Memory
Words by: Pam Nelson* | Music by: Tim Tompkins
Lyrics:
Memory, be no empty glass.
Hold, along with tears and laughter,
Children playing, summer grass,
Dusk and the moon thereafter.
Memory, build no way-less wall.
Leave some latchless gates ajar
Or chinks through which a child may crawl,
Chasing a ball or star.
Memory, through your every phase,
Flowing with water’s fluent ease,
Bring freely forth from other days
Their best to merge with these.
Inception:
This lyric is one of five journal entries that a co-worker, Pam Nelson*, offered me for setting to music. It was the spring of 1979, and I was writing songs feverishly while falling in love with Frances, another co-worker at The Skills Center sheltered workshop in Santa Cruz, California. We long ago lost touch with Pam, so she may never have heard the song, not with my original piano arrangement, nor with the expressive string quartet backing up Olgalydia Urbano, a woman with just the right voice and interpretation to bring the words to life. I hope Pam gets to hear it. She certainly earned the lyric credit. We will be grateful for any help with that from the world of interconnected people. (See photo of her below. [Tim]
Performance/Production Credits:
Olgalydia Urbano – voice – with the inspired Roy Malan String Quartet from University of California – Santa Cruz.
Recorded live on May 12, 2007, at Gordon Stevens’ Open Path Music Studio in San Jose, CA.
Masterfully engineered by Scott Sorkin for the right balance of bleed and isolation to yield both unity of the ensemble and “mixability.”
Mixed by Tim at the GallopAway Music studio in San Juan Bautista, CA, with a light touch of Melodyne software extending the Samplitude DAW.
Mastered by Joe Weed at his Highland Studios in Santa Cruz County, CA.
* Pam Nelson, journal-keeper and poet, showing a simple wooden model of a San Francisco cable car. Tim supervised the building of 100,000 units by about a dozen clients over a 2-1/2 year period at The Skills Center workshop in Santa Cruz, CA.
