The Buddhists consider the conscious act of letting go an essential part of a journey. It is the beginning of learning to live with yourself again — despite what happened, despite what was, despite everything. Our bags are packed with experiences both good and bad. Loss and grief, pain and hurt, happiness, and regret. Sometimes the greatest strength is in knowing when to let go and move on. There is beauty in the cycle of death and birth. Beginnings and endings. There is beauty in letting what is not working blow away. The song was written in room 214 of the Sugarloaf Key Lodge in the lower Keys Florida. It took about 10 minutes to write but I had been living with the feeling that sparked the song for a long time. On my way to perform at the very end of the highway in Key West, Florida, I was on the run from a few years filled with heartbreak and change. In my rearview, were a lot of miles of hard road. Long drives have a way of romanticizing one’s world. I felt the cosmic nudge that I needed to get something down. I checked into the room, believing I would wrestle with a song for a whole night. I walked out to the Gulf of Mexico and felt a profound feeling that it was time to let go of the past. The wind was blowing. There were metaphors everywhere. The song wrote itself. It just fell out. By sunset, I was in Key West feeling a lot lighter and ready to proceed.
The video for the song was created on the February 2023 “Vagabonds By Choice Tour” with dobroist Abbie Gardner that traveled through Florida. It was intended to tell the song’s story using the locations and overall feel of where Letting You Blow Away was written. It also acts as a travelogue of the trip itself as Abbie and I made our way from shows in Key West to stops in Key Largo, Sarasota, St Augustine, Tampa Bay, and Ft Myers.
lyrics
Standing on the edge of a turquoise sea
thinking of you and searching for me.
Untying the lines and casting off winter’s ghosts
and letting you blow away.
Wild bird lands on low wire
the day is done, the sky on fire
I‘ve got one hand holding tightly onto mangrove root
the other is letting you blow away.
The rush of the wings of the low flying loon
The Harbor lights, the yellow moon
I carried you closely down every wild road I’ve run
but now I’m letting you blow away.
I’m letting you blow away
from the deepest places and across the bay
over Gulf and the into distant forming storm
I’m letting you blow away
Staring out across the western sky
it is clear there are things that I can longer deny
so I’m giving up what was never mine and letting you blow away
As much as I will always love you
As much as I will always care
I can no longer hold you in these strengthening winds
so, I’m letting you blow away
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