Musical Musings

"So Long, Its Been Good to Know You" by Woody Guthrie

2020-12-10T10:10:00.020-05:00

Killooleet Sing, 1964, from Vermont Life magazine

There I am, age 10 with bangs swept off to the side and sitting next to the girl holding Tony Seeger's banjo at the Camp Killooleet Community Sing night. Every week, we had a Monday Community Sing night indoors in the main house and campfires outdoors by the lake on Fridays where we sang all the old folk songs I learned during the 4 years I went to Camp Killooleet in Hancock Vermont. Camp Killooleet was run by John Seeger, Pete Seeger's older brother. It is now run by Kate Seeger, John's daughter.

Tony Seeger, nephew to Pete Seeger, is leading us in song. Tony was my first banjo and then guitar teacher at this camp. I don’t play banjo anymore, but I still play many of the arrangements he taught me on guitar and I am forever grateful to him for starting me down this path.

Pete Seeger was a frequent visitor to camp during those years and I learned a great many songs from him when he led us in song at the campfires. This Woody Guthrie tune is one of them.

The recording below comes from the 5th Annual Woody Guthrie Hoot at the Old Stone House in Brooklyn NY in 2017. Thank you to Joel Landy for the recording and on the mandolin is Vincent Cross !

Here's hoping we can raise our voices in song together soon!

So Long, Its Been Good to Know You

"Once In A Very Blue Moon" by Pat Alger

2020-11-13T10:39:00.013-05:00

Shot of me performing this song 8/2004

The blue moon this year was on Halloween, and I missed posting then. The next one isn't until August, and I don't want to wait. So here goes. It seems like it is only once in a blue moon that I post on this blog. I am going to try to do better going forward!

Below is a link to my performance of this Pat Alger tune that I learned from Nanci Griffith. Clive Gregson is accompanying me on mandolin. thanks Clive! Recorded at the California Coast Music Camp

Once in a Very Blue Moon

"Night Rider's Lament" by Michael Burton

2020-05-13T15:12:00.012-04:00

I've been thinking about all the boom and bust cycles I have seen in my lifetime now that we are on pause in NYC due to COVID-19. Folks have been staying home and NYC is looking more and more like a ghost town. Hopefully, it is only temporary.

I am remembering all the real ghost towns I saw during my travels out West. This shot posted below is one I took at Bodie, a ghost town and now a state historic public park in an extremely remote part of the Eastern Sierras of California. It is at an elevation of 8379 feet. One tiny long dirt road is all that leads into the town. Windswept and lonely, there is literally nothing nearby.

This town was founded in 1876 with the discovery of gold. During its heyday in 1879, it had a population of nearly 7,000 people. A visitor in 1881 wrote that Bodie was “a sea of sin, lashed by the tempests of lust and passion”.

A tale is told that a young girl wrote in her diary, upon learning she and her family were moving to Bodie, “Goodbye God, I’m going to Bodie”.

I took the shot below of the Swazey Hotel in Bodie. This building served as a clothing store, a casino, and finally as the Swazey Hotel during Bodie's active years. By 1915, Bodie was all but abandoned.

Today, Bodie is preserved in a state of "arrested decay". Only a small part of the town survived, with about 110 structures still standing. When I visited, we walked the streets of the empty town and were able to look into shop windows and see goods left there when the town was abandoned. We also visited the town cemetery on a high hill where 150 grave markers still stand.

When the Boom Goes Bust

These memories of trips I took while living out west remind me of this song I recorded many years ago. Many things may have passed me by, but then as the song goes:

"...Ah but they've never seen the Northern Lights
They've never seen a hawk on the wing..."

I wouldn't trade my travels for anything....

I hope we can travel again soon! The song below features Clive Gregson on mandolin. Thanks Clive for the great back up! Recorded at the California Coast Music Camp

Night Riders Lament

"Love at the Five and Dime" by Nanci Griffith

2016-08-29T14:45:00.006-04:00

"Dance a Little Closer to Me"
(I took this shot of my Contra dance buddies several years ago)

I have always loved Nanci Griffith. During the 1990's, I went to every concert she gave within a 50 mile radius of Santa Cruz, Ca where I used to live. I worked out her arrangement to this song in open tuning by carefully watching and listening to her.

I have been in many bands over the years, none of which managed to stay together long enough to get anywhere, and the song certainly speaks to that in a humorous way. This is why when I perform, I still mainly perform solo.

I remember mon amie Pascale with this shot. We used to go Contra Dancing together oh so many years ago now. When this was taken, we had just spent the weekend at the Harvest Moon Dance in Santa Barbara. She is dancing with her former husband in their living room before the dance. Pascale died tragically and too soon a few years ago. But this is how I always remember her, so full of life and eternally dancing...

The clip below is my version, taken at a live performance I gave at a music festival in

Santa Cruz.

"Testimony" by Ferron

2015-12-22T16:55:00.027-05:00

Yosemite Falls, Winter 1994 taken by Beth Kotkin

I originally performed the song below at the 1997 San Francisco Free Folk Festival during the Summer Solstice. As I am posting this, it is now the Winter Solstice. I think the song is a better fit.

This year, the Winter Solstice comes in close proximity to the Christmas Full Moon also known as the Full Cold Moon or Long Nights Moon. It is a relatively rare event, which was last here in 1977 and will not come again until 2034.

The Winter Solstice is the longest night of the year and the start of the winter season. In the Scottish tradition of my maternal grandparents, winter brings the goddess of life and death known in Scotland as the Cailleach, or crone aspect of the triple Goddess. In her most mysterious aspect, the Cailleach was the "dark mother" who knew what the future held for all men.

In Scotland, the Cailleach was worshiped by the farmer who was the first to harvest his grain. He would make a corn dolly that would be passed from farmer to farmer as their grain was harvested in turn.

When the last farmer to harvest his grain received the corn dolly that represented the Cailleach, he would watch over her until the Beltane festival.

During Beltane, the planting cycle was renewed by the Beltane fires. These fires still burned in the Scottish Border area on the peaks of the Eildon Hills near Melrose, an ongoing tradition passed down from the Picts and my Scottish ancestors until well into the 18th century and modern times.

The song speaks to the passing down of ancient mysteries to our young ones as well, in an unbroken chain towards the future.

"Carolina Pines" by Kate Wolf

2015-10-11T12:21:00.018-04:00

This is a shot I took of the Redman-Hirahira House in Watsonville, Ca.
It was built by local architect, William Weeks in 1897 for James Redman, a sugar-beets farmer.

In the 1930's, a Japanese-American family, the Hirahira's, bought the house and the farmland surrounding it. During WWII, the Hirahira family were forced to vacate the house and lands when they were re-located by the US government and the military to Manzanar detention camp located in a desolate spot on the Eastern side of the Sierras.

As many as 10 percent of the population of Watsonville, Ca where this house is located, were forcibly removed from their houses, businesses and all they knew. They were bused to various internment camps during WWII. It has stood empty in the fields between Highway 1 and Highway 152 in Watsonville since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake made it uninhabitable.

I stopped at Manzanar while travelling down Highway 395 by the Eastern Sierras. This was the internment camp for the Japanese who were living on the West Coast during WWII. When I first moved to California, I had no knowledge of this shameful piece of US history. One of my co-workers in LA who was of Japanese descent mentioned to me that she grew up there during part of her childhood, and it was from her that I learned of the history of this place. It is so hot, dry and incredibly remote. Not so hard to imagine how awful it must have been to be forced to move there, leaving all the comforts of home behind and loosing most of your possessions and properties simply because your ancestors were born in Japan. Don't forget, these were all US citizens who had committed no crime except that of looking like the enemy.

The ultimate irony is that many of the young men from there volunteered to fight for the freedom of the US in WWII, while the rest of their families were locked up at this camp. Their unit was one of the most decorated in Europe and also incurred the most casualties. Not much is left there now, but the interpretive center, some markers of what used to be there and this cemetery standing alone at the foot of the Sierras.

This is a shot I took of the memorial at Manzanar in 2009 on my cross-country road trip.

Only a few of the innocent Japanese-Americans who died during their illegal internment at Manzanar during remain in this lonely cemetery on the Eastern side of the Sierras.

From Wikepedia: "On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the Secretary of War to designate military commanders to prescribe military areas and to exclude “any or all persons” from such areas. The order also authorized the construction of what would later be called “relocation centers” by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to house those who were to be excluded. This order resulted in the forced relocation of over 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were native-born American citizens. The rest had been prevented from becoming citizens by federal law. Over 110,000 were imprisoned in the ten concentration camps located far inland and away from the coast. Manzanar was the first of the ten concentration camps to be established"

The Manzanar cemetery site is marked by a monument that was built by prisoner stonemason Ryozo Kado in 1943. The characters on this monument are translated to mean "Soul-Consoling Tower" .

There are many places across the USA that are also desolate and abandoned, mostly for economic reasons. Dreams lost and shattered, houses and towns abandoned in the wake of economic ruin. This song sung by me (with Sylvia Herold on harmony vocals) and written by Kate Wolf, captures the feeling a continent away. Recorded at the California Coast Music Camp

Carolina Pines

"Deportee" by Woody Guthrie

2015-05-09T16:40:00.007-04:00

Shot taken by me on a back road near Salinas, Ca

When you wander through the Salinas Valley today, if you go down a certain back highway, you will pass these gigantic wooden figures of happy farm workers picking heads of lettuce while their boss watches them work on the side of the road. As you drive through mile after mile of farmlands, you can see actual farm workers looking not so very happy as they labor in the hot sun. Our fruits and vegetables are picked by Mexican immigrants (both legal and "illegal") in much the same manner as they did more than 60 years ago when Woody Guthrie wrote Deportees. I took this shot a few years ago, when I still lived on the Central Coast of California.

Woody heard a report on the radio in 1948 about the plane crash carrying Mexican farm workers who were being deported back to Mexico by U.S. Immigration authorities, and he wrote a timeless classic song about it. Recently, these nameless "deportees" were given names and a memorial nearby. For more, see the article here.

Here is a version I sang in honor of Woody Guthrie's 100th birthday at the last Woody Guthrie birthday bash at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC in 2012.

Deportees by Beth Kotkin

"The Water is Wide" (Traditional)

2014-04-27T10:26:00.015-04:00

Photo taken by me at the John Seeger Memorial.
Pete is there with John's children, Kate and her husband and Tony Seeger

The Last Time I Saw Pete Seeger

We were all gathered in Hancock Vermont at Camp Killooleet for the John Seeger Memorial in the summer of 2010. It was a full day, that included the Seeger family making music (which is when I shot the picture posted), an outdoor picnic, a campfire sing-along and mainly sharing remembrances of John and Ellie Seeger and our collective memories of this beautiful camp in Hancock Vermont that nurtured my love of folk music that has lasted my entire life. Pete was a fixture at the camp throughout my childhood there, along with the rest of the Seeger family, and they all instilled in me my love of sharing and swapping songs, and the sense of community that comes from raising our voices in song together.

Just a quiet moment with Pete Seeger in the main house at Camp Killooleet from that day in the summer of 2010. Pete came in to get his famous banjo (with the writing “this machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender”) while I was looking around the room that hadn’t changed at all in the 44 years since I was last there as a camper. We talked about the books on the wall that Pete said were there from when his brother John Seeger and his wife Ellie bought the camp in the 1940’s.

We got to talking. One thing led to another, as it often does with Pete, and he started to discuss one of the secrets to his longevity: he said he sleeps every night with his feet propped up by pillows, higher than his head, to keep the blood flowing to his heart. He told me he learned this from his father, Charles Seeger (musicologist and teacher), who Pete said had studied Yoga and practiced it well into his old age.

He then shared a humorous anecdote: He said that Charles Seeger practiced yoga every morning in the nude, upstairs at his home. One day, a young woman journalist who had been sent there to interview him got the shock of her life when she arrived a little earlier than expected and saw the aging Charles Seeger, doing a headstand in the nude!

We had a good laugh about this, and spoke of many other things in our moments together that day. He noticed my guitar case and knew who had made it for me. Encouraged me with my music as he always did, and then moved out to help set up for the memorial service for his older brother, John. When I strolled down to the lake, I was shocked and amused at the sight of then 90 year old Pete, picking up the long benches that the guests were to sit on, and moving them into place all by himself. But that was Pete!

The video clip below is from a performance I gave at a Folk Festival in 1994 of a traditional tune that I learned at Camp Killooleet. I am pretty sure that Tony Seeger, Pete's nephew and son of John Seeger, taught me the arrangement.

"The Circle Game" by Joni Mitchell

2014-04-19T13:04:00.013-04:00

I took this shot of my daughter on the beach in LA

In 1967, when I was still in jr high school, I attended my first anti-war rally in NYC, protesting the Vietnam war. 1968 brought the My Lai Massacre, as well as the murders of both Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, and riots in the streets. I had been too young to understand what it meant when President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, other than a day off from school. But the murders of our leaders in 1968 hit me and my generation hard. I was in utter despair that we would ever stop the killing, or find the leaders who could inspire us to do so again. I did not give up and I continued to protest. What else could I do? My friends and neighbors were dying. The final blow was Nixon's narrow election in 1968 with his so-called "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War. None of us in the anti-war movement believed him, and it took years of protest and action to eventually end that war. And we did.

In 1968, I saw Joni Mitchell live for the first time. She was playing at Hunter College auditorium in November of 1968. I was a Tom Rush fan, and I noticed she wrote a few songs on his Circle Game album. So I went and bought her first album, and I was entranced by her guitar, her voice and her songs. The night I saw Joni Mitchell, I was front row center for her so I could carefully watch what she was doing on the guitar. She helped me to put aside the trauma of that year for a while. I learned how to tune to her turnings that night, and the chord formations for many of her early songs, including Circle Game in G tuning.

The clip of me singing Circle Game is from 1994 at a folk festival in the Santa Cruz mountains, where I was living at the time. Singing this song brings me back to those years long before I turned 20. I will never forget.

"Waltz For You" by Sarah Elizabeth Campbell

2012-03-25T17:32:00.014-04:00

Shot taken by me of Yosemite at twilight

Another one of my favorites written by the late great Sarah Elizabeth Campbell. When I sing this song, I always think of being on the Eastern side of the Sierras, as the song says, "all alone, me and the stars".

One special night in particular stands out when I was camping out in the high desert just south of Mammoth Ca near the illegal hot tubs that some industrious hippies built over the natural geothermal hot springs that dot the area. Me and my then boyfriend sat in one of the larger hot tubs at night to watch the Perseids shooting by.

We were far away from the city lights and thousands of shooting stars filled the big black desert night. The night was so dark and the Perseid showers were so bright, that the stars seemed close enough to reach out and touch.

Some memories are magical and stay with you forever.

"Bristlecone Pine" by Hugh Prestwood

2011-12-30T11:43:00.010-05:00

That's me at 11,000 feet in the White Mountains

High in the White Mountains of California, above 10,000 feet, grow the oldest living trees on earth. Many of the ancient Bristlecone Pines here have lived more than 40 centuries. The Bristlecone Pines in this forest started as seedlings when the pyramids of Egypt were being built. They only grow in six states of the Western USA, and the oldest of them are in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest of the White Mountains of California, where this shot was taken of me when I visited.

These Bristlecone Pines thrive in the harshest of conditions in the highest altitudes, between 10,000 and 11,000 feet. These trees live longer than any other living tree in the world. Some of the downed wood, like what you see in this shot I took in the White Mountains of California, date back to the last ice age. The average age of these trees is 1,000 years old. But there are a few still living that have been around for over 4,000 years.

This is the Patriarch Grove, which is named after the oldest living tree that resides unmarked in this area. The "Methuselah" tree is somewhere in this grove at the White Mountains, and is over 4,767 years old. It is not marked due to fears of vandalism. The Methuselah Tree is the oldest living organism that is known and documented, with an estimated germination of 2832 BC.

They don't tell you exactly where it is when you visit these trees in the White Mountains. It's identity is a closely-guarded secret.

More here

I recorded a song about the Bristlecones written by Hugh Prestwood. Below is this live recording of my singing of "Bristlecone Pine" (from 1/1/2001).

This is my only duet with a Raven!

I was in a favorite spot at a music camp in the redwood forest of the Coast Range near Big Basin State Park. The park is a densely wooded area in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was clear and crisp, and the sun was shining brightly in the cool winter skies. I was singing, accompanied by my guitar, for some friends seated outside under the Coast Redwoods and the Knobcone Pine trees.

While I sang, a large jet-black Raven perched in a pine tree nearby and sang along with me. As I finished my song, he called out to me with a loud caw-cawing, growing louder as the song came to an end. For the rest of the day, my raven friend followed me from cabin to cabin, listening for my singing and joining in again and again with his unique raven harmony.

I felt it was a sign, but did not know of what. Recorded at the San Francisco Folk Music Club Camp Harmony.

Bristlecone Pine

"There But For Fortune" by Phil Ochs (updated lyrics by Beth Kotkin)

2011-10-09T11:11:00.009-04:00

A shot of me performing at the Million Mom March
on Mother's Day 2000 in DC

I had the privilege of organizing local moms and dads from Santa Cruz California for the Million Mom March in 2000. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children gathered together in remembrance of those lost to gun violence. I heard their stories, saw their pictures, wept with them for their lost loved ones. It was an incredibly moving experience that has stayed with me vividly.

The shot is from the Million Mom March in DC in 2000. It was the largest audience I had ever played for (over 100,00). In this shot of my performance in DC, I have a poster that is leaning against my legs with the faces of some of the local Santa Cruz Ca youths who had died from gun violence in the small Central Coast community where I was living in at the time. I was invited to perform a song that was originally penned by Phil Ochs, with updated lyrics by me.

Sadly, they still apply.

My brother Jon took this shot. It was the last time we were all together: my brother, my sister-in-law, my nephew, my mom and me.

"There But For Fortune" original words/music by Phil Ochs

updated lyrics written by Beth Kotkin

"Show me a playground, show me a park
Show me the classroom wall where the bullets made their mark
And I’ll show you a young child, with so many reasons why
There But For Fortune may go you or I

Show me a woman who leaves on the run
Show me an angry man who is grabbing for his gun
And I’ll show you a young wife with so many reasons why
There But For Fortune may go you or I

Show me a veteran who knows no one cares
Show me the trembling hands pull the trigger in despair
And I’ll show you a young man with so many reasons why
There But For Fortune may go you or I

Show me a country where guns are in style
Show me the families who have lost their dearest child
And I’ll show you some young lives with so many reasons why
There But For Fortune may go you or I"

The MP3 posted below is a studio version that was made with the help of many great musicians who donated their time to have this appear on the CD that was put out shortly after this event. Unfortunately, it never made the CD. I was bumped to allow Emmylou Harris contribute a song. That's show business folks!

But luckily I can share it with you here. I want to thank Ray Frank for all his work on this project: this was his arrangement, and he rounded up all the musicians and the studio all of whom donated their time and creativity, including the wonderful Patrice Haan, on harmony vocals.

There But For Fortune

"Ain't No Cure for Love" by L Cohen

2011-10-05T08:53:00.006-04:00

"Love's Ambivalent Embrace " (photo by me)

I have loved Leonard Cohen since I bought his first LP in 1968. Ever since then, I have been a fan of both his poetry and his music.

I was lucky enough to see him in person at the Barclay Center in Brooklyn in 2012. It was what can only be described as as a religious experience. He said, “I promise you we’ll give you everything we got.” And they did.

This song is one of his rare, more "upbeat" tunes, at least for him that is :).

Enjoy!

"The Diming of the Day" by Richard Thompson

2011-10-04T08:16:00.002-04:00

Twilight at Big Sur, shot taken by me

Here I am doing another sad song. This one is written by the talented Richard Thompson. It was originally sung by his then-wife, Linda Thompson. I know it gets covered a lot, and for good reason. It is a wonderful song.

This is my take on it. I have the guitar tuned to dropped D tuning, for those who are into this kind of thing.

"Across the Great Divide" by Kate Wolf

2011-10-03T11:33:00.004-04:00

Shot taken by me at 11,000 feet in the Hoover Wilderness near Virginia Lakes.

Kate Wolf died the year I discovered her music, over 20 years ago now. I never got to see her perform in person, but I listened to her music and learned many of her songs that I later went on to perform myself in concerts. I have been told that I sound like her, which I consider the highest of praise.

I am posting a video of me singing her song "Across The Great Divide" that I recently recorded.
(For all you tech nerds and geeks out there: I recorded this in my garage on my Mac desktop. I used IMoveHD, with a Shure8900 microphone plugged into an imic that was plugged into my Mac. Combine this with my isight that has the light attachment, and it worked like a dream!)

"Tomorrow is a Long Time" by Bob Dylan

2011-10-03T11:22:00.005-04:00


I took this shot of my daughter and our dog at the beach in Santa Cruz.

I learned this finger picking arrangement, in dropped D, when I was a teenager from a camp counselor named Lindsay Holland. Lindsay had been a roadie for Dylan back in the day, and taught me this arrangement before it had ever been released by Dylan himself. (thank you Lindsay Holland wherever you are!) If it ain't broke, then don't fix it I say.

When I learned it, Dylan had not put this out on record (remember those?), but it was available on bootleg and cover versions.

I still love the simplicity of this piece.

"I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" by Hank Williams

2011-10-03T11:19:00.013-04:00

That's me, age 14, getting a guitar lesson from Lindsay Holland

I learned this Hank Williams classic when I was a teenager from a summer camp counselor who came from Ft Worth Texas (thank you Lindsay Holland!). He taught me how to finger-pick, for which I am eternally grateful. Lindsay is a musician and poet, last heard of in San Diego California. Like many of us, his dreams of becoming a full-time musician were interrupted by life, but I hear he is still playing and singing, and passed his gifts to his son as well.

Wherever you are today, thank you for teaching me Doc Watson, Hank Williams, Bob Dylan and Libba Cotton.

I am so grateful to all the musical mentors who have crossed my path along the way.

La Chanson des Vieux Amants (Jacques Brel)

2011-10-03T11:07:00.008-04:00

Old Lovers, taken by me

I learned this song in back in the 1960's when I was a teenager, from a record I had of Jacques Brel. He was very popular in NYC at the time. There was a musical called "Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris" that was a hit on Broadway. Judy Collins also covered this song on one of her records.

I played the record over and over again to get the words (this was way before the internet. It would have been so much easier now). I performed it for a modern dance show at my High School. I had only a vague idea then what this song was about.

Now that I am older, it resonates so much more strongly for me....

Here are the French lyrics, with my English translation :

"La Chanson De Vieux Amants" by Jacques Brel

(The Song of Old Lovers) English translation by me

1) Bien sûr, nous eûmes des orages (Of course, we have had our storms)

Vingt ans d`amour, c`est l`amour fol (Lovers for 20 years, it is a crazy love)

Mille fois tu pris ton bagage (A thousand times you have packed your bags)

Mille fois je pris mon envol (A thousand times, I have taken flight)

Et chaque meuble se souvient (And each piece of furniture remembers)

Dans cette chambre sans berceau (in this room without a cradle)

Des éclats des vieilles tempêtes (the claps of old thunderstorms)

Plus rien ne ressemblait à rien (Nothing is the same anymore)

Tu avais perdu le goût de l`eau (You have even lost the taste for water)

Et moi celui de la conquête (And me only the taste for conquest)

{Refrain:}

Mais mon amour (But my love)

Mon doux, mon tendre, mon merveilleux amour (My sweet, my tender, my marvelous love)

De l`aube claire jusqu`à la fin du jour (from the clear dawn until the end of the day)

Je t`aime encore tu sais je t`aime (I love you still, you know I love you)

2) Moi, je sais tous tes sortilèges (Me, I know all your sorceries)

Tu sais tous mes envoûtements (You know all my magic tricks)

Tu m`as gardé de pièges en pièges (you have kept me safe from trap to trap)

Je t`ai perdue de temps en temps (I have lost you from time to time)

Bien sûr tu pris quelques amants (Of course, you have taken a few lovers)

Il fallait bien passer le temps (You surely have to pass the time)

Il faut bien que le corps exulte (The body must know rapture)

Finalement finalement (Finally finally)

Il nous fallut bien du talent (It took us a lot of talent)

Pour être vieux sans être adultes (To become old without becoming adults

{Refrain}

3) Et plus le temps nous fait cortège (And the more time marches on)

Et plus le temps nous fait tourment (The more time torments us)

Mais n`est-ce pas le pire piège (but isn't it the worst trap)

Que vivre en paix pour des amants ( for lovers to live in peace?)

Bien sûr tu pleures un peu moins tôt (Of course you cry a little less easily)

Je me déchire un peu plus tard (I tear myself apart a little more slowly)

Nous protégeons moins nos mystères (We protect our secrets less and less )

On laisse moins faire le hasard (We take fewer chances)

On se méfie du fil de l`eau (we don't trust the stream of water) or (we no longer go with the flow)

Mais c`est toujours la tendre guerre (but it is always a tender war)

{Refrain}