Another Eve (2024)

As Joyce concluded her Eden world tour, she invited us to create a song cycle that would further explore the themes we had begun to uncover in our previous collaboration, The First Morning of the World. That piece, rooted in the desire to connect with the essence of creation and find harmony within nature’s rhythms, became the foundation for Another Eve.

Each song in the cycle reflects a different impulse to embrace perspectives that emerge from the idea of Eden. The First Morning of the World was like a stone cast into a pond—its ripples expanding in many directions, yet all leading back to a shared hope: a deep, resonant connection to the world around and within us.

The borders of Eden, of course, are not drawn on any map. Yet, guided by Joyce’s luminous voice and her extraordinary ability to communicate, we set out to create songs that might make us feel as if she had been there—returning not just with music, but with an experience she could share, allowing us to glimpse, if just for a moment, that world through her.

The music makes a visceral journey with the singer through her emotions and questioning; soaring as she looks up to see a murmuration of starlings, or like a child as she climbs to the top of a tree, or being with her in her loss of a parent. The songs are emotional, intimate settings, unafraid of simplicity, desiring to connect to the listener.

Gene Scheer and Rachel Portman

ANOTHER EVE
Words by Gene Scheer Music by Rachel Portman

1. The First Morning of the World

There is a language without question marks.
You can read it in the rings of trees.
And in the wind and the river.
And in the sound of birds singing.
Has their song changed since they sang it once in Eden? 

Oh, to understand the language of the trees…
the grammar of the earth…
the sounds and the songs from the first morning of the world. 

But I am filled with nothing but questions.
And each one is bound together like logs on a raft,
Taking me down the river mile by mile.
Ever farther away from the mountain top.
Ever farther away from the borders of my heart.
Ever farther away… away…away…
Away from the first morning of the world.

There is a torn map in my clenched fist.
On it is marked where I have been
And where I want to go.
But this moment is not on any map. 

It is in the rings of trees.
In the wind and the river.
It is in the sound of birds singing as they did in Eden.
In the songs on the first morning of the world. 

Oh tree, Oh, bird, Oh, world. Oh, all of you…
Oh, forgotten garden! I am here.
Touch me. Teach me to sing notes that bloom like a canopy of leaves,
Meant to do nothing but feel the sun.

2.    Another Eve

Blamed, lost, cast out of the garden…
Another Eve looks up.
A flock of starlings weaves together.
Thousands and thousands of birds
Climb, wheel, dive, turn.
Twist, fold.
Shape shift into
into something astonishing. 

There must be a plan, a design,
a grand idea they share:
“Now we rise! Now we fall!
Climb, wheel, dive, turn.” 

Yet, there is no plan.
Just one starling…
And another and another
Focused only on who is right next them.
“You tilt your head. I tilt mine
You lift your wing. I lift mine.” 

Blamed, lost, cast out of the garden,
Another Eve looks up.
And another and another and another…
Not one of them is waiting for a plan, a design,
or a grand idea.
Only waiting for someone
who says: “ I’m next to you.” 

“I tilt my head. You tilt yours
I lift my wing, You lift yours.”
Climb, wheel, dive, turn…
Shape shift into
into something astonishing.

3. Breathing 

My heart is pounding.
The clock is wound too tight.
My heart is pounding.
Is there time to get it right? 

Day by day by day,
Envy and longing
Chiseling a life away. 

Breathing…
Breathing…
My heart is pounding…
Breathing…
Breathing…my heart is pounding…
Breathing…
Breathing…My heart is…
Breathing…
Oh, to make no more demands
But finding Eden
In what is in my mortal hands.

4. Holding On 

I climbed trees when I was a young.
Climbed them better than any boy.
No two trees were the same.
Just forests of chance.
I liked the puzzle of it. I remember…
All alone but not afraid.
Concentrating on each move.
Nothing but where I’d place my feet and hands. 

To get to a certain branch,
I need to get to that one first.
For way up there, on the other side,
the branches lined up like a ladder. 

I remember the feel of the bark,
the smell of pine needles,
the sticky sap on my fingers,
When holding on was all that mattered. 

Only when I got to the top
Did I stop and look out.
And when I did
I did not see the world in metaphors.
Not a crow’s nest. Not a magic carpet.
Not a chariot racing though the sky.
Words were not clouds blocking the sun.
The only sun was the one shining
in the sky and onto my face. 

I remember the feel of the bark,
the smell of pine needles,
the sticky sap on my fingers,
When holding on was all that mattered. 

I was on the top of a tree.
I was on the top of a tree.
I am on the top of a tree.

5. Why a Garden?

Why a garden?
Why is it where I go
When I feel that no one is listening
Or can truly understand?
Why a garden?

Because it is where she would go. 

Why a garden?

Because I remember
how she touched each seed,
tomato, bean and pepper.
So anxious to share what she picked that day.
How much she loved being there. 

Why a garden?
Because my mother is gone.
Gone for years and yet
Oh...Oh…Oh…

I’ll hear something,
smell something,
taste something,
And suddenly
She is… oh…



Why a garden?
For it is the place
Where all she ever wanted was for everything to grow.
Everything. Everyone find a way to grow.

Why a garden?

For she held it like creation’s violin
And her hands were the bow.


Why a garden?
Why is it where I go
When I feel that no one is listening…
Why a garden?
Because it is where she would go.

6. Eden’s Seed 

Am I singing lullabies
While the world slowly dies?
Am I lost in memories
woven into melodies?
Sometimes… often…
I am filled with doubt
It’s getting dark.
Time’s running out.
Our world, our home is on fire.
Oh, forgotten garden. What happens now?
I’m not sure.
And yet this is what I do.
Breathe and hope and sing to you.
Am I singing lullabies
While the world slowly dies?
Oh, let every note become a deed
As fertile as Eden’s seed.

7. The Tip of your Tongue

Stop listening to words
that others have sung.
The echoes of bells
that others have rung.
What are the words
on the tip of your tongue?
Where what is real
gives way to what is true.

You are the bud on
the end of the branch.
The beginning of a leaf.
The beginning of a life.
The beginning of a story.   

From the cradle
To the tomb.
The flower does not ask
Who will see it bloom. 

Stop listening to words
that others have sung.
The echoes of bells
that others have rung.
What are the words
on the tip of your tongue?
Where what is real
gives way to what is true.  

You are the bud on
the end of the branch.
The beginning of a leaf.
The beginning of a life.
The beginning of a story.