Of Course...

A New Demo of a Collaborative Song by Carrie Newcomer & Poet Jack Ridl

Hi Folks,

Last week I had the great fun of joining my friend, Jack Ridl, for an evening of music and poetry at a vesper’s event hosted by The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Detroit MI. Jack has several beautiful collections of poetry which I highly recommend. You can find them at Jack’s wonderful website Here. I love this quote about Jack, because…well, because its so true. "Quietly waging the most peaceful and poetic political protest in history." — Garret Stack, author of Yeoman's Work

This is a demo of a new song I call Of Course. It was written in response to one of Jack’s poems The Materialism of Angels.

In the poem Jack describes (with his usual attention to glorious detail and splashes of good hearted humor) the goodness and sacredness of the sensual world. He supposes how angels must be baffled by how we forget the glory of simple joy, and how they must love to dance. I hope you’ll check out the poem, and the song it inspired.

I’ve included the original poem, and my lyrics so you can see how the song grew out of the poem (with Jack’s permission of course). Of Course, was written a bit tongue in cheek, but I was personally quite charmed by the idea of angels doing the moonwalk then striking a pose and dropping the mic - charmed by the image of a god of music, art, dancing cranking up the music to wail along on her celestial saxophone.

You can find the demo after the lyrics below.

The Materialism of Angels  
“Who would say that pleasure is not useful?”—Charles Eames

Of course the angels dance. If not
on the head of a pin, then maybe
on the boardwalk along the ocean of stars.
And they eat hot and spicy: salsa,
tabasco, red peppers. They love
mangoes. They can munch
for hours on cashews. Olives
sit in bronze bowls on the cherry
tables next to their canopy beds
where the solace of pillows swallows
their sweet heads and the quiet
of silk lies across their happy backs.
They know the altruism of material things.
They want to say to us, “We’ll sleep
next to you. Feel our soft and unimposing
flutter across your shoulders, on your
heartbroken feet.” They want us
to take, eat, to smell the wood,
run our tired fingers over the rim of
every glass, give our eyes the chance
to see the way the metal bends and
curves its way into the black oval
of the chair. They want us to feel
the holiness of scratching where it
itches, rubbing where it hurts. They
want us to take long, steamy showers
and a nap. They know how easily
we follow directions: hook the red wire
to the front of the furnace, fill in only
the top half of the life insurance form.
They have no manuals for joy.
They can’t fix anything we break.
They wonder why we never laugh
enough, why we don’t know God
is crazy for deep massage, and loves
to wail on His alto sax whenever they dance.

–Jack Ridl

from Broken Symmetry (Wayne State University Press)