This song is about learning to break cycles of violence, both historically and in our own nervous systems, reducing our reactivity so that we can show up to life with open hearts and a listening ear.

Vocals, Piano, songwriting: Nora Maynard (SureFireCure)
Oboe, Vocals: Rafael Natan (FlightOrVisibility)

N.B.: tho this song speaks of thoughtless rage as undesirable, I personally believe thoughtFUL rage is incredibly valuable. with love & rage ~ Nora

Lyrics:

You know that day well. You always will.
Said the window to the sill; 
"I feel your pain.
You've been waiting all this time for a drop of rain.
For blood to spill"

Where does the time go? It sure does fly.
Seems like only yesterday you were by my side
‘Stead of facedown waiting for me to notice
Your hands were tied

A broken record never lies.
And history's an open book sometimes.
Time will spiral to the next
place we can ask ourselves again
how to bend ~not break~ our necks.

What would you tell them if they could hear?
Why do we keep thrashing out 
our thoughtless rage?
Does it penetrate the walls of that awful cage
that breeds our fear?

A broken record never lies.
And history's an open book sometimes.
Sometimes
Time will spiral to the next
place we can ask ourselves again
how to bend ~not break~
how to bend~not break~
~not break~
our necks.


This song grew from the seed of some chords that grabbed my heart and wouldn't let go until I'd cried along with them so many times. The lyrics *started out* about my Aunt Janet's death. She was an incredible woman, a spiritual visionary and kindred spirit to me. Soon after that as I attempted to learn to meditate I became aware of some past trauma that was contributing to my hyper-vigilance. For years I had always said people needed to be careful when they woke me up, since I have a tendency to want to defend myself physically when awoken suddenly. In attempting meditation I also felt hyper-vigilant, and suddenly remembered that as a teen, at a sleep-over I was placed (without my consent) into a dog cage while I was trying to sleep. I had been carried there in my sleeping bag by some friends who meant to tease me, probably because I was awkward and obviously queer. I was not locked in, thank goodness, but I was deeply hurt by the event in ways that I didn't even realize had stuck around until I found clarity in meditation. Now that I know this, I'm processing it all and awakening more peacefully.

Open Book Test - Nora Maynard (SureFireCure)

Matt Samolis (Shoebei) on bowed cymbals & metal, with Nora Borealis (surefirecure) supplying vocals. This was our first attempt at a collaboration. Be sure to play this loud on large speakers, if you can. This was the most indulgent and therapeutic sound I've ever been part of creating. I hope it will inspire your own primal sound of some kind. If you feel at all inclined, add your own voice as you listen. You never know might be waiting inside you, ready to join in this conversation. Perhaps as we end 2021, all the emotion of the past 2 years might still be looking for some sort of release. Blessed Yuletide!

Bowed Cymbals & Expressive Voice

This is what happens when my light and dark sides have a conversation. Got stuck on that first verse for almost a year!

Lullaby For A Nihilist

This is all about falling for somebody as slowwwwwwly as you can possibly manage, specifically while attempting polyamory for a while.

Breathing Room

Last July after I came back from spending time with family, providing music at my favorite Aunt's deathbed (my spiritual and genetic matriarch), I started playing some chords that fit a melody full of sighs I couldn't shake, and for a long time it all made me cry too hard to even work on the song.

At some point these words came to mind:
 
(You know that day well.
You always will.)
Said the window to the sill; 
"I feel your pain.
You've been waiting all this time for a drop of rain.
For blood to spill"

(Where does the time go?
It sure does fly.)
Seems like only yesterday you were by my side
'stead of face down waiting for me to notice
your hands were tied

A broken record never lies.
And history's an open book sometimes.
Time will spiral to the next
place we can ask ourselves again
how to bend
~not break~
our necks.

While I was meditating in my room at a vocal pedagogy conference in January, I realized that much of my anxious calibration and hyper-vigilance that seems to interfere when I look for a clean, blank, mindful room, is partly based on leftover trauma from being put in a dog cage as a joke that one time at a sleepover as I was drifting off to sleep, by people who were often my friends but who were routinely cruel to me, strange and queer as I clearly was. For years after whenever I was dozing I would lash out violently at anyone who touched me. It wasn't that I had forgotten the experience, but since it wasn't the *worst* hazing anyone has experienced ever I hadn't realized that it had been quite soooo destructively formative.

And so these lyrics joined the team: 

(What would you tell them 
if they could hear?)
Why do we keep thrashing out 
our thoughtless rage?
Does it penetrate the walls of that awful cage
that breeds our fear?

Open Book Test

Just a taste of what's to come! "This is Love" is a new recording of a song that started as communal improvisation full of choral ecstasy in a dream. That songlet grew wings as I improvised on the tune with my social-justice-dialogue choir, Voices21C. During our tour of Israel/Palestine that summer, I was asked to improvise a tune to Rumi's poem: 

"This is Love
To fly towards a secret sky
To cause 100 veils to fall each moment
First, to let go of life
Finally, to take a step without feet" ~ Rumi
.
I feel so humbled to have been asked to meditate on these words in song form so many times, backed up by a full chorus of singers.
It was always a time where I felt a portal to a different plane open in me,  purifying my voice and turning me into a channel for those words. 

In this recording, I'm tying that portal to another that always opens under a starthick sky, far from a city nexus, near a large body of water.

This is Love (Teaser)

versatile vocalist & violinist, singer-songwriter, voice teacher, creator of safer spaces for community music

Nora Borealis

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