Deepen the Well

Song story & origins

Introduction

Deepen the Well comes from The Long View (2012). I built it as a four-season circle after facilitating a Center for Courage & Renewal seasonal retreat series in the Black Hills: we met in fall, winter, spring, and summer, and I used my personal journal from those gatherings—not facilitation notes—as raw material. Later I remastered the track for a 20-song compilation I was assembling (Being Human: The Songs, 2020), a companion to the earlier Being Human: Instrumentals and its reflective journal. The piece is also a small lesson I keep relearning about art and ego: how quiet and stillness help me listen beneath the urge to perform.

Where it came from

Those retreats invite people to attend to what the season is saying—seeds buried; winter’s apparent deadness with life waiting under snow; mud and greening; full bloom. In my journal I tried to write honestly, not as a poet performing for an audience. That meant wrestling with ego (the fall stanza’s “poems I could not keep”) and choosing silence over cleverness: “my strong root is when the quiet reveals my voice.” Winter’s verse refuses to run for cover; it stays with the cold long enough to uncover what’s been hidden and to listen until even the air seems to shimmer with wisdom. In spring we quite literally had horses near the retreat center—rolling in mud, frolicking, sunning their bellies—and I wrote myself, playfully, into that Mustang body. Summer carries two images that shaped the refrain: a field of camas lilies (a poem we read asked whether their usefulness makes them lovelier, then insists on beauty for its own sake) and the reminder from scripture that Solomon’s glory can’t match a lily. From there the song answers the opening question—how deep must I dig?—with trust: there’s no fence on the edge of what it means to live; deeper brings more life.

Music and arrangement

Hearing it back years later, I smiled at how many voices I managed to braid without losing the through-line. The track opens with banjo, then brings in mandolin and a heavy, deep bass; as it grows you’ll hear strings, acoustic guitar, a later-entry electric guitar, and wooden flute. That instrumental break after the spring verse is deliberately joyous—a burst that matches the season’s energy before the song settles into summer’s long light.

What the song is saying

Go down instead of out. In art, in reflection, in relationship, depth—not spectacle—tends to be where the water is. Sometimes that means not sheltering from hard seasons, sometimes it means rolling in the mud with the creatures and remembering you’re one of them. Either way, the practice is the same: keep lowering the bucket. The deeper the well, the more there is to give.

Why it stays with me

Because it’s a map back to myself when I get noisy inside. When I can’t tell how far I still have to drop, this song reminds me: keep listening, keep digging, and let the season do its work. The water will meet you.

Source: New Music Memoir (1).docx

From the Being Human journal

I facilitate a seasonal (fall, winter, spring, summer) retreat series. We do a good deal of journaling and making connections with lessons each season has to teach us. I wrote Deepen the Well from notes I’d taken throughout each season during the series one year. Looking back, I can see how important it is to know that life is both dynamic and constant—changing and cyclical. Like the best songs… “repeat and vary… repeat and vary…”

Source: Being Human: The Songs — Album & Journal (2020) · p. 29

Being Human · The Songs

Reflection & journaling

Theme: Seasons of Life

Choose a question or word or line(s) from the lyrics to guide your meditation or journaling as you listen.

1. What season speaks most powerfully to me?
2. Do I have a favorite?
3. What lessons have I learned from each season?
4. Do I tend to lose myself within some seasons and forget that change is coming?
5. Do I tend to long for a coming season and miss the one I’m actually in?

Source: Being Human: The Songs — Album & Journal (2020) · p. 29