Description
There's the title cut: or rather, the George Shearing instrumental to which Indin has set her own lyrics, and whose title--"And then I wrote"--she (re)makes her own, in tribute to the female poets she has mobilised for her project. Indin's feisty words against Shearing's cool vibe create a productive tension, as the female practitioner of a male- dominated craft takes over the "master's tools", not so much to dismantle his house as to rebuild it, driven both by her need for liberation --"Speak your mind, pronounce it"--and by her desire for a revivification of a revered tradition--"I first heard this song / I had to hum along, / N' then I wrote these lines / Substantial words that rhyme." Rather than being cowed by her great predecessors, or crushed by the continuing injustices of her age ("Bewildered as I am / In these modern times"), Indin resolves to make her mark, on the musical world and in her life as a woman and mother. Because, as she writes, "Who gives in speechless? / Careless? Wordless?" Well, not Sonja Indin, that's for sure.