As animals, we're good about finding food. As we tire, we're adept at finding warm and dry places to lie down and sleep for a while. Some animals can even do it right in the middle of the sidewalk, amongst the bustle of the big city. With a little help, as animals, we can find how to get places. We can sniff out dangers or find trouble -- the kind that gets fantasized about and drooled over. We can survive, mostly, with nothing but our wits, if we're lucky.
Even with all of these abilities and ways to get by, there remains an unruly insistence on finding and harboring meaningful companionship. There remains a need to find a home in someone else, as if that person started as a concrete foundation, was then framed up, insulated, topped with a roof, shingles and a chimney and then walled in, carpeted and furnished so that it met all of our silly requirements.
The new songs that Dawn Landes plays here and with which she created her wonderful new album, "Bluebird," bring to mind what people do when the challenges to companionship and our happiness bend us. They wear us down and we're left with a very unpleasant dramatic turn to navigate. We must rediscover what it means to be alone, what it feels like to have a different place in the world -- to be without our old and familiar home to return to.