window every morning.

This jumble of images comes mostly from the last summer I spent in Parry Sound at the age of 17. Every one is layered with a dozen associations for me, many of them deeply emotional.

It's about 5 years old now and I'm just starting to grow into it.

haiku

And the beauty of you

And the light on Georgian Bay

Takes my breath away

Penny Lane

BLOG SONGBOOK GALLERY GIGS PROFILE

Monday, October 18, 2004

Penny Lane

This past spring, a friend from my hometown of Parry Sound died, leaving her husband, 3 kids, and a grieving community behind. Before she died, Penny learned that her vision and dedication to health, fitness and the outdoors would be honoured with a walking trail, cheerfully known as Penny Lane.

Last Friday night, a benefit concert was held for the trail, and I went home to take part. Although it was a difficult night, it was also a very beautiful night. At the end, the audience joined Katherine Wheatley, Aengus Finnan, Russell Braun, Carolyn Maule and me in this adapted version of a Beatles song. It was a magical moment.

PENNY LANE

In Penny Lane there is a white pine bending beautifully
Beneath the weight of all the ice and all the snow
When the springtime comes it's bound to go
It was always so

In Penny Lane you feel the granite underneath your feet
You smell the breezes coming off the Bay
And if it seems as though you just can't stay
You may anyway...

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the never ending skies
I walk and meanwhile back

In Penny Lane there is a moment for a memory
And then a moment and a memory again
And then you're standing in the pouring rain
And you can't explain

Take a breath and take a look out at the scenery
Take your time and as you make your way along
If you feel as though you're in a song
Then there's nothing wrong
Just walk along...

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the never ending skies
I walk and meanwhile back

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the never ending skies
In Penny Lane...

Lyrics adapted from Lennon-McCartney by D. Newland.

About oral history

On my recent trip to Owen Sound I heard from a local fellow who works for the Ministry of Natural Resources that tree stumps had been found deep, deep below the surface of Georgian Bay, just off Fathom Five provincial park.

I did a little reading and discovered that Georgian Bay might actually once have been separated from Lake Huron by a promontory of the Bruce Penninsula. I also found out that Native oral history had always held that there had been a land bridge between Manitoulin and the Bruce.

In a similar vein, when settlers first came to North America, there were also always Native legends of beasts like mammoths having been around in relatively recent memories.

Europeans concluded two things on this basis: (a) the mammoths must just have left, since the Native oral histories remembered them; or (b) the Native oral histories were bunk, because the mammoths had been gone for so darned long there's no way they could have been remembered by the oral histories.

Yet if you set a generation at 25 years, a tale only needs to be told from father to son 40 times to span a thousand years, 160 times to go back to the time mammoths lived in the Spengel Islands off Siberia, and only 400 times to go back to the time of the last Ice Age here in North America. Incidentally, this is about the time Georgian Bay is alleged to have joined Lake Huron, according to the articles I discovered.

My point is this: once a tale has receded past "grandfather," it simply gets attributed to an ancestor. So a Native guy could easily say "my ancestors used to hunt mammoth" which would still have a sense of immediacy. Likewise, "my ancestors used to walk from Manitoulin to the Bruce." In both cases, it's almost a sure thing that EVERY father would tell EVERY son such a momentous tale, so that it might easily survive for 400 generations more or less intact, and still in fact retain the quality of proximity.

I just think this is neat.