This song was a meditation about the coming of another year: “Welcome to the New Year.” It talks about 1. parents, 2. us, 3. kids, 4. grandkids, 5. work, 6. koyaanisqatsi (a Hopi word meaning “life out of balance, disintegrating, life in turmoil, going crazy,” it is “a call for another way of living, for time to think, ponder and be lazy”), and 7. the church. Some of these songs are almost impossible to reconstruct when I sing them, after not singing them for over a year. It is like I am not sure what the chord progression was, or some of the chords are different, and not what I regularly use, and it takes time to reteach my fingers to do something they have forgotten. Guess this is one of the reasons I have been working on getting all of these songs recorded. There are several of them which are probably quite different in these recordings than they were when I first wrote them. Oh well! At least there will now be a record of these meditations, and who knowns, maybe somebody will pick up some of them and keep them alive. Then the New Year will not “bring a new tear,” nor “challenges to match our fear.” Even as we watch Maxine get older, it is inspiring to see her be “like the good soldier, they keep going simply living bolder.” I picked photos of a snow storm for this song, because of the line in the first verse “The snow outside shows it’s colder.” We get older, and get sick, and mostly keep on living meekly. “The kids are living their own lives, we watch as best they let us,” and hope they will be wise. “The grandkids live in a different world,” a world I see as becoming unfurled, and that they do not see the consequences. “Thankfully for me work will always be here, challenging my mind keeping me in gear” and filling up my year. “All the while the world changes faster,” sin’s blaster, turning from the master and his plan. “Thankfully the church provides us an anchor, better than any provided by a banker,” as I justify not having enough savings by saying finances, in the end, simply canker. I think it would be good for each of us to meditate on the new year and how we will improve.
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