It Is Time to Sleep

by Carolyn Knight
carolynknight.ca*
www.instagram.com/carolynjknight
www.facebook.com/ECOArtsACTivatOR
*Note from Carolyn:
My carolynknight.ca Colabco Arts Hub site via WordPress , includes Donate options for folks to support my work. In the future I may add my music recordings; for now folks can see what my community engaged public arts practice looks like. It is a work in progress!

Kaitie’s notes: This page was built in collaboration with Carolyn Knight. Text in Italics are Carolyn’s notes. I want to thank her, truly, for her time and generosity both with creating the song and pouring in energy to help build this site to honor and carry it forward. I appreciate, too, her warm reaction to the evolution of the “little one” term of endearment at the end of the verse, which is a gender-neutral variation on her original words. There are several variations in circulation, but “little one” is the one I use. Carolyn says: The variation to reflect gender neutral words is an evolution for the comfort of singers and listeners that we agree makes for comfort, inclusion. I love this adaptability.

More on that, Carolyn’s work and inspiration, and on the origin of the song, below.

Carolyn shared with us this wonderful video, along with these words.
“December 15, 2024 with my friends who together are Karmistry. We are a quartet of women singing songs we love, for over 25 years, at kitchen tables, living rooms, as life allows. Sometimes we perform at our local folk music venue, Norway House. Ad hoc, we sing everything from early music, jazz, pop ballads, folk, to sometimes my original music. This simply imperfect kitchen-table-over-tea version leaves space for listeners to add their parts as they wish. I sing melody, Arlene, Dayle and Paulette sing harmony.”

Verse 1
It is time to sleep, time to go and lay/ it is time to sleep, time to go and lay/ it is time to sleep, time to go and lay/ once again once again little one.
Verse 2
It is time to rest, time to go and lay/ it is time to rest, time to go and lay/ it is time to rest, time to go and lay/ once again once again little one.
Verse 1 and Verse 2 can be repeated as many times as feels right.
Weaving in fragments such as “It is time, time” or “Time rest, time rest”, “Time sleep, time sleep”, or even “ It is, it is”.
Then, for Verse 3, a building crescendo, repeat a few times. Weave in “Time play, Time day”.
Verse 3
It is time to wake, time to meet the day/ time to wake, time to seize the day/ time to wake, time to play and play/ Once again once again one and all.
Outro: Sing Verse 1, softer softer. Then sing TAG: Once again, once again/ Once again, once again/ Once again, once again, (rubato: One and
all_____). Could return to a humming drone for a nice vagal nerve-calming ending.
Extra Note:
Verse 3 revision reflects individual and collective action, which was my intention but did not come through when we sang and recorded in the sample recording provided.
-FINE-

Another variation I appreciate is this:
A drone to start off is nice to start into the song. Song leader sings Verse 1 to set tempo, then other voices join in Unison or in parts; the tempo, which can, organically increase, especially for Verse 3 It is time to wake, can slow down over reprise of Verse 1 and The Outro which can organically be rubato to end. Then back to a humming drone.

About Carolyn Knight, and the origin of this song.
I sang before I spoke, catching songs as they rise. Singing as a songwriter performer or by codeveloping arts-based community projects, my aim is to make the circle bigger. Many voices, hands and views celebrating our human nature, and our love for the natural world. Here in the Pacific Northwest on Vancouver Island we are fortunate to welcome home returning wild salmon each autumn. We wish them well each spring as juvenile salmon leave their river homes to travel the mysterious tides of the Pacific ocean. A keystone species that has fed Coastal Peoples, bears, wolves, birds, bugs and ancient forests for millennia, wild salmon symbolize our resilience, and a reciprocal relationship between humans and coastal ecosystems, season by year, by decade by lifetime, supports life along the coast north and south. Save Wild Salmon is a hue and cry here where I live.

When my firstborn, Aidan, changed my life and made me a mother, the mysterious tides of motherhood had me explore my relationship to the natural world evermore deeply. A cradle song for my child rose up and over time, and another changing tide of another darling soul, added to an urge for a wholesome world for these two wonders to grow up into. It is Time To Sleep cradle song lent itself to become one of my **RiverSongs: Sing The Salmon Home for Colquitz River, sung each year at an annual community celebration event held at the river park. Spawning salmon do indeed return and have a final sleep – die after female lay eggs, males fertilize eggs with milt – and do wake in the form of their eggs growing and
changing to leave home, swim the seas, and continue the cycles of life. Emblematic of our life cycles too; born, birthing, giving way to death, reborn as our offspring continue the lifecycle. Living on in stories, songs, actions, and hope for a livable world.

At our neighbourhood urban creek, one that had historical importance as a wild coho salmon stream, turned into a stormwater drainage ditch, became a catalyst for me. One day, Aidan was not home from school. Out looking, I found him down at our creek, splashing in the cross connected storm and sewer water! Later, reflecting, I realized that the natural draw of playing in a neighbourhood creek is our children’s birthright. Taking part in our community initiative to restore the creek and the watershed feeding the creek, has became a lifelong urge that threads through all my work in projects with artists, schools, community groups and governments, in songs, murals, mosaics, theatre, puppetry, and social activism. With community arts-based projects, I share my love and need for healthy ecosystems in
projects connecting learners of all ages to their local creeks, rivers, and Garry oak meadows, and to one another.

**The original RiverSong – Sing the Salmon Home recordings, were lost: I want to re-record them for posterity and share them on my newly-revised web page project hub. Aidan – a musician and producer, is in the completion stages of his passive building Shape Recording Studio here in Victoria. I would love to share another RiverSong with you some day when he makes time for his Ma to do her thing!

More about the cultural movement toward using a gender-neutral term of endearment: From the salmon spawning perspective, gender difference is part of the lifecycle: maybe there are occasions when the distinction can be discussed with singing group to include the biological imperative of salmon lifecycle. As in the intent to sing for the wild salmon ( which I believe is vital, sacred, meaningful) can be distinguished. For example, provide a brief intro on wild salmon lifecycle, and draw parallels to our human need for healthy ecosystems, our homes, leaving and returning to a home, to rest, birth, of death, of new life born, and a rising up to meet the new day, play and play and play, and return to a state of time for rest, renewal. Energetically I like this arc.

Below is the recording Kaitie learned the song from, received from Maggie Wheeler who was present at the event where it was recorded. Carolyn’s reflection: [This recording] may have taken place here in Victoria during a get together of the people who had taken part in the song leading workshops by Shivon Robinsong and Dennis Donnelly back in about 2010 or so? Not sure of the date. The singing is lovely, and I am glad a recording exists that so reflects what I had hoped the song could do: be a circle of voices joined, organically. I like the changes in dynamic level, especially decrescendo over last refrain, as a natural calming/ soothing/ quieting end to the song.