Hi! It’s been a while! I got laid off in January, and it turns out that I need a day job in order to make music. And to buy, you know, things. Food. Now I’m happily employed, and literally ready to rock again. 🎸
Alain Johannes is a musician’s musician whom very few people know, but whose brilliance is legendary to those that do. I only found out about him a year ago or so, from Daniel Mackenzie (who sings and plays bass on my songs Better, Ice, and A Loving Man). Johannes is a great producer, musical director, songwriter, singer, and, in my opinion, in the top 5 of greatest living guitarists.
He wrote this song in the early 90s, and says this about it:
With our band Eleven, a lot of our lyrics were just fiction. They usually came from a general desire to understand life better. We would write lyrics that were kind of new age in a way but were multi-layered. We tried to be simple like a poem, whether it was in tone form or from a different perspective, like the perspective of a flower or a plant and what's that like, for example the impulse of reaching toward the sun while carried on the back of a bee. People react to the universal messages, things that are anthropomorphic. These things that we think are human are also the impulses of life all around us, like survival. When survival is taken care of, then it's admiration of beauty, and that's so personal and cross cultural in so many ways.
I’ve loved this song for a long time. It became an obsession that had to be exorcised, and this is how I do that.
Lyrics
Trapped in a shell, my intention is strong
With a mouthful of water, I can break through a stone
Carried on a dove, I have dropped from the sky
Now the ground is above and my goal is set high
Reach out with a kiss from my mother
Reach out just to smile at my father
Straight like a wand, my magic is simple
Sensing your laughter, the breeze makes me nimble
My colors displayed, I am ready to travel
On the back of a bee, all my children unravel