Look Up from your Phone!

I’m working on my first solo album. It’s so exciting to be able to say that! I hope to have it completed this winter. It’ll be titled Out of the Nest. I’ve spent 30 years singing with the band Crow Women, and that has been (and still is) a comfy nest. But now I’m flying out on my own, a fledgling exploring new skies. I have dozens of new songs to share. This post will feature one of my favorites: Look Up From Your Phone.

Like a lot of my new solo material, I wrote Look Up during that first year of the pandemic. I joined a songwriter’s group called Soulwriters, at the invitation of a musician friend, S.J. Tucker. Every week we would get a “prompt” and we were challenged to write a song in response to it. Here the prompt that appeared in my email inbox on Monday, July 20, 2020:

Song Prompt #1 ~ Theme Prompt: Lots of us do or have had random acts of kindness happen in our lives. Write about a random act of kindness, perhaps it’s something you’ve never shared. (Random acts of kindness can range from opening the door for someone to calling someone to check on them, or perhaps something on a grander scale)

I had until Sunday night to compose the song, make a simple recording, and upload it to the group. I did that. (I did that every week for a year! That’s why I have so much new material, pleading with me to be included in my solo act.)

The lyrics for Look Up came very easily. I immediately thought of a story my friend Sylvia told me. She’d been in the checkout line at the grocery store. In front of her in line was a young mother holding a baby who was having a total meltdown, kicking and screaming. The mom looked embarrased and overwhelmed. Having been in that situation herself, Sylvia could empathize. She leaned over to the mother and said, “You’re doing a great job. You’re a good mother. Hang in there.” And with that act of kindness, she changed that situation from one of desperation to one of compassion. It was an act of kindness.

The first verse of Look Up comes from that story:

That woman with the crying baby
Feels bad about it already
With a word of encouragement
you give her flagging spirits nourishment

The chorus appeared effortlessly. Why are acts of kindness more rare these days? Because everyone is glued to their phones! I know I’m guilty, too. But it came to me that if we could just get our faces out of our phones more of the time, we’d notice other people and could connect with the people around us, instead of cellphone screens. The chorus goes:

Look up from your phone
Look up everyone
Get out of your own head
Think of others instead

The next verse mirrors my pandemic experience. I was single and living alone. To fight the isolation, I wrote a lot of letters. I reached out to about 50 of my family and friends. Some didn’t write back. Some wrote back and forth with me a few times that year. But there were about a dozen people that settled into a lively correspondence with me. I chatted on the phone a lot, too. Those connections were acts of kindness flowing out and back, keeping us sane during those months of shutdown.

Someone feeling alone
You could call them on the phone
Or sent a hand-written letter
Connection makes us all feel better

There are also two bridges in the song. A bridge is a section that takes a different perspective from that of the verses and choruses. Like this one, a bridge often has a different rhyming structure and number of lines compared to the verses. This bridge steps back and comments on the song topic:

Acts of kindness are like ripples in a pond
Toss your pebble in, pass compassion along
You don’t know when you’ll save someone

It’s true isn’t it? Hasn’t someone’s act of kindness saved you in a moment of despair, at some point in your life? The other person might not even remember it. But you remember. Because it mattered.

There’s another verse that came a little later. I like having three verses in a song, so I cast around for another way I like to choose kindness. Parking! So many people get so aggressive about finding the parking spot that’s as close to where they’re going as possible. The nonsensical thing about this is that some of the same people strive to get their 10,000 steps in a day, perhaps jealously guaring their exercise time. Why not combine exercise and kindness?

In the parking lot, show grace
Leave others the close-in space
You’ll walk across the parking lot
If you could use the exercise, why not?

One barrier to being a force of kindness in this world is the fear of being taken advantage of. I gotta admit, that’s one of my personal buttons, so I can relate to this. But isn’t it better all around to live in an expansive, generous emotional space, rather than a tight, defensive space? As a pagan, I’m guided by the law of three. What I send out, comes back to me amplified three times. That’s true of negative energy and of postitive energy, too. Your vibe attracts your tribe. This became the second bridge:

Sure, it’s true, people should be kind to you
But all you control is what you yourself do
Trust the law of three to bring that energy back to you

I like playing Look Up From Your Phone. It’s always in my concert set list. It makes me feel good to sing it, and it reminds me of what I believe. Maybe the message reaches someone in the audience who needs to hear it. Here’s a video of me singing the song at a gig in Mexico:

Look Up will definitely be on my upcoming first solo album. I have a demo track done. You can hear it over on my Patreon feed–it was the Song of the Month for July, 2024. My Patreon feed is the very best place to follow the progress of my journey out of the nest. Come fly by my side!

For more information about Alane Brown (as a solo artist), including her collected articles here on Pagan Song, her bio, and links to sites on the web, check out Alane’s author page here on Pagan Song.

header photo of people with cell phones by ROBIN WORRALL