Story Behind The Song

Since childhood my life has evolved in the midst of several cultures: first the Colombian and German, then the Costa Rican, and finally the North American. I am Latin American, but I also belong to Europe and North America. With this song and the next (?Se fue mi bien?), I attempt to express in musical language the worlds which have shaped me to one degree or another. Here I sing an old love poem in English to a rhythm inspired by the pasaje. The pasaje is a rhythm from the Colombian & Venezuelan Llanos or plains, where I was raised.

Song Description

Love song.

Lyrics

Sandstone Ocean
(Karin Stein, 1993)

The unfinished song of a sandstone ocean:
Will we ever sing it to the end?
Will we dance to it spinning or sail with it slowly
Over the waters of romance and folly?

My unfinished song had a sweet beginning,
It is now bitter-sweetness suspended in air.
Two fools almost went their own separate ways,
Instead we have our own foolish pair.

Soaking and sinking and drowning and steeping
And steaming and howling in a pool,
A tide pool or whirlpool: full of what?
Spinning so slowly around and around
Or under, in dream-like reality,
Bumping heads and hearts: feeling what?

I hear you calling, I follow you falling,
Falling for you and the wisdom is gone.
Caution and wisdom: meaning what?
A two-step turns four-step, my soul learns to fly as
The dance carries us with the ocean tide
Down, out, and under: in search of what?

Play an unfinished song for the spark that warms us,
Joy and sadness walking hand in hand.
Loving frameworks bring peace, racing comets bring passion,
The beauty in both is what we have in the end.

The unfinished song of a sandstone ocean
Will we ever sing it to the end?
Will we dance to it, spinning or sail with it slowly
Over the waters of romance and folly?

Hear the unfinished song of a sandstone ocean
Filled with sounds of memories that sing.
Will a dance turn us swinging, a ship take us gliding
Over that ocean and off with the wind?