Tim Robinson

Biography

Tim Robinson is a NYC songwriter/artist.

He lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn with his wife Margi and their brand new baby boy, Wyatt.

"I'm humbled to be included in the VIGIL compilation and hope that these songs can help out somebody, somehow, just a little bit. What happened that September morning can't be healed with songs, but songs will try, and maybe one or two will linger long enough to serve as a warning or a comfort years from now. That's what songs are for.

"The Songwriter's Exchange is a truly raw, real, grass-roots, organic, artistic forum and I'm glad to be inspired, infuriated, informed, increased by my entanglement with this rag-tag bunch of dedicated writers. Thanks Jack. Thanks Suzanne."

[Tim also contributes his artwork to Vigil, he did all the graphic design on the Vigil CD booklet.]

Comments about writing 'Louisa, From Her Window' and 'For Your Heart':

It is such a hard thing to speak effectively about. I've heard a lot of songs wrestling with that day since September. Anybody who writes has approached the topic and we will all fail more than we succeed. Surely. I couldn't write straight at it so I sat where I could on the periphery somewhere and pulled these together.
I hope they are of some comfort to someone, somehow. I don't know what any of it means.
- Tim Robinson

'Louisa, From Her Window': A fictional woman looks out of her apartment in Redhook, Brooklyn, and sees the aftermath of the attacks.

'For Your Heart': A song for a friend who lost his brother, and an offering of comfort.
- Suzanne Vega

'Louisa, From Her Window'

[ mp3 sound clip ]

A business memo flutters on
A smoky Redhook wind
While fragments of a summer turn
To starlings and ascend
Louisa, from her window
Sees a toothless gray dog yawn
At two old men from different worlds
Sacrificing pawns

Louisa tilts a bottle deep
Enough to drown her thoughts
A church spire shifts invisibly
Toward falling but is caught
By souls still in the firehouse
Who's glowing faces laugh
At something that a TV swore
Would never come to pass

The view through ships and wires and stone
The bones of here and now
Add them to your shadows and
Drag on from here somehow
(Louisa, from her window with her black hair falling down)

A wound across the water’s now
A bleeding a sawed-off sky
Louisa, from her window cries
Among what’s lost was mine
The traffic set below the scene
Is jammed but underway
As knights fly from their castles
As the bishops claim the day

Chorus:

'For Your Heart'

[ mp3 sound clip ]

All of these blues are fallen sky
The answer to who? turns out is why?
And I have nothing shaped like solace but to say

I can take you to lunch and lend an ear
Buy you some time with a deep black beer
If god returns I’d even swallow pride and pray

For your heart, may it mend
May you laugh loud again

Cruel is a word that lacks the weight
To tether the vicious cloud of fate
That has come twice now to steal your blood away

Soon now the fall will paint the woods
And round where you live the walking’s good
So give me a call if another voice might smooth the way

For your heart, may it heal
May you smile wide and real

Sing when the tears give way to words
You of the grave symbolic birds
As always teach us something with your pain

I’ve got a baseball and two gloves
I’ve got a brother’s banged up love
If that's what you need lets stand in a field and play a game

For your heart, may it mend
May you laugh loud again for your heart.