Words for the Music 003: IRIS DeMENT

IRIS DeMENT

c 2005

EASY'S GETTIN' HARDER EVERY DAY
IRIS DeMENT
from the 1994 Warner Bros LP  

My Life

EASY'S GETTIN' HARDER EVERY DAY

Standin' barefoot on a cold wood floor

Lookin' out the window of my back door

If it keeps on rainin' I think the whole damn 

   house is gonna float away

The alarm was buzzin' at the break of dawn

My husband's askin' "Is the coffee on?"

And easy's gettin' harder every day

I'll drop the baby off at school at nine

And bust the lights to get to work on time

Where I'll be starin' at the clock

Just waitin' to knock off another day

When supper's done we'll watch some TV show

Of a bunch of folks who've never heard of Idaho

Where easy's gettin' harder every day

I had a garden but my flowers died

There ain't much livin' here inside

Lately I don't know what I'm holdin' on to

Wished I could run away to Coeur d'Alene

Take nothin' with me, not even my name

'Cause easy's gettin' harder every day 

We make love and then we kiss good night 

He rolls over and he's out like a light

But I ain't mad about it, we got nothin' to talk

   about anyway

The lights are blinkin' on the radio tower

And I lie awake and stare at them for hours and hours

'Cause easy's gettin' harder every day

I had a garden but my flowers died

There ain't much livin' here inside

Lately I don't know what I'm holdin' on to

I'll never make it up to Coeur d'Alene

There ain't no chance of me forgettin' my name

And easy's gettin' harder every day

And it feels like easy just keeps on gettin' harder every day

Words and Music by  

Iris DeMent

© 1993 Songs of Iris ASCAP

The following biography by JASON ANKENY is taken from the AllMusic website.  [It is re-posted here for recommendation purposes only and, like the material quoted above, remains its author's exclusive copyright-protected intellectual property.]

One of the most celebrated country-folk performers of her day, singer/songwriter Iris Dement was born on January 5, 1961, in rural Paragould, Arkansas, the youngest of 14 children. At the age of three, her devoutly religious family moved to California, where she grew up singing gospel music; during her teenaged years, however, she was first exposed to country, folk, and R&B, drawing influence from Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and Joni Mitchell. Upon graduating high school, she relocated to Kansas City to attend college.

After a series of jobs waitressing and typing, DeMent first began composing songs at the age of 25. Honing her skills at open-mike nights, she moved to Nashville in 1988, where she contacted producer Jim Rooney, who helped her land a record contract. DeMent did not make her recording debut until 1992, when her independent label offering, Infamous Angel, won almost universal acclaim thanks to her pure, evocative vocal style and spare, heartfelt songcraft. Despite a complete lack of support from country radio, the record's word-of-mouth praise earned her a deal with Warner Bros., which reissued Infamous Angel in 1993 as well as its follow-up, 1994's stunning My Life.

Her third LP, 1996's eclectic The Way I Should, marked a dramatic change not only in its more rock-influenced sound but also in its subject matter; where DeMent's prior work was introspective and deeply personal, The Way I Should was fiercely political, tackling topics like sexual abuse, religion, government policy, and Vietnam. In 1999, she collaborated with countryman John Prine on his album In Spite of Ourselves. DeMent recorded four duets with Prine that earned her a Grammy nod the following year. Her own recording career was on hiatus in the late '90s and early 2000s, but she returned in 2005 with Lifeline, a collection of gospel hymns. Released in 2012, Sing the Delta, her first album of original songs in 16 years, found her working again within the sparse and emotional quilt of her earlier releases. DeMent returned three years later with 2015's The Trackless Woods, a collection of poems by 20th century Russian poet Anna Akhmatova adapted to music.

 

Use the link below to visit the website of North American singer/songwriter IRIS DeMENT:

 

http://irisdement.com/home/

 

Special thanks to everyone who takes the time to upload music to YouTube.  Your efforts are appreciated by music lovers everywhere.
 
 

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The Write Advice 073: NADIA WHEATLEY

It is not uncommon for family and friends of authors to feel a mixture of pain and violation when they find pieces of their character or aspects of their experience turning up in a novel.  This is particularly the case, of course, with authors who work in the genre of realism, and especially with those who are themselves recognisable as characters in their texts.  When people take exception to what they perceive as transgressive fictional portraits, it is not necessarily the 'bad' or 'obvious' things that they mind.  The author may inadvertently make public some apparently trivial thing which the character's model felt to be intimate or private or domestic.  At the same time, the author may firmly believe that she or he has 'made up' the character, or has developed it as a composite, and may even be aware of what has been borrowed or used… While all of that can be difficult, it goes with the territory of being in a relationship –– whether as friend or spouse –– with that sort of writer.

The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift (2001)


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http://nadiawheatley.com/

 

 

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Think About It 006: MARCUS AURELIUS

Either you go on living in the world and are familiar with it by now, or you go out, and that by your own will, or else you die and your service is accomplished.  There is nothing beside these three: therefore be of good courage.

Meditations (c. 170 CE) 

[Translated by ASL FARQUHARSON 1944]



 

Use the link below to read more about the life and work of Roman Emperor (from 161 to 180 CE) and Stoic philosopher MARCUS AURELIUS.  (He was portrayed by RICHARD HARRIS in the 2000 film Gladiator with JOAQUIN PHOENIX playing the role of his son and successor Commodus.)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius

 

 

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The Write Advice 072: BADRYAH AL-BISHR

As a writer, I need space to work, so that I can write without [feeling trapped in a] constant state of struggle and conflict.  If I'm not being clear, I want my sentence to be for me, mine, and not simply a sentence responding to the comment of another.  When I was writing articles for Arshaq Al Aswat, I found myself always being [in a state of] reaction, and not action.  I believe a successful person is someone who does and doesn't simply react.  I think an intellectual shouldn't spend all his time debating others.

Saudi Writer Badryah al-Bishr: Be the Action, Not the Reaction [23 March 2015]


 

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Poet of the Month 032: JENNIFER DENROW

JENNIFER DENROW
2011

 

 

HOW THE MIND WORKS STILL TO BE SURE

 

You were the white field when you handed me a blank
sheet of paper and said you'd worked so hard
all day and this was the best field you could manage.
And when I didn't understand, you turned it over
and showed me how the field had bled through,
and then you took out your notebook and said how each
time you attempted to make something else, it turned out
to be the same field. You worried that everyone
you knew was becoming the field and you couldn't help
them because you were the one making them into fields
in the first place. It's not what you meant to happen.
You handed me a box of notebooks and left. I hung the field
all over the house. Now, when people come over, they think
they're lost and I tell them they're not. They say they're
beginning to feel like the field and it's hard because they know
they shouldn't but they do and then they start to grow whiter
and whiter and then they disappear. With everyone turning
into fields, it's hard to know anything. With everyone turning
into fields, it's hard to be abstract. And since I'm mostly alone,
I just keep running my hand over my field, waiting.

 

From the collection  

 

California

 

 © Four Way Books, 2011

 

 

The following biographical statement appears on the Better Magazine website.  [It is re-posted here for information purposes only and, like the poem re-posted above, remains its author's exclusive copyright-protected intellectual property.]

 

Jennifer Denrow received a PhD in Poetry from the University of Denver. She is the author of the poetry collection California (2011) and the chapbooks A Knee for Life (2010) and From California, On (2010). She currently resides in Colorado, where she writes and teaches.

   

 

 

 

Use the link below to read another poem by North American poet JENNIFER DENROW:

 

 

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/untitled-more-i-go-harder-it-becomes-return

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Last updated 13 April 2021  

 

 

The Write Advice 071: TONI MORRISON

No, I'm angry all the time.  Almost all the time, which is why I write books.  That's where I control things, that's where I think freely about things, without regard to the fashion or whatever else is going on, or who's planning to kill whom and whether we should all have guns or nobody should have guns.  All these things prey on you, and I got a little disturbed years ago with some business, political, cultural, I don't know what, but I was very depressed.  It was awful, so right wing, the country.  And I found myself not working, not writing, and my friend Peter Sellars [the opera director] calls me up usually every Christmas, and this time he called me and said, 'Merry Christmas, how are you?'  And I said, 'I feel awful, I really can't write,' and went on, complaining, and he started shouting, 'No, no, no!'  He said, 'Toni, this is when artists go to work!  Not when things are wonderful and calm.  This is the time!'  And I suddenly stopped whining, and I thought about writers in prison, in camps, in the gulag, a history of people who under the world's worst circumstances, write. This was about 20 years ago, but I now understand it better because it works for me.  I can think through my novels, I can react, I can invent, I can create, I can be free.  It's my space, and I am in control. 
   

Goodreads, May 2015


 

Use the link below to read the full interview with North American novelist, editor, professor and political activist TONI MORRISON:

 

https://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/1029.Toni_Morrison

 

 

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Think About It 005: SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

What should a society be, so that in his last years a man might still be a man?
      The answer is simple:  he would always have to be treated as a man.  By the fate that it allots to its members who can no longer work, society gives itself away; it has always looked upon them as so much material.  Society confesses that as far as it is concerned, profit is the only thing that counts, and that its 'humanism' is mere window-dressing; Society turns away from the aged worker as though he belonged to another species.  That is why the whole question [of ageing and retirement] is buried in a conspiracy of silence.
  
Society cares about the individual only in so far as he is profitable.  The young know this.  Their anxiety as they enter in upon social life matches the anguish of the old as they are excluded from it.
  
La Vieillesse [The Coming of Age] (1970) 



 

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https://www.iep.utm.edu/beauvoir/

 

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