COMPASSION

I was fortunate in hearing Caroline Waters (formerly Asplin) perform in the intimate setting of last fall's "Clearing Skies, Full Sails" conference that featured using the arts for recovery. Caroline has performed and given workshops for the benefit of survivors in her native Norway. She had recently emigrated and, when she saw we were including a talent showcase at our conference, she offered to perform since the conference coincided with a visit to the Bay area. It was a serendipitous occasion, and a fortunate introduction to this versatile and gifted songwriter, singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist musician.

Compassion was Caroline's first solo CD, which she wrote in the months following her trip to the United States in search of her friend Stefanie Stroh who went missing in 1987. The album is dedicated to her, and the songs reflect Caroline's compassion toward Stefanie and other women and children who are victims of violence. Depending on the listener, or the time of listening, the songs on this CD can be heard as a love story, a story of memory and awakening, or and offering of grace for feeling that we all need in order to heal.

The beauty of her voice, the rich ensemble arrangements, and her lyricism weave a dream-catcher hammock which rocks and cradles me between childhood and the compassionate nurture of my adult recovery Ð the compassion of the album's title. I especially love the jazz fusion arrangements, which lull me into a dreamy receptive state that opens up the images evoked by the songs. While this album can stand alone musically as a collection of love songs, I hear it through survivor's ears. Compassionate love supports the fledging self, a self described in "The Seagull":

Was it the earth that told him to get on his wings
So he could teach what nobody could preach...
If I want to be just as crazy as he, can I fly
If I try to be honest with myself, If I don't deny what I can be
Get on my wings so I can see the seagull fly.

It comforts the troubled self in "Cry in the Rain":

You can cry in the rain if you want, Nobody will know about it
...The rain is coming sister, to wash your worries away