The Questions

Track Listing

• A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
• A Happy Thought

  Music by Stu Mindeman
  Poem by Franz Wright (God’s Silence, 2006)

  Assuming this is the last day of my life
  (which might mean it is almost the first)
  I’m struck blind but my blindness is bright.

  Prepare for what’s known here as death;
  have no fear of that strange word forever.
  Even I can see there’s nothing there

  to be afraid of: having already been
  to forever I’m unable to recall
  anything that scared me, there, or hurt.

  What frightened me, apparently, and hurt
  was being born. But I got over that
  with no hard feelings. Dying, I imagine,

  it will be the same deal, lonesomer maybe,
  but surely no more shocking or prolonged –
  It’s dark as I recall, then bright, so bright.

• American Tune
• Washing of the Water
• A Secret in Three Views

  Music by Jaco Pastorius
  Vocalese Lyric by Kurt Elling and Phil Galdston based on Wayne Shorter’s improvised melody from Weather Report’s 1980 recording, “Night Passage.”
  The lyric adapts the words of the 13th century poet Jelaluddin Balkhi, or Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

  I don’t know / Am I supposed to know?
  What if every road / leads the same way home?
  Pathways bend / and never reach the end of it . . .
  blending / weaving around to begin again.

  And every night the questions come / and ask the moon to rise up
  And fly away from old Brother Sun & shine her light independent-like
  (just for one time)
  Playful calls / cat-scratch star falls of mystery
  Blessing every night dreams that play over darkened scenes –
  Like Northern Lights in the sky / like diamonds in flight.
  Where they lead / is the lonely question of life.

  And even though we strive / to make some sense out of being alive
  We plot & plan & connive / some sense of purpose to derive
  (When really all we think we know might just be one big cosmic swan dive)
  ______________________

  But take heart, you weary traveler / don’t fall apart
  Your final lover now sings straight into your heart
  You’re the sky / Yours, the inner eye
  You / my only love
  You / who question the lessons
  Make your mind up to stay up / & lay up / & wake up with me tonight.

  My love / I have only three things to say

  First: When I was apart from you this world did not exist
  Not this world, nor any other
  The second is that you are whatever I was looking for /
  It was you / always you / without you, love / I smother
  Third is why – why, oh why, oh why did I ever learn to count to three?

  So sleep / You are safe in the star-laden sea

  And so he sings / and everyone else starts to sing with him
  (laughing & dancing & drinking)
  And you are the fruit of this golden vine
  You are holy wine / You are wholly mine
  You are holy / And you’re mine

• Lonely Town
• Endless Lawns

  Music by Carla Bley
  Lyric by Kurt Elling incorporating “Winter Stars” by Sara Teasdale (Flame and Shadow, 1920)

  Afloat and all at sea / the stars align in threes
  They’re so fine and free / in blue and in green
  Like leaves on endless trees

  Come climb the sky with me / come hear and come to see
  Melody in perfect symmetry / in love / in light / in key

  ______________________

  I went out at night alone;
  The young blood flowing beyond the sea
  Seemed to have drenched my spirit’s wings—
  I bore my sorrow heavily.

  But when I lifted up my head
  From shadows shaken on the snow,
  I saw Orion in the east
  Burn steadily as long ago.

  From windows in my father’s house,
  Dreaming my dreams on winter nights,
  I watched Orion as a boy
  Above another city’s lights.

  Years [a]go, dreams [a]go, and youth goes too,
  The world’s heart breaks beneath its wars,
  All things are changed, save in the east
  The faithful beauty of the stars.

• I Have Dreamed
• The Enchantress

  Music by Joey Calderazzo
  Lyric by Kurt Elling inspired by “The Idea of Order at Key West” by Wallace Stevens (Collected Poems, 1923)
  Dedicated to Martha Elling and Dolores Marsalis

  She waits alone / in a chair / in a room
  The echo’d line of years / gone over too soon

  When she would sing beyond the crying
  of the dreamless sea / and her body fluttered free
  And the sea was not a wish / no more was she a wish than me
  Not more than a gesture / the sea

  The songs and waves were not medley’d sound
  For it was she and not the sea we heard / word by word

  The lyric phrases undeterred / though never understood
  It was the waves that she stirred

  ________________

  But now the sea is just a memr’y / in an silent time
  as the clouds go scudding by
  And the clouds hold only rain
  No strain / re-echos in her sighs
  Two curtain-closed windows / her eyes

  No song exists in her solitude
  Though in her hands she holds a bird
  No poem and no word / configures oceans overheard
  No melody conferred
  It was the waves that she stirred

  But soon her body will flutter free . . .
  And her body will flutter free . . .
  And soon her body will flutter free . . .
  And her body will flutter free . . .

  ________________

  She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
  The water never formed to mind or voice,
  Like a body wholly body, fluttering
  Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
  Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
  That was not ours although we understood,
  Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

  The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
  The song and water were not medleyed sound
  Even if what she sang was what she heard,
  Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
  It may be that in all her phrases stirred
  The grinding water and the gasping wind;
  But it was she and not the sea we heard.

  For she was the maker of the song she sang.
  The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
  Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
  Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
  It was the spirit that we sought and knew
  That we should ask this often as she sang.

  If it was only the dark voice of the sea
  That rose, or even colored by many waves;
  If it was only the outer voice of sky
  And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
  However clear, it would have been deep air,
  The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
  Repeated in a summer without end
  And sound alone. But it was more than that,
  More even than her voice, and ours, among
  The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
  Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
  On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
  Of sky and sea.

  It was her voice that made
  The sky acutest at its vanishing.
  She measured to the hour its solitude.
  She was the single artificer of the world
  In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
  Whatever self it had, became the self
  That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
  As we beheld her striding there alone,
  Knew that there never was a world for her
  Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

  Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
  Why, when the singing ended and we turned
  Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
  The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
  As the night descended, tilting in the air,
  Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
  Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
  Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

  Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
  The maker’s rage to order words of the sea,
  Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
  And of ourselves and of our origins,
  In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

• Skylark