Lyrics: Our Old Oblivion

He’s standing there in his ragged Sunday best
Smiling like an undertaker in the wicked old west
He is a maelstrom in my distant heart
But I cannot bear to be leaving though I know he’ll just hurt me more if I stay, just encourage his ways
He kills me a little everyday

He’s my capital, my king, my everything
We have not spoken to my family since early last spring
And what I have chosen feels hollow now
But there is some power in his strength and his pleading, his leaning on the door and I’m captured
In this room in this cold, distant town

There is no place in this state I could go
He’s got a lot of friends who’d tell him so
And I’ve never made love that’s so overwhelming
What am I afraid of? Each way that I choose, I feel like I’m losing everything
This adventure is all over now

This pill I’ve hidden inside my cheek
Will be my last kiss for him if it doesn’t put me to sleep
He says, “My girl, all could be forgiven.”
So come here my darling and kiss me by this neon light
I know we are both longing for a taste of our old oblivion

by Ms. Sam Wareing

It's the song, not the singer

From my new Tuvan throat singing CD to my new fascinations with Fado and Rembetika to the Tex, Don and Charlie show I saw on Saturday night at Melbourne's beautiful Athenaeum Theatre, I have been blessed with good sounds this year and particularly good singing. See Diamanda Galas post.

I am filling with new and interesting sounds but I need to get them out of my body with as little interference as possible. Seeing Ms. Galas, in particular, really brought home the terrible ambiguity I sometimes feel onstage, where there's too much mental interference going on to really, purely express.

I'm talking about moving beyond vocal technique. I want to communicate the emotions of the words and melody, being completely in the moment of the song. I do get there, especially in the songs with my band and my own songs, but not consistently.

Sometimes I do a dodgy show (too much smoke in the room, underprepared, out of sorts, unwell etc etc) and people will still like it. I read today about the ambiguity or contempt some comedians get running the same routine past lots of people and having it all become predictable. I have felt something similar over the last 18 months, like I'm out of my groove. I'm gracious, but if people complement me and it's unwarranted, I wonder how discerning they can really be when I am actually inside the song and... flying.

I can perform the illusion of deep emotion and intensity when it's not there, which disturbs me because I'm not sure how many people are fooled. I want to move beyond performance into, I don't know... transcendence. Where I am pure copper wire between the song and the audience, where my voice tells the story fresh every time it's sung, where it's all genuine.

I'd love this blog to be a forum to discuss this stuff. I'd like to hear your experiences.
Sam