Dear Andrew,

Hello there, I am Anna, and I have wanted to send some text and videos where I share my songwriting/poetry work to you and sing a little; some are your songs as well as more music I love.

This is to say thank you for your presence in my life these past few years. Your work has helped and guided me in multiple ways, even before I could start grasping its depths.

Many of the songs/poems I share were written with your work in mind and I wanted to make them available to you, were you ever interested in collaborating. The rest of my website has photo and video work. I also have a bit of animation and mixed media here: https://sites.google.com/view/annahendersonvisualart

Later I will also post some paintings I’ve created with your music and some tracks I’ve recently worked on, playing with loops and natural sounds.

I apologize for the many mess-ups - I’m still learning to control my Voice...

I’ll be posting on this page for a few days so there is more coming.

Thank you and have a very Merry Christmas and a Wonderful New Year!

Intro

Night Swim - 2024

54x28 cm

Acrylic on Wood

Third Avenue

Shrike

The Acrobats

Chatter

(private link)

On Silence

(Private link)

Dear Andrew,

Although it brings me anxiety because of our aggressive world, I have admired your stance for Palestinian rights. I have spent a little time in the West Bank and still foster a dear friendship with a family of wonderful musicians and educators. For a while I was active towards spreading awareness to their cause. Then for a while I became silent. 

I wish not to live in this silent space anymore. 

I wanted to share these words with you, and you may use them as you see fit in your own work, or we might revise them together. 

As for all of the songs and poems I’m sharing. 

Thank you,

A

Your Song

(Private Link)

Today, and as we approach the end of my shares for the time being, I ve shared two more poems above, “Waking” and “More Than Rigid” and also wanted to send a small home recording session where I sing along with some of my favorite artists. It’s still very undaring singing but it is fun after all.

Listed below are the songs I have chosen, so you can listen to their grandeur properly.

Fav Songs Combo (private link)

Happy New Year Dear Andrew,

I wish you a beautiful year 2025

Here are a couple of tracks I have produced recently while attending a digital recording intro class. The first is an experimental track where I’ve recorded myself tapping, the sound of the tram train in Nice, where I was born, and the thunder to make a heartbeat + other natural sounds like crickets and a ticking clock. Also added in there are some Japanese drums loops and singing bowls to make bell sounds.

The second is a mix I created with my selection from varied loops made available to us by our instructor.

Both Sides Now (private link)

Dear Andrew,

Today I am posting some more paintings that I have created with your music. These two, as well as another which I’ve added on the top of this page, called “Night Swim”

To see more paintings, you can go here:

www.annabellehenderson.com/paintings

Day of The Knight - 2024

45x72 cm

Acrylic on Wood

Hanuman - 2024

45x72 cm

Acrylic on Wood

From Eden (private link)

I wrote “On The Bus To Boston” years ago, probably back in 2017, and it was inspired by singer/songwriter Valerie June after I heard her set at the Newport Folk Fest

Say It All

Dear Andrew,

Happy Birthday to you!!

To celebrate your day, I wanted to send this lovely moment, post-a recent walk I had, listening to your music. When over, I sat, still with your music, and the birds answered. Here’s what they had to say when they heard you play on my loudspeaker:

June 16th, 2025

Dear Andrew,

Today completes (again, and finally) the work I am sharing with you on this platform. I’m adding new poems and songs, as well as a video “demo” of songs I have written for you - some of them are musical renditions of some of the work I’ve sent previously / re-works, and some of them are new. Also to complete my gift, is a poem I wrote about my hometown, Villefranche sur Mer (I now live in Rhode Island), which I recite at the end of the demo. It is also added below here in text form.

In the video demo the songs I sing are these (added below the video), in order:

Solenoid, The Acrobats, Butterfly, You Got It, The Daisy Girls, Holy Land, To Be Seen

I thank you so much for everything that you have inspired in me; you have helped me Grow tremendously.

I am there, always, if you wish to collaborate.

I send you my love and look forward to seeing you at your show next week, the 23rd in Boston,

Anna.

Portrait of A Village

I was born between a village and a city
Facing a ferocious boulevard and a Godly, panoramic view of the Mediterranean Sea.
Living atop a hill, nested in the carving, that made the rest of it a cliff. (You can call it a cornice).
School was on the mount, or in the city. Near was a small town, the one made for me.

The town, you see, was a treat.
Un petit paradis, an escape from ennui.
We had there pizza nights and baci-ball galore, (we call it pétanque in French flavor).
While at the club we could also savor,
sweet frozen cream, kept inside the cooler.

Hands on the glass, we’d salivate in our wait.

My father has an eye with an arm to Match it. He can throw anyway and be sure to land it. As a tyke I’d feel proud as a champ, mirroring his hurrays.
Later on, bring it on, I could clear the pool table.
He taught me to play like a gentleman;
We often were the only ones to step aside of our opponents’ way.
I often was the only young woman.

And I loved all the ways that I played.

Each time I stepped, stomped, skipped and stumbled; in my favorite place.

I felt closer to him and to all the appeal. The place where they met and where I learned to dream. As grand vagabonds setting sail, hitchhiking; meeting in the middle and deciding to land.

They followed the sound of the sweet seventies.

Him a merchant marine, she a nurse, and water colorist. His eye an equal match for a lens well traveled, he’d make of his world breathtaking pictures.
My favorites were the ones made of her. I still hide in my home the one’s I’d stolen.

She lived in a studio overlooking the Old Port; Bougainvillea lined windows, crimson vines holding on to a honey lime wash.

While transiting from one ship to the next, He slept under the hull of a skiff washed ashore. (Or ashore, washed?)

Their magnetic impact had them deciding to stay. Soon enough they were wed and I was on the way.

***

A Fisherman’s Village

As colorful cubes fragmented, in all shapes and sizes, with roof tiles made of clay,
The old town is sprinkled from the shore to the first cornice.
It is as charming as it is seductive;
amongst the many who, famously there adopted a home, Tina, Elton, the Stones and Cocteau shared my love of the place.

(Bella Ciao came in - you have to mention the history, the resistance)

A village with a past of fierce resistance. You’d never think, walking through the Rue Obscure, a tunnel-like street stretching under the old town - some of the doors you may pass, now perhaps modern flats, once hid the pride that still resonates throughout France.

It lived in our school yards and in the voice of our teachers. The wall near the entrance adorned with the Niçois version
of “Bella Ciao”.
A cry for freedom and reclamation.

The sprinkle also stretched towards the Citadelle, a fortress completed in the fifteen hundreds. Still to this day you can get dizzy, leaning too close to the edge of its battlements.

Some chose to use it to meet their ends.

You can walk around its great walls to the other port, the one less frequented and home of the shipyard. If you know the way you will also find, a pebble beach, away from the tourists and the grind.
(That’s where my father’s skiff was found)

As I write about it, I can hear the halyards, their music on the top of the masts.
When the boats were rocking, gently,
as we walked past.

Father brought me there to swim at night, naked under the stars.
Holding hands and laughing out of pride.
I was free from the approaching shame of teenage-hood,

Not yet a Child again.

At times, in summer, you might share the refreshing water
with a phenomenal display of nautical fairies. (You can also call it Bioluminescence)
And there are real monitors of the sea, right there on the corner, at the great institute of science.
A space now renowned and redeemed, it was long ago used to tie up the feet, also in transit, of poor southern souls ripped away from their homes-
and on their way to their knees.

***

Back in the village, you could also hear in the street
At dusk, when it smelled of damp concrete and wisteria in the compressed air
Little steps tip-toeing like mice in the attic, every Monday or Tuesday night, who knows now - music from the ballet class where my feet were stretched out.

Bellow there a cafe and tabac
Where I’d buy magazines. Some of them contained images I’ve learned never to take, some of them, my first love readings.
On the screen, the results from the horses getting raced, and on the counter,
Beers and mint waters.

In the streets, the regular meetings, mornings and evenings, of the town’s matriarchs. In the same chairs they’ll always sit, by their front doors or their neighbors shade. They’ll discuss the latest trends and “have you seen the news?” Which kid broke a window playing ball and “I wish the neighbor would share his lemons”.

They remind me quite of my dear Nonna, my grandma, from nearby Italy. “La Panchina” they call it, this cultural standard, whole, where we meet in the street whether it shines or rains.

To head up the village there’s small roads you can take. Or you opt for the stairs,
There by the hundreds

You can walk your life
Stop at the small grocers and the fresh vegetable markets. You can explore the narrow streets adorned with plants and leisurely roaming cats.
Easily bus or train around as you need to.
Go to the city, and the neighboring towns by the sea, or perched on the hilltops.

With mother, we’d spend time at the beach by day; invent a new life in the water and perfect our climb of lonely sea boulders; reliving again and encore, magical dives into the salted relief of summer.
I made all sorts of people splashing back then. One was a zen master.

(((One day I got knocked over by a small breaker.
I was already at mermaid swimming capacity, but for a split second or two, I didn’t know what to do.)))

When my mermaid was at her most magical state, once she found a North African brass Bangle. Stamped with circles and triangles.
She must have been looking for fish but instead got a gift she’d wear for years.
Her precious miracle.

She lost it in a fitting room, after fighting her sister, a proper knock over.
Trying on a new shirt she surely didn’t need, nor deserve.

***

Once I entered the church, proud pillar of our village, while on a Lesson-learning day.
God rang its bells three times, or perhaps the automat
They hit my heart like a ton of bricks, the ground shook beneath my feet

I miss them dearly

You always know what time it is, and you live by it, without much rushing.
You get used to the quiet voice of the place, and Godly amongst the bells, are the doves and the swifts, the fountains,
The noise of the sweep.

A couple of years back they shut-off the stream, which provided relief and water so clean,
direct from the source - now only granted,
if you afford a roof in Riviera land.

Amongst the losses of our changing times, be it from climate or rising estates,
I miss these fountains that lulled me by sound

Faithful companion, once right out my door, was one set like a mantle
On the public square
Long ago, the church’s cimetière

Occasional nightly borrowers of a bench
Now must find water somewhere far from the bells

A Grand gift is alive yet, doors to the house of prayers, by day still open

While non-elective of a God known by name, I still enjoy lighting up little flames
Send them well at the bare feet of poorly recalled saints,

And worship to my Love on a bench

***

I must also mention the smell
In a town where second floor windows nearly greet at the mane

Where caramelized onions and bakers breads
Will call you by name

On your walk you’ll notice all kinds of delightful aromas, lilies and orange blossoms, eucalyptus in the rain,

A salted breeze by the train

I let this move me as I stroll,
High
Amazed

The colors too will tell
Of a place built of stone, of clay and of sand
Shades of yellows, corals, ochres by the hundreds,
Pinks and turquoise and blues on the tiles or panels, the shutters above,
The street stained by petals

Their guarding tall plants adorn
All arrays of green
Some potted together, happiest ever seen

***

Flower festivals in the spring leave your table feeling blessed,
Sweet children wear mimosa in their plaids, arms reach at the harbor for carnations,
thrown from decorated boats in a parade

In summer too we’ll celebrate, with outdoor films and village balls
First loves staring at you near the band
Polkas and gypsies, swaying late

We sure loved dancing til we’d fall
(Til the Fall)

Post August heat we’d hear different bells,
Those that called us away from the sun
In class I’d dream of the Citadelle
That welcomed my feet as they spun

In the skirt I wore dancing, twelve or thirteen,
I fell in the harbor
While waiting for a table at the docks
A family dinner, rescued by my father

Oh the shame I felt
He plucked me like a sea twig,
I couldn’t show my face
Had to run home to get clean

***

Soon came the years of late night pow wows, with friends that would flirt or pretend to mock you
All we wanted was to be liked, (we forgot how to play)
And we’d try anything that would make us look cool

We’d hangout uptown on the boulevard
By the soccer stadium, closed at night,
But we owned the bus stop

First heartbreaks issued and received like a fight,
First safety issues and folks woken up

I later left my town when the big city called
More friends to be made, plenty of alcohol
Music in dark caves and dreams of growing tall

While I partied and sailed,
My sweet village waited
Until I’d return, well,

Yet not belonging again

***

Now my kids run down the stairs
The same ways I did
Climb the same beach boulders
Eat an ice cream daily

Dance in the summer

While on our yearly visit

You see, I moved to the US of A
Provided them with a grand yard to play
More space and too, more speed
Not the same bells nearby I must say

I miss the smells and the colors
I miss all the familiars
I miss the slow pace we harbor
The culture at the table

The girl who fell in the water

(Merci Andrew)

Anna Henderson

contact@annabellehenderson.com

+1 401 829 9307

400 Third Beach Rd

Middletown, RI

USA