SUNDAY SONGS #4

Art as survival, and all the other things we are. Here's "Eden."

Sunday Songs is a new series where I revisit songs from my music catalog. While most of you know me as a writer, I’m a musician first. Here are the stories behind the songs. Stay tuned for new music news. Thanks for listening! PS. This Sunday Songs is a perfect companion to Thursday’s essay, “We’re Just Visiting.”

I wrote “Eden” on a toy piano in the hospital during my son Lou’s first treatment for cancer. The melody kept looping in my head, so did the lyrics “Red river run, red river run,” as I stared at both the East River and the red lines of endless blood transfusions. Sometimes the looping lines reminded me of spinning analog tape in a recording studio, my natural habitat, a land I could not have found myself further from.

Two years later, when my record Wolves (2016) came out (“Eden” is Track 2), I was told the whole thing was a bit of a PR mess. I had just seen my child successfully through a life-threatening illness, but the songs weren’t directly about that experience. In fact, they were about everything but. I survived that year by keeping the other parts of me besides Cancer Mom alive.

Was that even allowed?

When you’re a Cancer Mom, you experience an erasure from everyone around you: your child’s medical team, your family, even your friends may be unable to see you for all the other things you are. And rightfully so, you’re leading the fight to save your child’s life. But underneath that suit of armor is a living, breathing woman, one with deep desires, dreams, regrets, and a hunger for more than her crisis.

The mothers I met at the hospital were vibrant and complex. To quote my favorite poet, Joy Harjo, they were “alive poems.” Yes, we were fighting for our kids futures, but we were also fighting for our own sanity. Some mothers drank, others popped pills. I knew one mother who had a shoplifting problem. There were affairs and other bad decisions. One’s head is not screwed on straight when you’re terrified. We cut each other slack; the outside world did not.

As for me, I sat up nights and wrote my songs, desperately trying to keep one foot in a world all my own while I was also there for my family. I mined my heart for far away lands and loves, beauty, desire, and all the other things I was — a prism, a complicated human, an alive poem.

Here’s “Eden.”

For the video, I teamed up with director Rachel Fleit. It features my friends and fellow artists Erika Spring, Sarah Sophie Flicker, Caris Reid, Larkin Grimm, all beautifully styled by

LaTonya Yvette

(we met on this shoot!). These women (and so many others) showed up for me, welcoming me back into my power. Watching now, I think of all the mothers on the hall, how we walked alongside each other. How we picked each other up. How we prayed not only for each other’s children, but for the end of our suffering as mothers, too.

You are more than your nightmare. You have every right to dream your dreams.

Chase. them. down.

xx Alexa

PS. Feel free to leave any thoughts or snippets of your story in the comments. What dreams are demanding your attention? What feels impossible but so necessary? Plant some seeds. May all beings know such freedom.

EDEN

I tried to keep you in Eden / I did not know

That even with water / some things do not grow

Red river run red river run / Red river run red river run

I tried to keep to my garden / a little plot of land

But the sun she did show me / there was blood on my hand

Red river run red river run / Red river run red river run

Was I too busy looking at the sun? I did not see the river run

Was I too busy looking at the sun? I felt the need to run, run, run

Red river run, red river run

I tried to keep all the pieces / little shards of glass

But the wind she did send me / Oh sassafras…

Was I too busy looking at the sun? I did not see the river run

Was I too busy looking at the sun? Oh the need to run, run, run

Red river run, red river run

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Released July 8, 2016
Produced by Tom Beaujour and Alexa Wilding
Recorded and mixed by Tom Beaujour at Nuthouse Recording, Hoboken, NJ
Additional engineering by Sean Kelly
Mastered by Sean Glonek
Alexa Wilding: Vocals, keyboards, synths, guitars
Tim Foljahn: Guitars
Tom Beaujour: Guitars
Jeremy Wilms: Bass
Drums: Brian Kantor

All songs written by Alexa Wilding
c. 2016 White Witch Whispers / Tiny Prism Records

See video for additional credits.