KOTODAMA : SPIRIT OF WORDS

by Anita Sandler

Written for EVERCHANGING MAGAZINE - May/June 2007

Reviewing and More

KOTODAMA : SPIRIT OF WORDS is a labor of love from one sister to another. As I continually try to re-invent myself, to elevate and educate myself....to choose projects that will have meaning not only in my own life, but in the lives of others....I found myself composing music to the words of my sister’s poetry...and in the process discovered more about myself and our relationship and how the same experiences can be viewed so differently even within the same family.

In writing music to my sister’s words, I almost felt like a voyeur looking into the corners of her life....finding out things I never really knew about...how she felt about life and love. I was so busy living my own life that we drifted apart then way apart and then, after our mother died things changed. After Vera found out she had a slow growing lung cancer, she chose a path of discovery and spirit. She visited her daughter in Hawaii and together they explored every healing method, every healer, whatever would lead to healing and love and spirit. At that time Vera discovered the power of dowsing and was given the gift of a door opening to other dimensions... and the ability to explore her past lives. She found that we had been twins in at least 6 other lives! Our birthdays in this life (our father’s, too! ) are on the same day ( our birthdays 8 years apart)...and even when we weren’t communicating all that well... we always seemed to be feeling similar things or going through the ups and downs of life at the same time....so finding out about our past together really helped us understand fate and karma and the paths we both had chosen which suddenly seemed to merge....and here we are on this path together....meeting as equals, and co-creators of our destiny.

Meeting at this creative and spiritual crossroads, on this path of ascending, this path where we recognize each other as spiritual searchers and creative beings...behold KOTODAMA:SPIRIT OF WORDS....Poetry (Vera Gelvin) Into Song ( Anita Sandler ). The CD, I feel, is a Gift from the Universe. I’ve written songs for over 30 years now and this is the first time I’ve written music to someone else’s words...my sister’s words are the words of a true poet. It’s been said of Vera’s poetry...”her poems will affect you on several levels...all of them are intense, and they may be simultaneously sensual, emotional, clever, humorous, intellectual and spiritual...vast and varied subject matter, ranging from dreamscapes to human relationships to psalm-like praises of creation, to pictures of the natural world, to metaphysical and spiritual wanderings, to celebrations of sensuality...” It’s been an amazing adventure and what has evolved are amazing songs...some blues, jazz, bossa nova, folky and even country feel....the words dictated the moods and the moods are many. It’s a full plate and she touches it all...”sometimes with a microscope, sometimes with a spiritual inner understanding that resonates.” In “Make Way For The Traffic” she takes you on a trip of reincarnation....joining with “water buffalo and alligators, ants and mosquitoes, angels on bicycles, monsters on motorcycles, babies on all fours....a living train...a processional...” In her poem “The Golden Thread” which I call “Gypsy Spirit”, I discovered that while I was out being a gypsy playing music on the road, my sister’s inner life was that of “ a gypsy spirit trapped in a conventional life...she cannot break through...to pursue...her nomadic existence.” ...so I tried to capture the poignant feelings with a slow jazz mood...all about the words and the vocal and the yearning.

The Poetry becomes lyric and yet some of the poems stay true to the spirit of the poem as opposed to becoming totally ‘song’...and yet something exciting and very refreshing happens when poetry crosses over into lyrics and with music becomes a song. A song holds its own magic and communicates emotion, words, passion, a story, in a different way then poetry....and in KOTODAMA : SPIRIT OF WORDS...we have a unique collaboration of words and music and a CD rich in discovery and meaning and love...and just plain great songs!