Don’t Go There Child

My mom was a concert-level pianist as a child but gave up practice for boys & fun in her teens. In her 50s she returned to the piano with a vengeance, taking endless music theory and composition classes determined to unleash her own creativity. She was convinced that if she just knew a little more she could write her own songs— but she never did. Not a single one.

At the beginning of Covid we moved our mom into assisted living. There in the dusty stacks of her life, I found a scrap of paper tucked in an old book of sheet music. Proof that she had tried to write a song. The lyrics were mostly sad, trite lines but a single phrase leapt up and seized my heart: Don’t go there child. One day, I knew, this would be a song. Her song. Our song. I tucked it away in a drawer till the time was right.

On a very blue Monday a year or so ago I pulled out that old scrap. An hour later Don’t Go There Child was written and composed. It was one of those songs that seemed to already exist. All I had to do was listen and transcribe it.

As many of you know, I’m not really a musician or a performer. Having only turned to music in my late 50s, I find myself living out a beautiful new vocation of writing and producing songs that—due to my own lack of technical ability— leads me to collaborate with all sorts of gifted artists. For this one I knew it would be my neighbor and dear friend of thirty years, Rachel Pollack.

She and I spent a good long while discussing how best to capture the intimacy of playing piano thru tears alone in the dark. How to resist the common pop-genre requirements of the big, booming, soaring chorus. How to keep it small and real and tender with just enough of a soundscape to lead to hope. When we were clear, we brought in Jonas Sorman to help us produce it.

On January 5th, the world will get to hear what came of that one tiny seed written by my mom so many decades ago. The release date is very intentional. January is the month when we’re all supposed to feel full of hope and big plans for the future but is, in fact, the time when more people feel depressed and suicidal than any other.

My prayer is that this song will help carry people thru many a long dark night knowing that “daylight’s coming.” Hold on. 

God plays the long game. Always.

This song is nothing if not proof of that.

Pax,
Heather (aka Sophia Streams)