Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
A long way from home, a long way from home.
Sometimes I feel like I’m almost done,
Sometimes I feel like I’m almost done,
Sometimes I feel like I’m almost done,
And a long, long way from home, a long way from home.
True believer,
True believer,
A long, long way from home,
A long, long way from home.
…
I was broken from a young age
Taking my sulking to the masses
Writing my poems for the few
That look at me, took to me, shook to me, feeling me
Singing from heartache from the pain
Taking my message from the veins
Speaking my lesson from the brain
Seeing the beauty through the…Pain!
You made me a, you made me a believer, believer
Pain!
You break me down and build me up, believer, believer
Pain!
Oh, let the bullets fly, oh, let them rain
My life, my love, my drive, it came from…
Pain!
You made me a, you made me a believer, believer…
Beiliver – Imagine Dragons
Favorite covers of the Motherless Child:
Odetta: https://open.spotify.com/track/2K309W3VUCbMaW4RcpyNez?si=3ed4bead57074fef
Released: October 1960 (First recorded: April 8, 1960)
Album: Odetta at Carnegie HallMichael Kiwanuka: https://open.spotify.com/track/19g75Yi2dfeSBKc7BNneRN?si=864b864ff9444054
Released: April 7, 2017
Album: Resistance Radio - The Man in the High Castle AlbumRomare: https://open.spotify.com/track/0y3z37R490UEdkyCdFmFDm?si=9286bdc373e4493e
Released: February 23, 2015
Album: ProjectionsBoney M.: https://open.spotify.com/track/75GxVvt8GFCY6msfcWPL7l?si=d8b4ec943ad94b85
Released: May 2, 1977
Album: Love for SaleJazmine Sullivan: https://open.spotify.com/track/0ZbsKlIZ1LBXEmCJOaO3pO?si=f9f555e1488847d1
Released: June 24, 2022.
Album: "Elvis"Jimmy Scott, Arif Mardin, Lewis Hahn: https://open.spotify.com/track/7K2KpvkQhrNaJnseqFJzYg?si=86ea73b6001042f2
The Fabulous Songs of Jimmy Scott
Album
1960If I were to write anything about motherless-ness I might never stop writting. It is not so much about a factual thing than about a feeling. Maybe what I would say is that when the being in me reached out to find a mother in the world, she felt nothing but silence and darkness. Fishing in the deepest, darkest, most endless pond that ever was, she threw her line further and further. Afterall, one has to be attached to something of this life to be something of this life.
I’m not entirely sure if the line ever caught on to anything tangible, or if the tangible connection was ever a lasting one, I don’t know if there is anything lasting.
How long can you long for something before the subject is forgotten and all that is left is the longing?
How much longing before you don’t remember what it felt like to not be?
Like I said, it will never end! Quite literally the juice of much of my thinking flows from the space of motherlessness!