This song is called “Blessed Motion.” I learned the songs at Singing Alive and the songstress is Annie Zylstra. I am amazed by the song and the story of the song, which is as follows:

Blessed Motion is a 4-part acknowledgement of the nature of Life as an unpredictable, ever-changing movement toward itself. The melody came squatting on a rock next to a fast moving fork in the Trinity River, where salmon were in their first week of journeying to their spawning sites in northern California. Martin Prechtel said after surviving the Guatemala earthquake of 1976, during which he witnessed the ground beneath him rising up and swallowing people and villages whole, that solid ground is a myth believed by people who live on the earth rather than in it. This idea has stayed with me through the years and provided partial inspiration for this song. This is a big song! It travels through two dimensions, the first, a three or four part set of repeating lines, the second, a layered riff topped with a solo section. 

Thank you Annie. 

I hope you can hear the waves and motion in the voices of the track. It is genius. 

LYRICS

I believed in solid ground until I saw the earth in motion,

in the winds of steady change and in the ever-rolling ocean.

All moves on in perfect, perfect motion.

All is change and ever-rolling ocean.

All is moving, all is change, though I once believed that there

might somehow be something firm beneath my feet, but

All is motion, and all is well for solid ground is just a myth 

for those who never swim in it.

All is moving in blessed change, o the world we know

will come and go and everything will rearrange, so

be the ground beneath that sky,

tumbling round the by and by.

All is change, so am I.

lye lye lye, lye lye lye.

Blessed Motion Cover (Original by Annie Zylstra)

Alexandra “ahlay” Blakely is a descendent of Ashkenazi, Scandinavian and British folk. She is a singer-songwriter, grief tender, community organizer, facilitator and ceramicist walking the path of ancestral healing and the reclaiming of lost cultural memories. Her community singing album, Spells from the Unknown encapsulates songs for the community to transform, ask questions, and seek to lead lives that might make us ancestors worth honoring. Her upcoming 2024 community singing album, WAILS: Songs for Grief was recorded in July 2023 with a choir of 200 voices. The album is completely dedicated to grief, inspired by the Whales and Frances Weller’s “the five gates of grief.”

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Website: https://www.healingattheroots.com

Blessed Motion Cover (Original by Annie Zylstra)

Alexandra Blakely