Track Two: Grasshopper Said To Ant

It’s out! The album is live on all the streaming services. If you use Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, or Amazon Music, “Late Bloomer” is finally alive and kicking. If you use the other streamers, you can find it by searching for the name of the album. Here it is on YouTube. This begs the question, what’s next? Yes—it is the physical CD—and that will be coming in a few weeks. One step at a time, I’m living the dream!

I am grateful to live in a society that values the arts a tiny bit, so we creators don’t have to exactly starve, quite. I am also grateful to have achieved an age at which I am supported as a reward for having survived this long, leaving me free to make the art that’s been burning inside me all this time of stress and struggle. Arts should be supported! That’s what Track Two of the album, a reworking of the old fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant, is about.

I live on a tiny rural island with give or take a thousand year round residents. In summer, that number swells tenfold; it begins in mid May and phases out by mid September. Our population is like the weather, kinda predictable, kinda variable. Some years they come early, leave late. Some sunny winter weekends bring shocking droves of visitors. I have a love / hate relationship with this cycle. On the one hand, I love the variety and the opportunity to see new faces coming and going. On the other… well. Get outta my yard! NIMBY! Raah. It brings out the inner curmudgeon. Waking up from winter sleep is hard. The arts keeps us all alive. Some islanders are visual artists, some musicians, some grow glorious gardens. All participate in the arts in some way. It makes me want to share, to care, to include.

This year, we have a brand new expensive Arts Centre opening and I am all for it—it’s got a gallery space, a sprung dance floor, performance spaces, and even a year round cafe. I’ve been waiting for this for a while, as it could change the game completely. It might bring more people for more of the year, a blessing mixed with the curses of grumpy islanders.

I’ve always been an artist; my Mom says my first painting was in margarine on the wall. The critics were unimpressed, but I never stopped. I doodled and drew and meant to be an artist. In high school, I cut every class except art. I took a school bus forty miles just to hang out in the juke joint before and after art class. Now, I paint, doodle and draw on my iPad; my Instagram is full of stuff I created over the course of a few years, like my Substack logo.

Here it is bigger:

I’ve been split between music, art and writing all my life. I love all of them! Right now, this album is my baby and my obsession. Also, writing about it. “Grasshopper Said to Ant” is special to me.

Every song tells a story, but Track Two tells more of a coherent story than most. I remember well the moment it came to me.

I was standing at the kitchen counter in our much-loved home on the water, the one the fire department burned down as practice after the property was sold and divided. I still can’t think of that house without a pang, it was so beautiful and unique, and then so shockingly gone. Despite the mice and then the rats, despite the enormous difficulty heating the space, with its snake-like meandering length, it was such a fun and funky home. We expected to stay there much longer than we did. Our landlords divorced and divided the property, and just like that, we were once again seeking a home.

The late afternoon sun made the countertops glow a glorious soft gold when out of the blue I thought of the old tale of the ant and the grasshopper. I’ve never liked that story, about the feckless, lazy grasshopper vs the industrious and responsible ant. In an illustration in a storybook I had as a child, the ant smugly puffs on its pipe by the fire behind stoutly barred doors, while just outside in the howling wind and snow, the dying grasshopper suffers as he deserves, lazy dumbass.

I identified with that grasshopper even as a child. The moral made no sense to me. Why did the ant have to be so mean? Why not invite the poor grasshopper in? They could have a great time together!

The song showed up in my head in that moment, whole and complete, melody and all. This doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it’s a blessing and a gift. I grabbed paper and pencil, wrote it down and figured out the chords on the guitar, voila! A song was born. From the first I was charmed by the classic celtic sound of the melody and the tale, and the often-clever rhymes. I particularly liked the triple rhyme in “Why borrow sorrow from tomorrow”. My favourite compliment I’ve gotten for this one is, “Oh, you wrote that? I thought for sure it was a traditional song!” It does have that feel.

I’m really happy with the way the music turned out on this song, with the upright bass and mandolin. I thought of adding fiddle (because Grasshopper was a fiddler) but it didn’t need it.

In the song, I retell the Ant and the Grasshopper as a kind of love story. Grasshopper is a happy soul who lives in the moment, dancing and free, and can’t understand why Ant can’t take some time out to play with him. Meanwhile Ant worries her friend, but gets on with her busy life preparing for winter. Grasshopper doesn’t believe in winter! The world is bright and warm, what’s to fear? There’s a sad lesson in here that the grasshoppers of the world will never learn it until it’s too late. “Then bitterly repented he that never did he yield.”

Was the lesson that he should have given up his carefree ways and worked harder? I don’t think so. I don’t think he could have—he was an artist, and artists must create, no matter what. I think in the end, he learned to receive friendship, kindness and support, and to give back what he had to give—music. No small thing, music. Music is everything. Music is love.

The story has a moral. It’s a twist on the old moral, which was something like, work hard and you’ll earn the right to live, don’t and you’ll die in the cold, alone. The new moral, as the song says, “It takes all kinds, and love is blind, and what will be will be.”

It takes all kinds, yes it does! Not everybody has the sort of brain that thinks about the future or plans four steps ahead. Creative types need support, and what they give back is enough to earn that support. “When winter’s gloom has them entombed, his music gives them heart.”

Art has value and is worth supporting. Artists, musicians and creators are the shamans of modern society. All cultures, back to the beginning, have had space for the different ones, the shamans and seers and bards and healers, who were supported for what they had to offer. Support the arts! Grasshoppers have the right to live too, and they have so much to share.

I’m so grateful to live in a community with a strong core of artists and with a cohesive commitment to facilitating and supporting community creativity. We have a new Arts Centre under construction, nearing completion in fact, and I am excited to see what we will be able to do with it. More arts! More music!

The song was written by a grasshopper, naturally. Ant was far too busy to write songs.

Grasshopper Said To Ant

Grasshopper said to Ant, when they met by chance
"Won’t you play with me, may I have this dance?"
Ant said "No, I have to go, for winter’s cold and dire
I must have food, I must have wood, there's no time for desire."

Grasshopper said, "The sky is blue, the world is bright and warm
Why prepare for what’s not there, why expect the storm?
Be here now, I’ll show you how, there is no cause for fear
Why borrow sorrow from tomorrow, all you need is here."

Ant said, "Pray dear Grasshopper, I know you love to play
I greatly fear that winter’s drear will break you, cold and grey
You’re not prepared, why aren’t you scared, how will you survive?"
Grasshopper laughed and hopped away, sang only, "I’m alive!"

Ant kept working, never shirking, built a cozy home
Grasshopper played his fiddle while dancingly he roamed
As Ant foretold, the winter’s cold did find him in the field
Then bitterly repented he that never did he yield

The path he’d chosen would have froze him, if it weren’t for Ant
She happened on poor Grasshopper and mercy did she grant
Through frost and gloam she bore him home, to share her labour’s fruit
She could not bear to leave him there, their argument was moot

Now everyone loves Grasshopper, his fiddle and his art
When winter’s gloom has them entombed, his music gives them heart
the moral of the story, if moral must we see
It takes all kinds, and love is blind, and what will be will be
It takes all kinds, and love is blind, and what will be will be.

Blessings and love to you all and thank you for reading!