The Water Is Wide

In the days following Hurricane Katrina, I've picked up my guitar a few times and noodled with song ideas. Several ideas have come to me but been discarded. There is no shortage of subject matter to write about related to Katrina, from the wrenching human toll to the sudden migration to the bureaucratic incompetence to nature itself.

Like the onslaught of water, the images and words have come relentlessly, a torrent of "what nows" and "if onlys". There is so much to be done and so much to be said, yet I find myself mute in front of the television set, overwhelmed by the losses, not only of whole lives but of all the parts-of-lives, the parts that seem so hard to live without: the houses, the pets, the jobs.

After the initial shock of the event came the rapid rush of understanding of what Katrina means. Thousands of people are now permanently displaced, and their experience will ripple through the generations, as will the echoes of unheeded cries for help in a country where peace and security was thought to be a birthright.

Hundreds of songs will come from this. The best ones, I believe, will come from the people who lived through this disaster and still have strength to sing.

Instead of writing a new song of my own, I have been drawn to an old song that has been sung by many. I find myself singing the traditional folk song "The Water Is Wide" ("...I can't cross o'er. Nor do I have strong wings to fly...Give me a boat that will carry two...and I will sail, my love and I...") Today, that lyric seems to describe the gulf between what New Orleaneans expected from their country and what they received, between what was promised and what was delivered.

That water remains high today, between the shores of dream and reality, fiction and truth.