About the Songs

Cafeteria Girl
Inspired by the people from South and Central America I met while working in the Boston College cafeteria: great laughers, talkers, singers, workers, and human beings. I got to know a few of them pretty well, and most of them well enough to guess at the “doubleness” of their lives in the cafeteria. I suppose that’s true of workers everywhere, but this college cafeteria seemed more a waystation in a longer journey than a destination.

On a Lark
We venture out alone when we make art. Poets have always imagined their muses as fickle creatures who came and went as they pleased. Here, I imagine the creating self emerging out of that solitude with perhaps more whimsy and friendliness. I find it easy to become lonely for that creating self, rather than lonely in its company. It comes, as so many lovely and free things do in this life, “on a lark.”

Madcap Taxi Driver Based on a true story – or, as they say, “true enough.” People who know me find it hard to imagine me in a state of road rage, but in the wrong mood, I can race through life with the best of ‘em. Green Wave of Ocean A song of love, and one of the first songs I ever made. Born right out of the sea – my constant and constantly-changing friend in Maine where I grew up, a lobsterman’s daughter.