A song about a family being mirrors for each other, reflecting the light and growing together.
āBroken Mirrorā
The Story
Happy to say I wrote this song today! It is prompted by the Open Mic Songwriters Challenge, launching this week. I first discovered the official invitation this afternoon, and thankfully I was able to get the kids to bed early enough to write and record this song. I even recruited my partner, @wildfamily, to sing the chorus lines with me. It's essentially our love story, with a bit of embellishment.
She and I met when I was finishing grad school at UT, here in Austin. I sported a mohawk at the time, and tended to be up late, partying. She had a one-year-old son, and tended to be up early, playing peekaboo. So we had some quirks right from the get-go. And then we discovered we had a strong commonality in the appreciation of each other's quirks. It turns out we're twin flames, divinely aligned to grow together as a family. š„ š āØ
This song's chorus lines are really fun to sing! Catchy, right? This week's songwriters challenge required us to use ābroken mirrorā as a prompt, and so I started playing around with the concept and found a way to see a broken mirror in a positive light: more mirrors to reflect the light of the sun (hm, I wonder if this is how disco balls originated). To me, the sun is the ultimate source of life and light, and so I revere the sun as a sacred gift. I love the idea of the many suns, that might be reflected in a broken mirror.
My partner and I have been through a few broken mirrors. We've also received some stellar parenting coaching on the subject of mirrors. Our mentor, Carrie Contey, Ph.D., frequently reminds us that kids mirror their parents, and vice-versa. This means we model each other, yeah, and it also means that we empathize with each otherāwe feel each other's pain, we learn by each other's trials and errors...
And we radiate each other's light. When I think about what it means to say that I āshine a lightā for my family, many concepts come to mind: (1) I pay the electric bill that keeps the lamps lit; (2) I do my best to be brilliant in my thoughts words and actions; (3) I accentuate the positive; and (4) I choose to be strong, safe, happy, and live well. I like to think I do all of this for the sake of my family. The greater truth is that I shine a light for myself, first and foremost, and this light naturally reaches warm, bright, and cozy to my family, to my greater family, and to my Greater Family, which is all of us. Aho.
The Lyrics
He was a mohawk hipster party-seeking
She was a braided hippie granola-eating
Met in Austin started rock ānā rolling
Soon left Texas to pursue country living
He got ready to be a rad daddy
She got ready to be a hot mama
Suddenly they had a five-member family
In a wild world getting wildly heavy
[One sun reflecting on a broken mirror
Echoes many suns all at once] 2x
He let his inner animal howl
She let her inner animal roar out
Broke many mirrors as a man and a woman
Broke many more mirrors married with children
[One sun reflecting on a broken mirror
Echoes many suns all at once] 2x
He saw himself when he saw his daughter
She saw herself when she saw her sons
They learned to be mirrors for each other
Reflecting the light and growing together
[One sun reflecting on a broken mirror
Echoes many suns all at once] 4x
Here's the guitar tablature, in case you're interested.
The Open Mic
I'd like to thank @meno and @luzcypher for co-creating the Open Mic Songwriters Challenge. And another round of thanks to @luzypher for simultaneously hosting the Steemit Open Mic Week 61. Cheers to all of the sponsors, judges, participants, and audience members. Thank you all for being here and supporting live music.
Side Note: I'm just now noticing the interesting collection of books on my night stand right now, which gives evidence to the fact that I'm just as much āhippieā as I am āhipster,ā and the same is probably true of my wife. :) Gnomes, The Rainbow Book, Humans of New York, Cosmicomics, Nature and the Human Soul, The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, and Anna The Voice of the Magdalenes.