Notes about The Atlantic, and a missing lyric

Evidence: Tanya Donnelly’s Swan Song, 6 EP series

In a dream state(ish), I keep singing a lyric which I assumed/I thought is by Tanya Donnelly… but I did a crash course on her entire catalog yet cannot find any sign of the song. Also a search more widely produces not a clear match. That said, Internets is limited in my sequestered room.

Noting the same mystery happened with the lyric “Grandma take me home, I want to be alone” which later turned up on a cassette from brother Dan while in Saji, Japan on Nirvana’s outtakes “Insecticide” “grandma take me home, I want to be alone” just as I remembered it.

By this point I’d written a song in my head with the same riff and lyric. Sigh. Kept rewinding to reconcile memory from erstwhile reality. “Mom and dad went to a show, drop me off at grandpa Joe’s, I kicked and screamed, said please don’t go…”

In this case, and this isn’t the first time, and feverish haze I thought of the Atlantic.

The fucked up the Bucerias trip as well left me looking east word overwater as though in the Canadian Maritimes, basically something like “the Atlantic she calls you, the Atlantic she needs you she need you to come home.”

I’ve visualized lighthouses and rocky headlands and stone houses. Maybe Cape Breton, Nova Scotia where a Buddhist monastery is mentioned in “when things fall apart” coupled with thinking about Leonard Cohen living as a monk on Mount Baldy. The same mountain Gary  (Japhy) and Jack rambled (mostly) in Dharma Bums.

I had it “the light houses will bring you, the hearth will warn you, so please, please come soon.”

Indeed, this stretch of life for me is about reinvention, changing everything no matter the pain to me or others. This is terrible to think and worse to write but I am renewed, not by choice as I was pleasantly addicted to “old” life of authentic, adrenaline, admiration. But, by necessity, I no longer have ability to compromise to make others content. Brutal but true. Will “it” revenge self on me? Perhaps, but I know I can find silence at the edges and fringes of salt water-even the bay of Bengal or Indian Ocean. Filthy at the beach I saw despite a vantage name.

##

Found the song – tis: Cape Ann by Tanya Donnelly from her Swan Song series. I ordered a 3 disc vinyl delivered to Pacifica – “the Atlantic she needs you… You’re the one who got away.” Indeed.

Lyrics follow:

>>

When the road was wide
We walked side by side
Where it narrowed one fell behind

It was okay in those days
We were headed the same way
Didn’t care who’d get there first
You copy you paste you lose
So your bird can sing
It’s a beautiful thing
And you taught her all the songs we knew
But your bird, your bird, makes up all her own words
Which is just what I loved about you

Coming off of Cape Ann
Head to toe salt and sand
And the stain of the yellowing foam
The Atlantic, she loves you, you’re the one who got away
And she wants you back home

When the road is wide
We walk side by side
Where it narrows one falls behind
It’s okay, it’s okay, we’re all heading the same way
I don’t care who gets there first

Coming off of Cape Ann
Head to toe salt and sand
And the stain of the yellowing foan
The Atlantic, she loves you, you’re the one who got away
And she wants you back home

The Atlantic, she loves you
And she wants you back home
The Atlantic, she loves you
And she wants you back home

The Atlantic, she loves you
You’re the one who got away
And she wants you back home

She wants you back
She loves you
You’re the one who got away

The Atlantic, she loves you
You’re the one who got away
She loves you

One thought on “Notes about The Atlantic, and a missing lyric”

Comments are closed.