The Story of "A Long Way Up"
Story Behind The Song – A Long Way Up
In the course of this pandemic there have been hard days and good days – or often a combination of beautiful and grievous, grounded and messy. On one of those beautiful grievous days I went for a walk in the woods with my husband, Robert. He had brought along his I-phone and pulled up the Sam Cooke song “You Send Me.” He put his phone in his pocket, put up his hands in invitation and we slow danced out in the middle of the woods. It was a lovely tender moment, singing and humming and laughing, turning in a slow circle as the light turned from late afternoon golden to eventide blue. I went home and began this song in appreciation for those who walk with us on the good days and the hard days, who make us feel seen and heard, who will remind us of the poignancy of living and the joy of just being in the moment together.
There is a nod in this song to a Kurt Vonnegut quote.
“God made mud. God got lonesome. So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!" See all I've made, the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars. And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud. I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done. "Nice going, God!”
There is a tenderness to this song, a sense of mystery and delight. It is a moment for me, who is mud sitting up, to say “Wow, there is so much wonder here, including dogs and trees and moss and evening light and sultry voices and lighting bugs and woodthrush and hiking boots and shirt pockets and Sam Cooke… and my goofball partner in life. Thanks God.”
Somedays it feels like a long way up – may you have people in your life that walk with you on those days, who carry hope for you when you can’t find a lot of it yourself, who hear you and really see you, will tell you a joke or bring over soup, who share life with you in the most amazing and true ways.
-Carrie
