Wow, is all I have to say. The response to last week’s TV Tuesday post of my “Royals” cover has been outstanding. I’m thrilled that so many people are enjoying and sharing it, and can’t thank you all enough. Hope you enjoy this week’s video just as much. It’s an original, my song “Little Stone Church.”
This song actually has a pretty interesting backstory. Several years ago, I read Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky’s unfinished novel about the Nazi occupation of France during WWII. It was heartbreakingly beautiful, not only because the writing is absolutely breathtaking (seriously, every sentence is perfect) but because Nemirovsky wrote it in real time, as the events unfolded in front of her eyes. She originally intended this prose opus to contain five separate novella sections, but completed only two before being taken into custody by the Nazis because of her Russian-Jewish heritage (despite the fact that she had converted to Catholicism some years earlier.) Nemirovsky was sent to Auschwitz, where she died in 1942 at the age of 39. Years later, one of her daughters dissevered the work in a journal of her mother’s, and had it published.
I get inspired by many things, and this novel was one of them. It’s a small tribute to those who have endured great suffering and those who are suffering today, and I hope it brings a few moments of peace to whoever hears it.
Little Stone Church Lyrics
There’s a little stone church
In a little stone village far away
Had its ceiling blown off in a bombing
But it still feels holy
So I guess I can still pray here
And I think of the last time that I saw you
Through the window of that train
And you could smell something coming
You said this city’s going down
And it’s going down in flames, dear
And are we one more triumph of heroes
The stuff of the legends revived from these stones
Or one more
Story they’ll write down in novels
And sell on the shelves when we’re gone
Well, I don’t know.
And you might look older now
But that’s alright by me
These days I’m no daisy myself
It takes most of my strength just to breathe
And brave the air
Oh, but say one May morning
You’ll waltz down that lane
Laugh at the little Church, the two of us
And the pile of dust left
From all we became this year
And are we one more triumph of heroes
The stuff of the legends revived from these stones
Or one more
Story they’ll write down in novels
And sell on the shelves when we’re gone
Oh, one more classic
Brave and romantic
Sprung from the ashes
And etched on the sun
Or
One more tragedy
A publisher’s fantasy
They’ll break it pieces
And spell our names wrong
Well I don’t know
But there’s a little stone church
In a little stone village far away
And the war’s come and gone now
But the ceiling’s still missing
So I might as well stay.
Copyright 2009 by Jenna Paone
