- Karen Joy Brown - Blog

Story Behind the Song #2, Look Upon me With Love

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:56:08 -0700

I was just starting to get to know my shadow self (as my psychologist friends say) when I wrote this, at the turning of the tide of the black and white thinking that had carried me through late adolescence and lingered in a fundamentalist Christian setting. Some other friends were learning the hard way about how good intentions do the right thing ≠ NICE LIFE. Getting personally acquainted with this formula is a lesson we all learn, or are doomed to repeat in life’s merciless remedial courses. In retrospect, this song marks the mere infancy of my relationship with that kind of higher math.

I observed that “each of us defy a reason to be loved;” that only perspective changes our focus from the damning details to the embraceable big picture. The utter lack of armor, the assailable emotional skin we reveal when we ask another to look upon us with love astounds with its honesty, and terrifies with simplicity. How much easier to spin stories and construct air-tight arguments to convince someone why they should love us?

The meaning deepens and doubles as the years go by. The challenge to “let your lens be tinted with that rose” demands me to honestly recognize shortcomings while resisting a cheaper worldly bitterness that confers a lonely superiority. On a good day, this song can strip us of our cherished litanies repeated desperately in the dark hours before dawn, and deposit us eye to eye with the actual people in our life who may or may not “deserve” our affection, but what a gift we could give?

Look upon me with love

To the naked eye each of us defy

A reason to be loved

We speak too often or too quick

Make promises we’re sure to ditch

Can’t find a reason to be loved

Please look upon me with love

Yeah, look upon me with love

Let your lens be tinted with that rose

Look upon me with love

What other question, other cry, would be so easy to deny

Than look upon me with love

There’s nothing I can guarantee

For such a risk you’d take with me

To look upon me with love

Please look upon me with love

Yeah, look upon me with love

Let your lens be tinted with that rose

Look upon me with love

There’s nothing I can guarantee

But such a gift you’d give to me

To look upon me with love

Story Behind the Song #1-Goodbye my Beautiful Ocean

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:44:29 -0700

Goodbye my Beautiful Ocean was written before the world was round. My marriage was dependable as the dawn, California’s economy buzzed away in its hive, and Sunday’s biggest dilemma was where to go for lunch after church. My friends got together and rented a house called Sea Breeze in Bodega Bay to spend two nights and three days lounging, cooking, and eating with an ocean view.

The soul of that trip waited silently to be discovered on the path carved into the bluff leading down to the ocean. A natural wedding processional with flower girl vines strewing silver beach lupines and yellow seaside fiddle necks, down it led curving with solemn steps on driftwood stairs and sandy soil; muffled breath until the altar.

The sea and I were a happy honeymoon couple, even with others around everything was a secret smile between lovers. We relaxed for hours eyes closed and ears tuned to the dreamy static of wind and waves. Novels, sandcastles, and picnics, all unfolding in the loving, loose embrace of the ocean.

Driving east on Queen Anne’s lace lined roads, my skin still tingled with the salty breeze like a lingering kiss. I grabbed my notebook and wrote these lyrics before hitting the dry brown expanse of the Sacramento valley.

Goodbye, my beautiful ocean
Goodbye, my beautiful sea,
I drank up all of your goodness,
I ate up all of your dreams
Hey, goodbye

Goodbye, my beautiful ocean,
Goodbye, my beautiful sea,
I loved your study of movement
Your voice singing wild and free
Hey, goodbye

Goodbye, my beautiful ocean,
Goodbye, my beautiful sea,
And though my heart should be breaking
I’m still riding high on your peace

It seems you’ve written me a message
Upon my secret self within
You tell me that your waves are waiting
Until at last we meet again
Well, goodbye

When I listen I can hear how solidly the song rests on that time frame’s foundation, the bright anticipation and certainty of wonder. I’m still surprised that one of my earliest songs holds up as one of my musical and lyrical favorites.

Click on the iTunes button below to preview and purchase, or listen to the whole song by clicking on the first line of the song above. Consider buying and sending it to a friend for a $.99 pick-me-up. I invite your comment on a past or present experience with the song!

A Foundation in Poetry

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:41:44 -0700

In the face of unemployment, I've decided to keep connected to things I love and the rest of the world via some mini-blogging. Poetry foundation is the website that Garrison Keillor reads from during NPR's Writer's Almanac. Whenever I listen to him read, I'm transported into whatever world the poet has conjured. I thought I'd share a poem from the site on a regular basis to provide the opportunity to connect to that kind of inspiration.

Today I read "Flurry."This one reminds me some personal experience, and I like the cadence of it. Her description of tears and their "burning leaps" feels right on target. What do you think?

New Blog Feature/Brainstorming

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:20:09 -0800

Hey folks. My website now has a blog feature that I thought I'd try out. I'm doing album background work which involves setting up promotional opportunites via internet and/or community radio. What internet or community radio do you listen to besides Pandora?