mark ettinger: Music
send me down the river
(mark ettinger)
i wrote this song staring out at the Hood Canal on the Olympic Peninsula, during that psychic no-man's land after the country fair - tired but happy. somehow "send me down the canal" didn't quite have the right ring to it. poetic license. the song references (yup) a poem by William Blake - it shows up elsewhere on this same disk. guess it was on my brain at the time. when writing the bridge, i was thinking of George Harrison and his proclivity for long vocal phrases all on the offbeat.
as a kid i was pretty taken by the Greek, Roman and Norse pantheons. This innocent (is it ever?) interest served me well later in life when i discovered how much these stories serve as a backbone for later Western culture - and they are exciting as well! so there are a number of rivers in Hades, the Grecian underworld - perhaps the most famous is that which separates the worlds of the living and the dead: the Styx. so famous a glam band took the name. as George tells us "declare the pennies on your eyes - taxman!" - those pennies are for Charon, the ferryman who won't take you across if you don't have money for passage. but another river down there is the river Lethe, and those who drink of it forget everything about the life they have just lived and lost. careful what you drink ...
this lovely harmony was written and sung by my daughter Kate - we don't have enough songs where she sings all the way through. the plan is to make many more.
Send me down the river - to the sea
Like old Moses or that rascal Huck –
I’ll be floating free
Past the rushes waving slowly,
Through the ghosts down on the lee
Throw your candle in my evening bag,
‘Cause the morning waits for me
Don’t the shores look soft and warm?
Arms that reach to me
Send me down the river, darling,
Down the river to the sea
Last night was wondering - strolling hand in hand
past and future in the stars above, rolling in the sand
Can we hold that moment always - and let it also slip away
Kiss a joy as it flies along; Kiss that joy another day
You held me with your eyes,
Saying the tide don’t stay too long
And you turned back up the river –
I watched ‘til you were gone
Now I know that river’s wide –
gonna rock me off to sleep
Like the Lethe down in Hades,
oblivion in the deep - oblivion
Today we’re floating; a pair of lilies in a tiny jar -
moved by something we can’t understand,
cut off from who we really are.
our roots are down there somewhere,
entangled on a hidden plane
I’ll be with you as I pole along –
howling in the moonlit rain
But here and now the herons rise,
like the sun that’s gone before
Send me down the river, darling –
dawn’s knockin at your door
Send me down the river, darling