bryan field mcfarland ₪ sassafrasongs: Listen

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Tuning: CGDGCD, Capo 5 Written in: Swannanoa Gathering & Greensboro, NC 2003

The title of the project, "Way" has become my anthem about returning to discover something one never really lost. This is another song that comes from having been to the Swannanoa Gathering at Warren Wilson College. Begun in 2002 in a class with Christine Kane, "Way" portrays a day spent on the beach at Fripp Island, SC watching my daughter and my brother build a sandcastle they named Sea Kingdom. Hence, "a realm you named nautically."

As the waves rolled I watched them design and construct their castle. The idea for this song washed up that day as driftwood gift. A rough-hewn call back to writing songs of meaning, purpose, vocation and calling.

Out in the open desperately hopin’ surf won’t change castles too soon.
Off in the distance roams my resistance slouching away on the dune.

Dragons and pirate ships, wagons and potato chips
shared ‘neath the sky by the sea.
Comic book characters are overlooked banisters on bridges between you and me.

There’s a light. Can you see it? Up above, down the way.
There’s a life. Can you be it? False or true. No way. Way.

You were the architect using your intellect there in the sand and the foam. Designing a mansion. Refining expansion.
As waves brought the water back home.

Coming and going. Falling and flowing.
The rhythm of waves on the beach. Common, exotic, reckless, hypnotic,
within and out of our reach.

There’s a light. Can you see it? Up above, down the way.
There’s a life. Can you be it? False or true. No way. Way.

On the waves. In the sky. On the wind. In your eyes. In the now. On the way.

A realm you named nautically free flows methodically here in my gray matter sea. And the tide is calling. The tide is calling me back to some ways yet to be.

So, I’m off to the ocean guided by the notion alive in the clouds up above.
And the tide is turning. The tide is turning me over and over toward love.

There’s a light. Can you see it? Up above, down the way.
There’s a life. Can you be it? False or true. No way. Way.