6
Rosie
I tried to fall asleep, bit it simply wasn’t possible. My surroundings were too unfamiliar, my mind was too wound up, and my body felt like it had just been on a roller coaster from all the day’s emotion. I ended up popping in my headphones, firing up my laptop and posting a new video to YouTube that I’d recorded earlier that day instead.
The song had a wickedly hard guitar part, all triplets and syncopated rhythms. I’m not sure what I’d been thinking when I wrote it. Just playing the thing was hard. Singing it was even harder and required me to really stretch my range. But I was nothing if not stubborn. After a month of practice, I could probably play and sing the tune standing on one leg while juggling lit candles and it would still sound perfect.
Some of my stubbornness stared back at me when I watched the video one more time before posting it.
“Do you ever feel like you’ve lost touch with the things that mattered most to you?” I asked from the playback window. “I wrote this song about finding them again before it’s too late.” I smiled nervously. “This one’s called Pearl Diving.”
There’s something in the water,
You can see the shadowed shape,
The pool is deep and silent,
And you’re standing there agape,
If you jump in, you’ll be freezing,
Or your friends may laugh and stare,
So, you stand there doing nothing,
You pretend that you don’t care,
You used to dive straight in,
and look for treasures in the blue,
Then breaking breathless from the water,
You clutched pearls like dreams come true.
You found magic in the water,
and that magic found you too.
You’re addicted to the hunt now,
and the hunt has chosen you.
But now you’re older and you’re wiser,
and since you just want to fit in,
you nod that pearls are out of fashion,
you’re embarrassed,
you pretend.
So, the treasures stay un-rescued,
And the moment passes by.
You forget about the magic,
Or at least, you know, you try.
But sometimes you wake up cold,
having sleep-walked to the edge.
The pool still calls you forward,
it might pull you off the ledge.
When the treasures stay un-rescued,
if all the moments pass you by,
You’ll wake up, but on the bottom,
Gazing breathless at the sky.
You found magic in the water,
but magic doesn’t come for free.
You can deny how much you want it,
It will still collect its fee.
You’re older but no wiser,
You can pretend you aren’t alive,
You can pretend that nothing matters,
One day you’ll have to take the dive.
If your treasures stay un-searched for,
The magic will finally pull you down
You’ll wake up on the bottom,
Clutching treasures as you drown.