My friends have asked me to share the stories behind some of my songs, and amazingly, a theme has emerged – celestial objects. I certainly have days when I am feeling low and defeated, but eventually, I always find myself looking up. Quite literally looking up to the sky for inspiration and hope.
I have long held the belief that unconditional love is the ultimate Divine gift and, alas, I am lousy at both giving and receiving it. Agape seems such an impossible thing to this fragile, human soul.
But if I look to nature – and physics – light is perhaps the equivalent. Light, like unconditional love, comes from a source that seems so far away, so mysterious, and it falls upon whatever/whomever is in its path. Light, like unconditional love, does not care one bit whether one is worthy or not of its brilliance. It simply shines.
I mean, light travels through eons and across the universe and that journey comes to us, and even through us, continuing beyond. We can hide in the shadows, but it is by our own hand that we choose not to receive that love, that light.
It’s funny, I almost always remember where I was and what I was feeling when I write a song. Often, I am considering light and what I can learn from it.
Between the Stars
Sometimes I have voices in my head. They tell me things I could never have imagined – they create music that I could never have written on my own.
Ava stepped into my head and heart in 2018 and for the next three years shared her life as a musician touring the Milky Way 30,000 years from now. And she shared her music, which became the album/space opera She Walks the Stars, released in 2021.
Before I even knew who or what Ava was, I received the first verses at a summer festival in 2017, scritched them down in a random notebook, wondered what the heck I had just written, and then lost the notebook for almost a year. That notebook resurfaced as Ava emerged into my consciousness, and I finished Between the Stars, writing a guitar part that I couldn’t play for months. ‘Twas completely worth the wait and the practice.
Here we find Ava in stasis during intergalactic travel – but far more aware than she should be – as she travels between the stars. An interstellar lullaby, if you will.
Shadows dance and draw you close
You leave behind everything you know
To find all the room that you need to grow
In the space in between the stars …
Quiet out here between all the light
Sleep between suns in this eternal flight
And the promise of love lost to the night
In the space in between the starsExcerpt of lyrics from “Between the Stars” by Mama Gina
That’s Not the Moon
Perhaps my most down-to-earth song that mentions a celestial object, That’s Not the Moon began at the end of an exhausting, but wonderfully full day at festival. I stepped into my assigned cabin, unrolled my giant sleeping bag, fluffed my pillow, and crawled onto the bunk without even checking for spiders. (If you know me …)
No sooner had my head hit that pillow, I realized that the moon was shining directly into my eyes through the window beside my bed. I was too tired to get up and close the shutters, and I lay there thinking, “It’s the moon … it will move in a bit.”
Twenty minutes later, that moon had not moved at all – it was so bright and so full! But, but, it wasn’t the right time for a full moon. I got up, opened the cabin door and stared out at a huge outdoor light shining harshly through the trees.
And, of course, now I was awake. So, I pulled my guitar out of the case, grabbed a notebook, and wrote the first line, “There’s a light in my window that shines like the moon, but that’s not the moon.” Like so many songs from the album Firewood & Rust, all the sorrow and feelings of abandonment and betrayal – all of my broken heart bled onto the page. I finally understood THAT love was never really love, and THAT moon was just an illusion.
There’s a light in my window that shines like the moon
But that’s not the moon …
That’s not the light I remember – the light that I know
The light that shines under your skin
Not the feelin’ I felt when I didn’t know
Where you ended and where I begin …
What does it say when your world fades away
And everything that you do
Looks like your love, but it ain’t
And that’s not the moon – That’s not the moonExcerpt of lyrics from “That’s Not the Moon” by Mama Gina
Due North
It was late October 2015 at Florida Pagan Gathering’s Samhain Festival. I was spending a lazy morning visiting with folks and playing guitar at my campsite. I had checked the news one last time, planning to put my phone away for the rest of the weekend. The top headline described a regulated hunt, sanctioned by the state of Florida – a black bear harvest – that had netted the state over $300,000 dollars in hunting license fees. The “harvest” aimed to reduce Florida’s black bear population of around 3,500 by about 10%. The hunt that was scheduled to last two weeks was shut down in two days because 298 bears had already been slaughtered. And public outcry finally reached its peak.
I felt like I had been punched in the gut. Two hundred ninety-eight Florida black bears … dead … in 2 days. And we might never know the number of those who later died of wounds. How many cubs were left to fend without their mothers? I found nothing responsible or rational about this slaughter.
I was angry. Reaching for my guitar, angry chords and angrier words spilled into my little campsite.
What emerged was the story from the view of the Bear archetype, in Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, who danced with the Warrior. They served each other well until the bear became nothing more than a trophy to those who forgot how to look to the sky.
Due North by Mama Gina, (c) 2016 on the compilation The Green Album
You traced my shape upon your stars
Wrote my name in your sky
Pointed me due North
So you could find your way on the darkest night
You honored me – Begged me shelter
Stretched me like canvas – Wore me like cloak
To your Warrior’s art, I played my part
And I fell in the dance to his spear in one strokeYour children – my cubs
We lived with each other and that was enough
Took what we needed – But we never took more
Until your lights burned brighter
Than the stars in your sky
And now due North’s forgotten
And now there is slaughter … and now there is war
A war I have no heart to wage
It seems you have no heart at all
And so, due North, your compass fades
And I am just some trophy for your wallHonor lost, collecting dust
A relic tossed aside – have you no soul?
The wounded – the abandoned cubs
And no one counts the stars that fall
Your children – my cubs
We lived with each other and that was enough
Took what we needed – But we never took more
Until your lights burned brighter
Than the stars in your sky
And now due North’s forgotten
And now there is slaughter … and now I’m no more
Just some stars in your sky … pointing due North
I’m just some stars in your skyLyrics from “Due North” by Mama Gina
The Green Album Connection
Due North first appeared May 2016 on The Green Album, a musical compilation created by a consortium of like-minded Muses, Musicians and Songbirds from all over uniting as a global Tribe to raise awareness, celebrate and give something back to Mother Earth, with proceeds donated to The Rainforest Trust.
Look To The Sky
We are all made of star stuff. We are light. We are love. How can we do anything less than SHINE? Remember that, and look to the sky.
For more information about Mama Gina, including her collected articles here on Pagan Song, her bio, and links to Gina’s sites on the web, check out Gina’s page on Pagan Song.
Featured image: Hubble Unveils a Glittering View of Sh2-284, Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Andersen (European Southern Observatory – Germany); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
For more Pagan Song posts about the stories behind the songs from your favorite Pagan musicians, click here! For more on the cosmic connection, you might also be interested in Marilyn Krowommn’s stellar posts Mystery, Magic and the Cosmos and Gazing Into the Mystery.
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