All I Ever Wanted
Composed by Benjamin Fairfield
This song can also be accessed on Amazon, iTunes, and other streaming services. I include the YouTube link in the spirit of your Open Access journal.
Lyrics
All I ever planned for you was love.
And all that I expected was reciprocation of…
but on this divided highway, the sign’s beyond the bluff.
So here I’m hoping hope will be enough.
Oh, here I’m hoping hope will be enough.
All I ever wished for us was life.
Twists and turns we’d navigate together in the night.
But here I’m reading currents while you’re following the light…
And I can’t know where to join your side.
I can’t know where to join you at your side.
All that I can promise is I’ll try,
and learn to leave the logic that demands to know the why.
I know you feel the pain but don’t yet know the way to cry…
So help me hear the words you have inside.
Oh, help me hear the words you have inside.
All we ever fought for was your peace.
Hoping we could claw our way in, keeping you in reach.
When every missed connection shows that love and failure sting…
I’ll still give you my everything.
I’ll still give you my everything.
Artist’s Statement
All I Ever Wanted focuses on our love for our young son while addressing themes of neurotypical parents raising neurodivergent children. Before we received the formal diagnosis, there was a nearly daily deluge of emails from preschool staff telling us to “please talk to him” about “his behavior.” It seemed that everywhere we turned, exasperated caregivers kept giving up on him, wanting to wash their hands of this “problem.” At that time, I had been working on an album using only homemade instruments made from repurposed “junk,” in conjunction with an ecomusicology course I had created at the University of Hawaii. I wanted to underscore that the things deemed “worthless” discards, from which so many sought to distance themselves, still have voice and purpose, and can make music(s) of their own. All I Ever Wanted, emphasizing the importance of connection, integrity, and respect, seeks to disrupt assumptions about “normative” communication and critiques ableism.
Read more Poetry in this issue of Wordgathering.
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About the Artist
Benjamin Fairfield received his MA and PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where he serves as lecturer and founder of the MUS311 Thai Ensemble (a sustainability-focused course where students repurpose found objects into Thai musical instruments). He has taught music at Ala Wai Elementary School, produced a high school garage band rock album in Thailand as a Peace Corps volunteer, and has published in various academic and literary journals. His illustrated children’s book about repurposing rubbish into musical instruments, Kani Ka ‘Opala: How can garbage sing? (University of Hawaii Press), was published in September 2025. These and other projects are curated on his website, www.kanikaopala.com.