Quiet Work of Sisterhood - 2026 02 20 - Jenny Arntzen

 

Tonight I am home with dogs, getting ready to suit up for a cold, late night walk. This is my homemade movie of a song I wrote last year, played tonight to share with you.

I wrote this song in response to disturbing events perpetrated on defenceless people by corrupt, sociopathic government forces.

It was the month of May, 2025. The Trump regime was supporting genocide in Gaza of the Palestinian people and allowing food stockpiles to rot instead of delivering them to people in need.

In the garden at the corner of my street, these gorgeous lavender irises were blooming. Their beautiful emergence despite the catastrophic policies of humanity, were an inspiration to me. Everyday I am out the door with the dogs, walking familiar routes and noticing the subtle and dramatic changes in nature as the seasons change. I take strength from the world of nature, and from the nature of sisterhood. It is through my honest, authentic and infuriated friendships with women, and the men who support them, that I am able to draw strength to make the best of each day.

In this song, the melancholy sadness of minor chords conveys the sense of despair hovering at the edge of my comprehension of the world of human suffering. At the same time, those same minor chords convey a sense of subterranean life force operating below the surface of superficial things. It is this subterranean force that I imagine as the quiet work of sisterhood. Operating underground, out of sight, but no less powerful and enduring.

In Verse 2, the C# minor chord adds a discordant tension to highlight the terror and destruction of soldiers boots trudging through mud and blood, and then again, the terrible crime against humanity of withholding food and allowing it to spoil instead of giving it to starving children and the mothers who are caring for them.

In the last line of Verse 2, the idea of the quiet work of sisterhood is elevated with an E minor chord, the first time we have heard that voicing in the song. 

Verse 3 returns to our local neighbourhood and the inspiration of persistent plants growing and blossoming in the garden. We are growing food, there are pea shoots flowering, which promise delicious greens in salads later in the summer. The red rhododendrons are in full regalia, their trumpet-shaped blossoms a clarion call to persist, resist, and prevail. It is through the changes we wrought that we change the course of humanity. 

The last line of Verse 3 reminds us that the quiet work of sisterhood rises each day with the sun. As we sing the word, "rises", we hear, for the first time, a C major chord, a lifting voicing of hope. Our final word, "sun", is lifted into transcendence with a D major chord. We are rising with the sun each morning, we rise with the sun metaphorically, with the same persistence and resilience, and we rise musically, as the D chord lifts into hope and empowerment.

This song embodies the quiet work of sisterhood. We pay our respect to nature, we deplore the cruelty and wastefulness of humanity, we vow to bring about change for the good of all concerned, and we lift each other up, to have hope, ingenuity and good spirits in our struggles.

I often don't understand the songs I write, until long after they have been written. Sometimes it takes me awhile to learn how to play them. 

I find this little song fascinating in its depth, breadth and brevity. It contains multitudes in its quiet, modest way.