A song that wonders what happens to us when we die.
Composed, and performed by Ellen-Cathryn Nash. Produced by Ian Lintault and Ellen-Cathryn Nash at Platinum Island Recording Studios, NYC.
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I composed the music for I Still Cry when I was five years old. This song was caused by a nightmare I’d had about my Dad dying. By the age of five I’d internalized the concept of impermanence and worried about losing my father more or less every day until I finally did lose him twenty four years later. That was when the lyric came – the loss of my father was so great that I was reduced to feeling five years old, only this time I was living the dream. This is why the song sounds so childish.
That my father was brilliant and kind is objectively true. Dad had an obsessive love of animals – he rescued every dog and cat we’d find and charmed my mom into keeping them all. Dad would understand my having four battered horses – if he were still here I’d definitely have more horses because he’d help out with the bills just so more horses could be safe. If he were still here, I know I never would have evolved into the flight animal I am today. Dad was a very tall man and he and Thornton, his pet Rottweiler, commanded immediate respect from my and my sisters’ boyfriends. What a pair – that dog listened to him only.
Apart from giving me my gift for music, the greatest thing my father gave me was teaching me to be an humanist. My father thought in a way that is different from the way most people think – he did things simply because they were good things to do – no strings attached. He put the waitress at the restaurant where he had lunch each day through school so she wouldn’t always have to be a waitress. She poured him ‘short fours’ at my request. He taught me that when one takes the 10,000-foot view, people look very small indeed and there is every reason to tell others about the special things you see in them. There is every reason to make new friends. Some people are naturally suspicious of this mode of thought and its attendant intensity, so one has to be prepared to go the extra distance. It takes a certain kind of guts to invite someone who probably
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