Theme
12:19pm September 14, 2014

youneedacat:

I can’t even express how much this song touches something deep inside me, deep inside who I am in a wider context of family and culture and location.  It’s not just the words, it’s the images, the music, the rhythm, the subtle tonalities of her voice, everything about it.  Kathy Mattea is definitely one of my new favorite singers, even though I’ve been listening to her since I was a kid.  She and Lacy J. Dalton both evoke something akin to marona in me in such different ways.  (Don’t ask me to totally define marona, it’s a word I made up for a thing that has no words.  Similar to what I mean by familiar, but with an element of this is my home this is me this is where I belong this is the one tiny corner of the universe that is exactly where I should be.)  But this song, especially, wow.

Lyrics:

I remember the year that my granddad died
Gone, gonna rise again
They dug his grave on the mountainside
Gone, gonna rise again
I was too young to understand
The way he felt about the land
But I could read his history in his hands
Gone, gonna rise again

Corn in the crib and apples in the bin
Ham in the smokehouse and cotton in the gin
Cows in the barn and hogs in the lot
You know, he never had a lot
But he worked like a devil for the living he got

These apple trees on the mountainside
He planted the seeds just before he died
I guess he knew that he’d never see
The red fruit hanging from the tree
But he planted the seeds for his children and me

High on the ridge above the farm
I think of my people that have gone on
Like a tree that grows in the mountain ground
The storms of life have cut them down
But the new wood springs from the roots in the ground

Gone, gonna rise again
Gone, gonna rise again
Gone, gonna rise again

Notes:
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