Song: Our Purpose Here
Album: Testimony
Performer: Ferron
Writer: Ferron
Year: 1980

I was in a gifted and talented class in middle school. It’s really one of the only classes I remember well from middle school. My closest friends were in the class and I really liked the teacher. He made us write journal entries, sometimes with prompts. He’d check that we wrote the entries and would sometimes write notes in the margins. I’ve always been pretty bad at writing journals because I think too much about it and don’t just write in a stream of consciousness manner.

There was one entry that I remember from that class. I talked a lot about how much I loved Bob Dylan and wanted to be him. I think I said something about me never being able to roam the country like he did because I was a girl. My teacher made a comment on the entry that I should look for female musicians that I wanted to emulate. I took it to heart but didn’t have as many resources at that point to find those female artists. But I have since tried to find women who make music that I love.

So, I’m going to write about a bunch of women who are creative, poetic, and represent aspects of who I aspire to be musically.

Ferron is a well respected songwriter from Canada. She is credited as influencing many female songwriters including Indigo Girls and Ani DiFranco. I’ll be completely honest and say that I really haven’t checked out much of her body of work past this song, but it’s been something on my musical discovery checklist for awhile now.

This song in particular brings me back to that journal entry in middle school. That was the first thought that crossed my mind when I heard this song. I thought “wow, this is a woman who is living the life of a traveling musician and she’s making it and telling that story.” The writing style in this song is not dissimilar to the often rambling lyrics of Bob Dylan. The cadence is very speech-like in her delivery.

The story in the song is Ferron grappling with a dedication to music (requiring late nights and a lot of time away from home) and trying to make an intimate relationship work within those parameters. I feel like that’s a perspective you don’t get so often from a female perspective. Me being in a relationship with a traveling musician and being a traveling musician myself, that struggle is very relevant. I often feel like I’m on both sides of the relationship – feeling both the loneliness of being home by myself and the loneliness of being away.

The opening of the second verse captures those emotions very strongly:

There’s a secret in this solitude
As my love unfolds I find it’s often crude
I call you late and my words intrude
And I falter

But the miles don’t shrink by telephone
The crackling wire becomes our home
I tell you I’m okay alone
And then I wonder

And we get the uniquely female perspective on the experience later on in that verse:

It’s a woman’s dream this autonomy
Where the lines connect
And the points stay free

I feel like I often struggle to maintain autonomy in my romantic relationship but when you both have careers that require solitude and sometimes extended time apart, autonomy becomes essential.