Robyn Landis: Music

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About While Trees Fall

While Trees Fall was inspired by an interview with Michael Moore that he included on the DVD of his movie Bowling For Columbine. In it, he mentioned among other things how he was taught as a boy that we will be judged by how we treat the least of us, and also that a camel will have an easier time getting through the eye of a needle than a rich man would have getting into heaven. While many people are familiar with these phrases from their own religious upbringings, I was not; however, they resonated with me and, intrigued, I jotted them down in my songwriting notebook. Many months later, on a day when I was particularly despairing about the sorry state of the planet and the terrifyingly greedy, shortsighted and inhuman cronies that have mostly put us there -- and their deafness to our protests -- I flipped open the notebook, saw the sheet of paper with those words on top, and wrote this song.
-Robyn Landis

In August 2005, While Trees Fall won first prize in the acoustic category of the William Robert Abate Songwriting Competition. This contest, in conjunction with the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, awards songs that promote peace, love, and community, or speak out against violence, war or hate, and only one winner is chosen in each category. it has also been recognized in nine other songwriitng competitions as a finalist or winner.

To read an interview with Robyn Landis given to AlphaMusic Group (AMG)--a NYC music PR firm that promoted the William Robert Abate contest and its winners--go to http://www.shortandsweetmusic.com/lyrics.htm#intvw

How we treat the least of us
reveals the beast in us
I don't like what I see
so I turn off the TV

They have nothing to say
They say it anyway
They send us shopping now
They tell us where and tell us how …

They didn't take my calls
behind the whitewashed walls
My letters undelivered
while trees fall

I'm shouting all the time
The world should have been mine
I have to hand it over
filthy with another's crime

chorus:
They want to get into heaven
through the eye of a needle
Let me in before the ones in suits can try
Can I be an angel
so I can ask some questions
Before I let them by
Before I let them by

While someone stalls for time
someone collects the dimes
We can't see without light
so why bother to do what's right

There isn't any hell
we don't already know so well
Like the one they're building
for the people they don't tell
>>>>
They want to get into heaven
through the eye of a needle
Let me in before the ones in suits
can even try
Can I be an angel
so I can ask some questions
Before I let them by
If I let them by

(Bridge)
They never touch the earth
or they might feels its pain
If they could calculate its worth
they'd sell the rain

The world's all muffled screams
Razor blades in children's dreams
They don't know what it means
or why they feel ashamed

Every day I try to sing
Every day is reckoning
And wrecking everything
that moves or breathes or cries

They never take my calls
They haven't got the balls
They just have lies is all
while trees fall and fall and fall

They want to get into heaven
through the eye of a needle
Let me in before the ones in suits can try
just let 'em try
Can I be an angel so I can ask the questions
Before I let them by
SEE If I let them by

Let 'em by ...
I don't buy...
Should I let them walk on by...
I won't let them walk on by...

©2004 Robyn Landis