“I am”
Paper Art & Song
I wrote this song when a beloved relative had a terminal cancer diagnosis. I was musing on my relationship with death and dying, death vs dying. E.E. Cummings wrote a poem called ‘dying is fine)but Death’. It praises dying and calls death a scientific sin. It’s not meant to highlight dying as pre-death and death as after dying. It’s about the gerund as an action; the movement of dying and the stagnant feel of death. I took an embryosophy class from Jaap van der Wal where he also noticed this difference. He added something like, “And why wouldn’t dying be just like birthing? We are warmly welcomed, anticipated, celebrated.” I began thinking more about dying and all the little deaths we already live like falling asleep, as in the song Bed by Loudon Wainwright. There is a brief pause between each inbreath and outbreath. It feels good and true to extend our being beyond all of our dying. So I wrote the song: I am through the pause of my breath. I am through the break of my sleep. We are through the rest, of our dying, being again and again.
LISTEN TO SONG BELOW.
“Everything is Living”
Paper Art & Song
This song came in response to my energy around spiritual materialism (spirit lives in all matter) vs materialism (spirit is a made up idea about matter) vs spiritualism (spirit comes and goes from matter), etc. David Abrams’ ‘Becoming Animal’ invited more life into all objects for me. Everything comes from nature. We are also nature. Space is nature. Nature can
lose her balance, like anyone.
When my grandmother passed, I felt how much of myself was from her, and how much she was still with me in my thoughts and loving actions. My son said that the love she gave me flowed into him and I’m reminded that however spirit moves, there is magic in connection. I wrote the song: Everything is living. Everything is here. I’m gone when I am sleeping. I am nowhere near. Everything is in me, though I am alone. I am all around you.
Together we are home.
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“My Feelings”
Paper Art & Song
I write many of my songs as reminders of ideas that I want to sit with more. I sing them on repeat, as a mantra, to let them settle into my soul. This is one such song and I have been blessed with stories of people singing it for solace and comfort with friends, and with children. I wrote: My feelings are healthy and normal. They will come and I will listen. They will go and change into other things, just like the beautiful sky.
LISTEN TO SONG BELOW.
Artist Bio
Fehlya Ehrlander is a Songleader, Vocal Coach and
Childbirth Educator in Olympia. WA.
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