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July 2022. I wrote this song in May of 2021. The last few years have so often felt so dark. Covid. Mass shootings. War. Collective insanity and bitter cultural turmoil dividing families, neighbors, friends. Mental health issues metastasizing into new and virulent forms, destroying families who do not know how to cope. I have lost loved ones to death. I have even lost dear ones because of differences in how we see reality. Maybe you have too.

So much sadness, so much fear. My social and political moorings have frayed, snapped, and left me adrift, “politically homeless,” as so many of us feel in this moment. I am fearful of authoritarian tendencies coming from the left in rigid woke ideologies and from the right in anti-democratic power grabbing. As a feminist, I see women’s rights being eviscerated on both sides. I realize how fragile “progress” can be.

“The end justifies the means” seems to be the moral ground staked on both sides. Anger rages through our societies, a fire in a parched forest. Dogma has replaced compromise. I don’t believe this is a good thing at all.

I am also aging, having difficulty breathing at times, trudging from doctor to doctor but finding no answers to some of my health issues. “When I’m 64” is no longer “many years from now.” That birthday is just a few days away!

Maybe there are no answers except to accept that every breath is precious, even as every breath takes me one step further from birth and one step closer to the grave.

I write songs so I can heal. For me, healing does not mean “being cured:” more coming to terms with reality as it is, finding acceptance and peace. I write songs to stop running from pain. To just be with the discomfort. Observe it and see what emerges. Putting my pain onto others is harmful. So is shoving my pain into an ideological box that allows no nuance or contradiction. Best to cradle my guitar, feel, listen.
This song emerged when I was feeling very much “down at the bottom of the well,” staring at sunlit swaying maple trees on my friend’s porch and looking towards the ivy-covered land where his well sits. I felt immobilized with grief. I started with a minor key to mirror the sadness numbing me. I had lost “the song of the spirit” and needed to start with that acknowledgement.

When the word “lord” popped out of my mouth I was surprised. I have not been traditionally religious for many years, but this word felt right. (Songs have their own lexicon—over the years I have used the word “baby” to refer to a lover more than once in a song, but I only call Brian “baby” in jest!) I had been singing lots of spirituals for my elders and listening to Brian sing some country blues, so that may be why I sang “lord.” Or maybe the sound itself has a resonance I cannot even fathom. When I sing this word, I address a universal in a plea from my heart.

In the I Ching and elsewhere, the Well represents a source of life. In the Bible, the story of the Woman at the Well is about quenching a spiritual thirst. Going down to the well is about doing deep work within oneself. It’s dark and deep, but if we reach the source of life-giving water, we can be renewed.

But there are no shortcuts. We must learn to live with what the Buddha called dukka, the suffering or discomfort that every living being feels. When we run from our pain and try to replace it with fleeting pleasures, we do not heal. We are not nourished but trapped in addictive patterns. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” I think he was talking about this process of opening to pain, observing our own pain as the pathway to real happiness.

Someone once told me that my songs are "relentlessly redemptive.” I didn’t know what he meant at first, but I have realized he was right about this redemptive quality I return to again and again, song after song. It’s at the basis of why I write songs at all, as a way to deal with discomfort. Some artists present the darkness without the light, but for me the light must be there too—because that is how life is.

I can’t leave my spirit down at the bottom of the well. And nobody can get it back for me—I must retrieve my spirit myself. Redemption can only come from honesty and vulnerability, from being poor in spirit. We cannot force a sense of renewal or redemption from life. It is always a gift. But if we are curious and still--just sit with the pain life dishes out--we can heal. We can find joy again.

I will go down to the well
I’ll find my song with a strengthening spell
I’ll find my way through heaven and hell

Located traditionally at the center of a village, the well is also a symbol of our community and connection to each other. We are not alone in this world, even if it feels that way at times. The clear water that keeps us alive is for everyone, and we can help each other find renewal too. I hope my song can connect us a bit more, even in this digital space.

May beauty return. May love return. May hope shine its light again into our hearts.