5090 by FAWM: "Subway Weather"

Subway Weather

Liner Notes

“Subway Weather” - #fawm 50/90 2024 song 28

Coming across these lyrics was a pleasure — I don’t remember if the challenge was to write without rhyme, but there’s very little rhyme here.

This song reminds me that I was a poet first. Sometimes my songs should probably be poems, and some of my old poems have become songs. I love language.

This is about transportation and weather-related danger in NYC but it’s also about mortality, as so many of my songs are, and fits my self-defined genre of #americanasati (Americana + maranasati). Maranati is a Buddhist meditation practice that keeps in mind the constant companion of death. “Oh that I might live for the interval that it takes to swallow…” (Maranassati Sutta).

All my originals: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6mTUlPL-MmAm45IMVgat1necrh2mGnT6&si=sAdXP581ZNU__9rn

Remaining 2023 Skirmish lyrics to finish: 21

#fuc #acoustic #acousticonetake #ukulele #personwithukulele #onetake #girlwithukulele #singersongwriter #poetry #subways

Lyrics

The subway platform underwater by a foot
We watched the waterfall that poured from overhead
Until you mentioned hanging wires
And we thought better of it all

The tracks slope up and spring out of the ground somewhere
We ride in windstorms past raw shreds of caution tape
Ice-lines in winter’s carnival,
Emerging from the city’s heart

Subway weather forecasts dirt and rats
Along with tunnel trash
The fires of a city summer’s pulse
Meteorologists losing their sanity
With desperation holding doors
And lying down on seats

Radiation radiating rays around
Sometimes the wall beyond looks more like flesh or bread
I hold your hand, we ride the sky
It’s not like bridges never fall

I hold your hand, we are inside the earth
It’s not like walls do not come down

I hold your hand, we ride the sky
It’s not like bridges never fall

Comments

@russkeys 7w

Very interesting picture of subway. Well sung. These lyrics seem to me to need some textures to augment them, they seem tactile more than visual.

@heliosonorous 7w

Very descriptive lyrics, takes one from the subway to a bigger picture, like looking for safety or feeling safe from all the chaos outside, well sung as well!

@freshspotlessyouth 7w

I really like the rhythm of the strumming, and the way the vocal soars around it. There were brief moments when I thought I heard a violin, but it was you. The lyric is so visual. The music is so lovely and uplifting--I'd almost welcome a falling bridge

@barkstales 7w

It's a very pretty song. Great job. The uke playing really supported the song. Never really thought about Subway weather. Subway is just really aren't a part of my life here in Southern Michigan. Actually I've never even seen a Subway. Well you know outside of television. Or movies.

@loveonamixtape 7w

Beautiful lyrics -- I feel what you're saying about poetry versus songs. I've been writing more poetry recently, after not having done so in years, and it was tempting to turn those poems into songs, but I let them be. But now you're making me rethink that, with how beautifully this works. I love the rhythm of your playing -- that central "riff" is really catchy and bright, and holds the whole thing together in a really bright and optimistic way and in lovely contrast to some of the lyrics. Some really beautiful imagery, but I especially like the opening image, the whole "subway weather" bit, and the bridges vs walls back and forth in the end. Another stunner -- really loved this one!

@brisk 7w

This is very beautiful. I haven't really got the musical vocabulary to describe what I hear - but I love the orderly, controlled chords and the melody that is weaved so deftly through.

"It's not like bridges never fall" is such a knockout blow. Don't know why. I think it's the efficient way it combines dreadful violence and the speaker's resignation. Also, "the wall beyond looks more like flesh or bread" is deliciously strange and freighted with potential meanings.

(By the way: thanks so much for giving mine a listen - this last couple of FAWMs-50/90s I've only really had enough juice to do my own output, let alone put time in to listen to other people's stuff. Sorry about that. I will try!)

@catmisgivings 7w

I like the sweet melody and gentle tempo in contrast, perhaps, to those tempests that send water cascading down the subway stairs and onto the tracks in recent years

@billwhite51 7w

i like how you begin with a relatively mundane image of a flooded subway and, verse by verse, proceed to allusions to a world in apocalyptic disarray. finally, like lot's wife looking back at the ruins of sodom, you create a historical perspective on natural disasters, signifying that such decay and ruination has always been wit us.

@kosch 7w

I think sometimes, rhyming is overthought.
I might have not even noticed that this didn't contain rhymes, if I had not read your liner notes. It still flows, as if they are there. Some wonderful(?) images contained within.

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Subway Weather

Liner Notes

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