Elsie

A new song

“Midnight Cranes” by Nicole Kurland, whose art exhibition opens at FUSION 708 on October 3

My mom tells a story that when she first met my dad, he had a picture of a black woman hanging up in his house and she asked him who she was. “That’s my mom,” he said. He looked a little too pale for this to be true, but said it so matter-of-factly that she didn’t inquire further. Elsie Cobb, she later learned, was a hired housekeeper for a family of seven raucous boys and one sweet girl in Alexandria, Louisiana. My dad says he didn’t remember his family having much money, which tells you how little Elsie was likely paid for her work - work that was so profound in its impact on my dad that he still talks about her regularly to this day.

All my life I’ve heard stories about Elsie - about her kindness, about her sense of humor, about how much she did to shape my dad into who he is. These stories exist against the backdrop of the American South in the 1960s; against the legacy of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the emerging Civil Rights movement. The sweep of history lived inside a boy’s relationship with the woman who raised him, without his knowledge of its presence.

I wish I had a chance to meet Elsie. I wrote this song to honor her. I’ve come to think of a soul as the pieces of ourselves that live on in others after we have passed. Part of Elsie’s goodness lives in me because my dad passed it on to me and I pass it on to those I love through this song.

I’ll be donating any sales of the song on Bandcamp to the NAACP Louisiana State Conference. Listen on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you get your music.

Elsie

Your worn black hands fold cotton white sheets
Braiding Jocelyn’s hair while the boys play in the street
Just blocks away from that old plantation
A throbbing wound on this callous nation

Elsie you’re an angel
This world did not deserve you
And you did not deserve this world

Into this sad southern gothic you only brought your love
Like your last dollar folded into the shape of a dove
You raised my father like he was your own
You aren’t in his blood, no, you are in his bones

Elsie you’re an angel
This world did not deserve you
And you deserved so much better than this world

Last night I dreamt you resting near a window by the street
In a bed made of my bones where I came to kiss your feet
Singing “this ain’t for absolution, I’m just trying to make sense
Of whatever good in me came at your expense”

Elsie I am grateful
That’s all that I can be
You deserved so much better than this world

Thanks to my friends who brought this song to life and treated it with respect and care.

Recorded, Mixed, and Mastered by Roman Garcia at Sol Sound Lab
Performances (in alphabetical order by last name):
Colin Baillio (vocals, acoustic guitar, piano, glockenspiel)
Ken Broyles (drums, triangle, shaker, washboard, piano bench)
Dustin Harvey (banjo, hand drums)
Muni Kulasinghe (violin)
Alex McMahon (pedal steel, baritone guitar, synth)
Tanya Nunez (upright bass)
Meredith Wilder (vocals)

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