Secrets Are The Best Stories

Track Listing

• The Fanfold Hawk (for Franz Wright)

  Think that / or imagine you are just / just gliding

  The hawk flies / in clear skies / mirroring fire / floating higher

  higher than any spire

  unconcerned or aware / of empty / forgotten prayers

  He’s one with the air

  His golden skull / all full of null / and void

  except for the will of God

  and not with crazed incessant sounds

  the noisy echoes that pull us to what makes us ill

  Why do we go / after what drives us mad / you know?

  We push and elbow / grabbing what makes us sad / like every ego fad

  Quiet the mind / find your flow aligned / or stay blind

  Nothing comes of

  Making the same / blunder a thousand times / that’s just inane and lame

  And how to go sane / reading between the lines

  when all the lines are your chains?

  It isn’t easy

  You’ll have to show some spine / some spirit

  Move from within / Bust out of what confines

  Because

  Music and solo by Jaco Pastorius
  Lyric by Kurt Elling (2019)

• A Certain Continuum

  There’s a mystery / an enigma / there’s a memory oh so slight

  There’s a message / in the mirror / that will flicker to a spark / of light

  Turn the dark in to sight

  Questions about love are as old as / everything that’s ever been

  Questions linger on until the end

  There’s a ribbon / in the river / that is running through your heart

  There’s a whisper / in the water / with a wisdom to impart:

  Restart …

  Be your own / work of art

  Questions about life are as old as / everything that’s ever been

  Questions linger on until the end

  We are the face in the mirror / and the mirror

  We are tasting forever / every moment

  We are stars in the night / and we are the night

  There’s a ribbon / in the river / that is running through your heart

  There’s a whisper / in the water / with a wisdom to impart:

  Restart …

  Be your own / work of art

  Music and solo by Jaco Pastorius
  Lyric by Kurt Elling (2019)

• Stays

  There was a man on the second floor
  He’d always retreat behind his door
  whenever I’d come off a tour

  From what I gathered he’d never leave the floor
  I’d hold my breath when I’d hear his sneak-ering pause at the door

  Creaking the floor
  hiding, for sure

  Once came a fiery flame / and the fireman came
  Hurrying staircases / dropping floods up / up above me

  Making a vertical sea

  We ran around saving what could / until the fireman said that we should

  Get out of doors and stay for good / like we knew we should

  They brought the man from the second floor / He was carried out by police and more

  Pitching forward / running out of air / down the stair / into glaring lights

  Looking unaware of the night

  They set him down and he sat by me

  For once in time began speaking free / pointing out a flaming tree

  Just two refugees / looking at the spectacle sight / and crying

  That was when he said something to the air

  “I saw a burning like this before / The fire there / it was war, for sure

  Screaming into the air / Soldiers on the stair / I could only stare / I couldn’t endure”

  Looking at the man / he was pretty old

  And I began to fear he was shuddering from the cold

  But what he said sent an icy hold & told me what his unconsoled / beholding eyes knew:

  “I lost my family in ’42. The reason I would hide from your view:

  The SS man looked just like you”

  From what I gathered he’d never leave the floor
  I’d hold my breath when I’d hear his sneak-ering pause at the door

  Creaking the floor hiding, for sure

  ‘Cause where is the cure? / & how to endure?

  When fear and hate is such a lure

  At history’s core

  The answer’s obscure . . .

  Music and solo by Wayne Shorter Lyric by Kurt Elling (2014)

• Gratitude (for Robert Bly)

  Just as sunlight casts a shadow / the first shade of another day

  Interrupted in his sleep / still in half a dream

  Nettled into awaking / wishing light away

  Drinking his cup of coffee / puzzling what he wants to say

  The evening before he’d tried to tell it

  He’d showed off all his ecstatic truths

  … and wine had encouraged his bray

  He’d gone to bed / long before the point was proved

  And risen / deep in the night / to walk

  To wander under stars / And time and again

  He’d wished then / that his children had come walking with hm

  To wonder at stars / until they grew dim

  Sharing the thoughts that spin him / like butterflies trapped within him

  And so he thinks himself unlucky / this someone who has eyes to see

  Who finds stars when wanting stars / who can sing the moon

  Someone whose feet get sandy / in the hidden dunes

  Someone who knows the ocean / who knows what he has to do

  He still thinks his mind is full of tangles

  Whose mind to him just a mangle is

  … and who thinks his poems a mess

  Even though he tells the truth / long before the point is proved

  And rises / deep in the night / to write

  To wander until light / and fly words like kites

  Whose children / share their father’s inner intuition

  To sing to the moon / I think maybe soon

  Somebody ought to tell him / Maybe we ought to tell him

  Something he ought to know

  Something his poems show

  Based on the Robert Bly poem “Visiting Sand Island”
  Music by Danilo Perez
  Lyric by Kurt Elling (2019)

• Stage I
• Beloved (for Toni Morrison)

  Beloved (for Toni Morrison)

  I have just four / the treasures of my spirit
  Laying like doves / all around my heart

  In memory they soar / But only I can see it
  Gone, as with love / since we’ve been torn apart
  The oldest was a girl / Curious of eye and gen/tle/she
  The next was a boy / Mighty
  Then came along / a boy who brought us laughter
  And finally the babe / safe in her mother’s arms

  And each was a joyful gift of God

  But what God gives you – God can take it too

  Escaping with the nestlings of my heart / to swim through the ice

  Across The Ohio’s frozen bridge of hopes

  The the sky that held the Bright Northern star was as cold as the frigid sea

  We’d rush over open fields and hide in woods crowded with feeble trees in fear and tears and whispered hymns and prayers
  to find where some safe place might be

  Dangerous bargains were entered then

  Signed, with my finger the bloody pen

  Scared of the smuggling men

  Prayed, and then prayed again

  But (still) the blood-thirsty dogs gave raging chase …

  My hope began to fall / I couldn’t save us all

  Where no one would hear us call / The river became a wall

  What did I do? We were too few / with dreams to pursue
  We couldn’t push through …

  Judea’s refuge cities had power
  To shelter, shield and save,
  E’en Rome had altars, ‘neath whose shade
  Might crouch the wan and weary slave.

  But Ohio had no sacred fane,
  To human rights so consecrated,
  Where thou may’st shield thy hapless ones
  From their darkly gathering fate.**

  And so I pleaded for strength enough
  to strike a blow for freedom
  Oh Lord … transfigure us!

  Knowing we would soon be seeing heaven made my heart a shining flare

  I lit a torchlight with God’s flaming words and set ablaze my head of hair

  Rising to the air I felt a sense of power reaching everywhere

  Overcoming all that I could see / The Lord’s Holy Spirit used me

  And, seeing the pathway / my children let go their fright

  Surrendering nothing / they burned up their place in the night

  Now they’re with God / surrounded by the angels

  Someday I’ll see / my doves once again / with all of the heavenly host

  . . . Amen

  ** “The Slave Mother, A Tale of the Ohio”, by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1857)
  Music by Danilo Perez
  Lyric by Kurt Elling (2019)

• Stages II, III
• Song Of The Rio Grande (for Oscar and Valeria Martinez-Ramirez)

  I used to hear the running of the river as a song with no ending

  The sound was like a message to my spirit that the river was sending

  The rushing of the water played with harmonies continually ascending

  Enchanted by the river I would stand alone in fear / and ever trembling

  The Rio Grande filled my heart

  But now Ive seen a side of things that makes the song a curious tune

  (It seems) the river is a siren calling underneath a cowardly moon

  And harmonies grow darker as as the revelation opens up to me

  (and up to you)

  Because now I’ve seen the river kill our brother and our tiny sister too

  The Rio Grande has drowned my heart

  Of course, it’s not the river / It’s the people we’ve elected to lead us

  Who make the walls and send the armored wagons for the ones who would join us

  While billionaires recline upon divans upholstered in the skins of slaughter

  And feast upon the children we should think of as our only sons and daughters

  America, you’ve lost your heart

  (And it’s no excuse / just being blind)

  America, you’ve lost your mind

  Music by Danilo Perez
  Lyric by Kurt Elling (2019)
  Based on a theme by Hugo Distler

• Rabo de Nube
• Esperanto

  There’s a secret that never dies / Like a dance of hidden meanings that we never apprehend

  There are questions just as old as time / And the answers that come never quite make amends

  Even so when you look at time / You can get a subtle feeling of the way it ought to be

  Take a good look at your own real life / And you will see if you want what you’ve gotten to be

  It’s a hope / a sign / a measure of quiet rapture / of love and what might come after
  It’s letting go / and letting no answer be an answer
  ________
  How did smoke learn how to fly? Where do birds go off to die?
  Why does coal sleep in darkness? Do dreams live in apartments?
  Is a number forever? Where’s the soul of the water?
  How old is old November? No one here can remember . . .
  If I die, where does time go? Do the bees feel vertigo?
  To get love, is there potion? Or is love only motion?

  Holy lift / holy reading Holy gift / Holy needing

  Holy sound / holy waiting Holy light / animating

  Holy food / Holy breathing Holy light interweaving

  Holy night / Holy handwrite Holy flight / Holy insight

  Holy Sun / Holy brother Holy moon / Holy mother

  Holy dream / Holy vision Ho ly scheme / Holy mission

  Holy one to another Holy me / Holy other

  Holy lives / Holy blending / Holy start / Holy ending

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