The following was provided to us by Emily Wells:
I wrote this song going back and forth from the guitar to the piano, pressing at its holes and rough spots through the different tells each instrument can give. The song came from walking in the woods near my house in the early spring of 2020 where I would often see a fox who was living under an enormous graffiti marred rock near the creek that became a river after a big rain. I read somewhere that the pandemic was a dress rehearsal for future climate disaster and that idea found its way into my body. I wanted that sure footed fox to tell me how to be immortal, just as the trees did. Originally the song was to be part of our set for this tour but it got put on the bottom of the pile and eventually abandoned so I thought it would feel good and right to revisit it on the gorgeous Steinway at the Hult in a familiar form. It’s one of my favorites from the album to sit at the piano and play, almost as one would a hymn.
Lyrics:
– For Nayland Blake –
All day the trees are praying
I go down in their splendor
Then I am praying too, then I am praying too
Somewhere in the night, that creek turned to a river
Now we are all banks, now we are all banks
Love happened here. Love happened here.
Where nothing is still, love happened here.
All night the fox is outside
Knowing how to live forever
While I’m in here trying to be an animal
Search your delicate mind, for all that you took
To the dress rehearsal, to the dress rehearsal
Love happened here. Love happened here.
Where nothing is still, love happened here.
“Immortality is what nature possesses without effort and without anybody’s assistance, and immortality is what the mortals must therefore try to achieve if they want to live up to the world into which they were born, to live up to the things which surround them and to whose company they are admitted for a short while.”
– Hannah Arendt