Phone recording of Strawberry Brain the night I finished writing it, July 3rd, 2020, a rainy midnight in the middle of a heat wave and the anniversary of a concussion that sent me spinning in 2019. I would like to re-record it sometime, but I kind of love the tenderness of hearing a fresh new song in the voice that just wrote it. 

Lyrics:

A sunbeam unravelled all my threads, small hours of the morning
When two spinning planets’ dancing heads collided without warning
She surfaced too fast and I saw stars, tripped and spun, bit my tongue

I slipped out the door and walked alone through streets that split like wishbones
Spat blood on the floor when I got home, my insides soft as fish bones
I slept through the summer and the fall, stayed inside, hoped to die

My strawberry brain a hidden bruise, can’t follow conversation
Preserve all my thoughts for later use, I’m under sweet sedation

When I get the nerve it won’t be long 'til guts twist into harp strings
And I’ll find the words to write a song of blood and broken heartstrings

Strawberry Brain

Strawberry Brain (July 2020)

Spooky tune recorded in my basement last fall for Blue Canoe's storytelling event Viva Voce: Haunted.

Lyrics:

I'm friend-sick, he's got other plans
Call forensics, someone's got ink on their hands
He grasps at something invisible, I feel the pull and follow his stare
Playing me like a theremin, no fingerprints, just dust in the air

His hands shake, my heart oscillates
Watch him sway, how hollow he seems
I walk myself home, he follows me into my dreams
It's nothing, I know, but pheromones and colour tones and sleeping alone
I want to be loved, not womanized, but oh, his eyes are cold as a stone

Pressure shifts, now I'm no meteorologist 
But I'd predict it's better just not to acknowledge this
Clear my head, he jokes that no one gets me
But forgets that you get what you give and he never gave openly

Disappearing messages and vestiges of questions that all missed the mark
Dismiss it, there's no evidence, shady at best, and you know I can't see in the dark.

Forensics

Forensics (September 2020)

A song I wrote and recorded for Rysia Andrade's radio drama "A Strong Girl", featured in the Cellar Door Projects & CFRC's Shortwave Theatre Festival, November 2020. 

Written, arranged, and sung by Haley Sarfeld. Guitar and mixing by Rogan Gowan.

Listen to the radio play here: https://podcast.cfrc.ca/2020/11/a-strong-girl/

Lyrics:

Red and winsome in the sunshine, where will you go when clouds roll in?
Under cover, be my lover, I'll feed you berries and stain your chin.

Like laundry left out on the line in a storm, I dipped and I shook on her pillow,
And as in a song or a rhyme in a storybook, love struck me down to the marrow. 

In the garden, hope you'll pardon how I stare at your frilly dress,
Lace is sweet but I'd rather see what's underneath it, I confess.

I hiked up my skirt and I slipped off my shoes and sent the poor lady's head spinnin', 
Her hand on my back and my heart in my throat, our lives wrapped up in dirty linen. 

Where ya goin'? Please come back, don't leave me here alone in bed,
Love, be careful on the stairs, I'd hate to see you break your head.

She lifted me up in her firm, sturdy arms and carried me to the wheelbarrow,
Wielding me gently she strode through the dark and buried me deep in the meadow.

Red and Winsome

Pulled this song out to test my mic setup for a school project the other day. It's a funny, grumpy little tune I wrote when I was about twenty, before I could play any instruments. I used to sing it with my bandmates accompanying me on guitar and/or keyboard. 

This is my first time playing and singing it all by myself simultaneously (a little breathlessly, and I think I'll do it in a higher key in the future). I'd like to re-record it sometime, but I'm trying to be less sensitive about imperfections, so in the meantime, here you go!


Lyrics:

I eye the liner notes and I regret not knowing noted lyrics line for line
I side-eye, sidle serpentine, I try my quill skills porpentine, solve pining thoughts with bitter pills and turpentine

Instead I line our skies with felt-tip trifles, rifles through my thoughts before they shoot off and surprise
I kept a lid on everything I felt, I stifled, tossed my thoughts inside a box and hid them from your eyes

I'm not a love dispenser and you really push my buttons when you shove a coin into my slot and try to make me dance
In for a penny or a pound, I'll gain a few but stick around for two-cent conversations and your clumsy stoned romance

I'm not a cutlet but you try to soften me with mallet strikes, you sear me with your tender eyes but you don't see me cry
I'll rearrange my bustle into something subtle, muddle up my metaphors, pretend they're yours, let you take the applause


Instead I line our skies with felt-tip trifles, rifles through my thoughts before they shoot off and surprise
I kept a lid on everything I felt, I stifled, tossed my thoughts inside a box and hid them from your eyes

If you weren't such a stressful boy your boisterous boasting wouldn't bore me, but you're just so immature, so I'll show you the door
Speak easily, dislike the sneaking, seems to me that what you're seeking isn't me, and furthermore I never will be yours


I'll never line your skies with felt-tip trifles, rifles through my thoughts to save you from your own demise
Won't keep a lid on anything I feel, won't stifle, keep my thoughts outside the box, won't hide them for your lies

Busking (Line Our Skies)

Assignment: "Write either a dramatic dialogue or a poem, about a page long, that organizes multiple voices (at least two), of which at least one is drawn from literary scholarship."

So, you've tamed the creature that's been threatening local maidens and taken him home to be your handsome husband. Now what? "True Love's Morning Chores" imagines the mornings after the events of the Scandinavian folk tale "Prince Lindworm" and the Anglo-Scottish border ballad "Tam Lin". 

-

Lyrics:

The shedding and sloughing are done, shifts and skins strewn about the room,
The Lindworm’s been whipped with lye, bathed in milk, and sung a lullaby.

Now, what’s to be done with the skins he’s sloughed, the milk-white shifts she’s shed?
Who will strip the linens from the bed, clean the curdled tub, scrub the stinging lye?

I will save the skins and silken shifts, I will hang them on the line to dry,
I will scrub the sin from linen sheets and rinse, just as I scrubbed the shaking Lindworm Prince. 

She’s held him fast, feared him not, abortion thwarted, maidenhead still lost
Tam Lin, naked man, wrapped in her mantle and carried home. 

Now, what’s to be done with the gashes he’s left, the grass-green kilt he’s torn?
Who will adorn the naked man and unborn bairn, kirtle kilted up, needle fast in hand?

I will mend the gashes and the kilt, I will clothe my husband and my bairn, 
I will let my waistline out, pull stitches all, just as I pulled the rose at Carterhaugh.

-

Do the Shepherd’s Daughter and Janet perform heroic acts of love and courage to save their partners’ lives, or pragmatic acts of compromise to save their own? What if it’s both? Who cleans up afterward? Do the events of the stories leave these characters with emotional trauma? Will the Prince and Tam Lin be good to their wives and hold them fast when they need support? Or is nurturance, like washing and mending, still only women’s work? 

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Sources:

Acland, A. “Versions of the Ballad of Tam Lin.” Tam Lin Balladry: A website of folklore and discovery. 1997. Accessed online: https://tam-lin.org/versions/index.html

Asbjørnsen, Peter Christen and Jørgen Engebretsen Moe. “Prince Lindworm.” East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Old Tales from the North. Project Gutenburg eBook, 2010, pp. 53-63. Accessed online: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30973/30973-h/30973-h.htm#PRINCE_LINDWORM

García, Ana Belén Martínez. “Formulaicity in Child Ballads as a Means to Express Assertiveness.” Folklore, April 2017, vol. 128, no. 2, pp. 175-188. Accessed online: https://journals-scholarsportal-info.proxy.queensu.ca/details/0015587x/v128i0002/175_ficbaamtea.xml

Mitchell, Anaïs and Jefferson Hamer. “Folk Alley Sessions: Anaïs Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer - "Tam Lin (Child 39)".” YouTube, uploaded by FolkAlleydotCom, 19 March 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3yTEUnyYDA

Mullen, Ginger. The Transformation of "Tam Lin": An Analysis of Picture Books. MA Thesis. University of British Columbia, 2003. Accessed online:
 https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/831/items/1.0091412

Haley S.