Singing in the Dark

This week I received a sweet E-mail from Dublin singer/songwriter Susan McKeown telling me how much she loved my blog. She also sent me an MP3 of her new song “A Woman Like That” (with lyrics based on the Anne Sexton poem “Her Kind”). The compelling song was a wonderful surprise. I have been looking forward to hearing her upcoming album, Singing in the Dark, ever since I read an interview with her in the Spring 2010 issue of NAMI Advocate.

The passion behind the album is something near and dear to our hearts here at the Strange Light Cafe: understanding madness and creativity. The lyrics are from poets of the last thousand years who were writing through the lens of depression, mania or substance abuse.

Susan has financed the album on her own so far, a true labor of love, but she needs our help to finish. Please go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1597578099/singing-in-the-dark and learn what you can do. If you help, you could receive signed advance copies, extra tracks, tickets to her show, attend meet and greets or even suggest your own reward.

Your assistance is needed, not only to finish the album -- but to give it a proper release and to make sure it is heard. Help Susan complete her dream. Together we shine.

Vincent


Below is the Anne Sexton poem that the song “A Woman Like That (Her Kind)” is based on and a link to the video.

“A Woman Like That (Her Kind)”
Lyrics: Anne Sexton
Music: Lisa Gutkin

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1597578099/singing-in-the-dark