Bill Crandall
During a road trip around Serbia some years ago, we stopped to see the Ottoman bridge in Visegrad, Bosnia. It was the subject of Serb author Ivo Andric’s novel The Bridge on the Drina, which depicts the life of the town over the five centuries of the bridge’s construction and existence. It has a small sitting area at the center, called the kapija, where teens, lovers, and friends would meet. And where they threw the bodies into the green water during the Bosnian war.
My first music album imagined the first people to leave Earth for another planet. When I started working on new material for the followup, human stories from back on a climate-changing world, I set one of the songs in the town as the waters begin to rise.
Visegrad
Great green river cuts through the town
On its way forward
The past rushed over, submerged
You know I can’t quite find you
My breath is still inside you
A kind of storm
Rise green tide, take over
Wash away our fears
Soon we’ll meet on the kapija
I know you can’t oblige me
Your kiss is still inside me
A kind of storm
And the wheels turn around
And the walls hold their ground
And the breeze feeds the fire
As fleets go to ground
In faraway sounds
The bridge keeps its head over water