The Occult Technology Of Lost Songs

Sailors call it the Atlantic Circle.

Everyone sails the Circle their own way.

Sarah’s favorite route left from Long Island,
paused at Bermuda, then sailed for England,
Spain, Morocco, the Canary Islands,
then to Brazil, Florida and back home.
She had sailed the route twice, single-handed.
On her third trip, also single-handed,
her thirty-five foot ketch, Gogo, set sail
from Morocco but never made landfall
in the Canary Islands. Nobody
ever saw Sarah again. It’s believed
a rogue wave swamped Gogo, taking her down.

Sarah’s former band-mates revealed she’d planned
a concept album, a double album
solo release built on a song cycle
she was writing called, Songs for Atlantis.

Her bass player believed in her travels
she had met old-time sailors who told her
stories, legends passed sailor-to-sailor,
that led Sarah to discover the truth
of the real location of Atlantis.
He believes Sarah had planned to reveal
the truth about Atlantis in her songs.

No notes exist. No studio sessions.
No one claims to have heard her sing her songs.

Sarah left one page with her producer,
just the route of her Atlantic Circle.

No double album ever was released.
Sarah’s guitar player did one album
before disappearing into the life
of a successful session musician
playing movie soundtracks and commercials.

I never met Sarah but I studied
music theory with her guitar player.
I saw the actual sheet of paper
she left with her producer where she drew
a rough sketch of her itinerary
sailing around the Atlantic Circle.

I think Sarah knew about Atlantis.

And I think that note to her producer
is something like a song. With something like—
to borrow the labels from the key tops
of an arranger keyboard—an intro,
an A part, a B part, and a repeat,
Da Capo al Coda to an outro.

I’m working for a small boat of my own.

I want to sail the Atlantic Circle
with my guitar, my arranger keyboard,
searching for the lost songs of Atlantis
that Sarah found. When she found Atlantis.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .



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