On the song “Beauty Everywhere”
by Deborah Crooks
One of my earliest memories is of my dad, who was a war veteran, taking me to see the tulip gardens at Golden Gate Park. He grew up in San Francisco, and knew and loved both the park and the natural world in general, and fostered that same appreciation in me. I couldn’t believe the site! My jaw dropped, my eyebrows raised and I laughed in sheer joy. The sheer beauty of that field of riotous, red blooms — and the way I felt seeing them — made a deep and lasting impression on me. Throughout my life, especially during tough times, personal or global, I’ve made a practice of looking for such beauty.
When I wrote the song “Beauty Everywhere” more than four years ago, I was in need of some hope. I thought of my dad, who passed in 2001, and what he’d taught me, and began making lists of beautiful things I’d see each day — birds at the feeder, sidewalk chalk art or the view of the ocean — to remind me of the wonder of simply being. The list-making naturally led to writing “Beauty Everywhere” the song. Many of its lyrics are paraphrased from what my dad showed me as a child: to notice “all the world’s a miracle/ all the flowers coming up in bloom / all this life keeps going on / despite the strife and the gloom.”
The song became its own medicine for the moment, a self-made mantra of sorts.
I never really know what songs will persist. Like any medicine, a song might be needed only for a time, and sometimes just by the songwriter (for this reason, some songs don’t ever leave the house)! Songs either keep an audience or the singer interested past their inception, or they don’t. The best songs, of course, do both, transcending both the moment and the singer.
I’m finding that much like searching out beauty, whether pedestrian or show-stopping, is a practice that still sustains me, the impetus to sing “Beauty Everywhere” continues. I’m singing it more again this year, 2020, a time of challenge for so many. And other singers have taken interest in the song, some covering it at their own shows.
Beauty everywhere. May we always find it.
Lyrics:
you used to say all the world’s a miracle
all the flowers coming up in bloom
all this life keeps going on despite the strife and the gloom
beauty, beauty everywhere
I’m looking all the time
beauty beauty everywhere won’t you be mine?
remember the tulips under the old windmill
so much color for the eye
so much stillness in that thrill
the center I don’t won’t want to bid goodbye
beauty, beauty everywhere
I’m looking all the time
beauty beauty everywhere
won’t you be mine?
there’s the rub, there’s the rose there’s the bright sun glare
hummingbirds are flying make their flight a prayer
beauty, beauty everywhere
I’m looking all the time
beauty beauty everywhere
won’t you be mine?
beauty beauty everywhere
Words & music ©Deborah Crooks (ASCAP) Deborah Crooks, vocals Art Khu, guitars, keys Kwame Copeland, acoustic guitar Mike Stevens, drums Ben Bernstein, bass Produced and arranged by Art Khu. Recorded and mixed by Shawn Alpay at Tiny Telephone Oakland & SF. Mastered by Michael Romanowski at Coast Mastering, Berkeley, CA.
Bio
California writer and songwriter Deborah’s lyric-driven music draws on folk, rock, and Americana, as well as her studies of natural history and yoga. Her latest record, the 11-song collection The Department of the West was described as “imaginative, cinematic, informative and last but not least … entertaining.” Along with her solo work, the California native co-founded the band Bay Station and its “Love the Bay” Music & Sailing video series.
[http://facebook.com/deborahcrooks]