Listen up.

…the Rivers are our Brothers is a song cycle on ecological responsibility told from the point of view of the land. Written by Majel Connery and performed by Connery in collaboration with Edwin Huizinga and Ben Matus, the songs in the cycle take a first-person view of nature, ascribing human qualities and feelings to elements of the landscape: water, trees, mountains, rivers, and clouds

Artwork by: Joe Baker

I Am the Air

I am a mountain, I am Father Time. 
I am a memory, a reminder, of the old things. I am a monument.
I never forget. 
I am a sculpture of a former life. 
Secretly, I’m not tall, I’m small. 
The exposure makes me shy. 
Failure’s not an option, I cannot take it back. I’m naked at the summit, I’m lost in the avalanche. You can use me, you can climb me. 
I will lift you up, I’m not like the rest. 
I’m the voice that supports you, 
The voice that affirms you. 
I will never contradict you,  
I say yes. 
Talk to me. Talk to me.
You can laugh at the world, and I’ll laugh back. Climb me. You can climb me. 
We can sing together, or apart. 
Higher than the wind can wind,
Darker than the storm that blacks the sky, 
Sweeter than the water flowing down me, 
The oldest metaphor we know. 
I am listening. What do you need? 
You lack the journey. I will oblige. 
A mountain to conquer,  
A memory to make. 
Simpler, much simpler than you think. 
To climb is easier. To think is to wait. 

I start life as a vapor.  
My heart is made of sand. 
My pattern is impossible. 
I’m a diagram, one hundred hands. 
I live among the dancers. 
We fall but we don’t die. 
Together we’re destructive, 
Intensifying white. 
Total noise, and total silence. 
We drown the light, we drown the life! 
A crystal. A diamond in the sky. 
I am a wonder. I am the music of a silent world.

I am a wanderer, I only travel lightly. 
I’m never in the same place as I was the day before. I live with my brothers, the stones beneath your feet. Never sedentary, we breathe the air you breath. I’m from very far away. 
No space, no sight, no sound. 
The loneliest of lonely things,  
I have to form the ground. 
My body is a tempest, my stomach is the sea. I laugh at all the glaciers, you cannot fathom me. I am metamorphosis, the first and the last! 
I was here before you, I’ll be here till the end. I am liquid fire, I’m a million years. 
I part the waves, and shake the ground, 
I cause the land to quake. 
The heat of the earth is my mother, 
She lives under the sea. 
She keeps me warm. 

I eat the sun, I drink the light. 
I am a conjurer. My sugar is self-sacrifice. 
I cut my arm to feed my leg. 
I am waiting for nothing, needing for nothing. I am an army, I am the mother of them all, 
I can regenerate. 
I clone a nation from my foot. 
I am a country of one. 
I am a family; I am a household.
I have skin and I can bruise and I can bleed, and I can cry. I make my friends. We are connected.  
We are inseparable. We grow intertwined. 
We share the sky, we are agreed. 
I can give, and I can care for. 
I’ve got other mouths to feed. 
They need me. 
I am a tree. I know secrets that you will never know. I channel lighting. I see in color.  
I make the air you need to grow. 
I’m not a man, I’m not a woman. 
Surprisingly I’m both. 
And when I know that I must die  
I put the best of me back into the ground. 
I stretch for miles and miles and miles. 
And let’s not forget my leaves: 
Clouds of green. 

It’s been my goal as a fish 
For so long I’ve waited to be full 
I’ve waited to carry you, all of you. 
Now that I’m full I regret my decision 
I thought I could handle it but I’m so full I’m so full of eggs, it’s too much for me. I only know I’m a fish and I’m proud, 
I’m a fish and I’m loud! 
I was carrying so many little fish, 
But a wave came over me … 

I am a river. I am a world.  
I am the distance, I am a system, I am the source. I start my life in the ice. 
With a little warmth, and a little sun,
I will travel miles. 
I am a danger, I’m raging. 
I am refreshment, I am a rush. 
I am a sculptor, I am persuasion, 
And I run. And I run! 
I am a river, I am a mother. 
I give an arm, a foot, a tooth, a tongue. I give a rib, a mouth, a hand, a lung! 
When the time is right,  
A sharp edge becomes skin-smooth. 
When the time is right,  
I change my body. I rise, and I rise!