I once fell in love with a man I never really knew. I was at a music gathering at Oberlin College in 1985. On the last evening of the gathering, I stood on a staircase in Asia house as a door opened below me, and I heard a voice laughing that made me stand still. It was then a small dark haired young man appeared with some of my friends. There is a feeling I call the ping that happens when I first encounter something very important to me, as if rediscovered from long before. We all played and sang the night away. But the focus of attention soon became this young man, Bill Maraschiello. Not because he was a great player or singer. He was his music. The best anyone can ever hope to be.
Before the night was over I forced myself to leave and hit the road to home, more than a thousand miles away. I knew if I didn’t I would never leave. We never even talked that night. And I loved him.
I only saw him again one more time. But he was falling in love with someone else. My love did not set sail. But that was not the end. That was the beginning.
This is the most beautiful and universal song lyric Bill ever wrote. It was a favorite among his friends and fans. When Bill died at the early age of 32 in 1986, four months after I last saw him, he was sorely missed. I wrote about him in a music journal I was editing at the time. And people connected him, to me. For years I heard from his friends around the anniversary of his death. Because, they read in my words, that as he was his music, my words were my love for him. They sent me his stories, and gave me his music.
The most important of all of it was this song.
I performed The Waters of Time, as he had done, in his memory until someone told me something about the tune. There was a problem: The tune is so attached to the identity of the original folk song, The Waters of Tyne, which is a beloved anthem of the Geordies of the world, that I heard a few protests along the way. I believed Bill's lyric deserved an identity of its own.
Around 2000 a mutual friend put me in contact with Bill’s widow, Judy Jones Reynolds, who gave me permission to write an original tune for the lyrics. I recently discovered that Judy, and the family keeper of Bill’s flame, his brother Paul Maraschiello, had both died. Paul, whom I had corresponded with, had let Bill’s friends and fans know that it was the wish of the family for Bill’s many tunes and lyrics made over the years to be shared and continued in the public domain.
In respect for Paul’s wishes, I am making the tune I wrote available in the public domain as well. Bill didn’t just write the words. He lived them. He was music, from beginning to end. He taught me to be my own.
I hope that you will sing and share this song, no matter who you are. I will share it wherever I go. This is life in a sailboat. Beauty and fear. Live it anyway.
The Waters of Time
Chorus: The Waters of Time flow too swiftly to sea,
And no one can follow them down to the sea,
For the boats they are many, and the banks are not wide,
And you’ll never set sail if you wait for the tide.
It was just after dawn I set off and away,
On a glistening sea at the first light of day,
Like rivers of fire the waves they did shine,
As I skirted and skimmed through the waters of time.
Well bright mornings come, but they never do stay,
And soon those bright mirrors were cloaked in dark gray,
And the clouds they grew heavy and shadowed with storm…
I felt small and naked as the day I was born.
Well, that storm shook my boat like a leaf in a gale,
And I saw the waves crash, and I heard the wind wail,
And I thought in that tempest I saw my own grave,
The masthead my tomb in the dark rolling wave.
Then I lifted my eyes and I saw the clouds break,
And I saw the sun rise as the morning did wake,
On a sea that was rich as the vineyard’s red wine…
I had circled the length of the waters of time.
Now all of us sail our own chosen streams,
We drift with our cares, or we move with our dreams,
But no matter how far or how freely you roam,
The course that you follow, it must be your own.
Chorus: The Waters of Time flow too swiftly to sea,
And no one can follow them down to the sea,
For the boats they are many, and the banks are not wide,
And you’ll never set sail if you wait for the tide.
Discover Bill’s music here:
The Waters of Time