Story Behind The Song

After surviving cancer, losing my fiancée to a tragic accident that left her with little memory of me, and then enduring my own near-death experience when hit by a car while riding a motorcycle -- everything changed. I was told that walking again would be a difficult road, and I lost the use of my left arm for three years. During that time of physical limitation and emotional upheaval, "Does a Seed Ask Permission" was born. It became both a meditation and a declaration -- a refusal to let pain and loss be the only voice in my head. This piece is not about being brave or heroic; it's about choosing life, my life, fiercely and tenderly, amid loss. It was my way of saying: I'm still here. And I didn't come to fit in -- I came to be.

Song Description

This one fuses poetic language with cinematic folk sensibility. With imagery rooted in the natural world -- seeds splitting, storms in roots, tides that refuse to whisper -- the poem becomes a metaphor for human transformation and resilience. It explores the raw interior of a person shaped by wounds, wildness, and color that bleeds from deep within. Rather than claiming the mantle of a hero, the speaker invites us to witness what it means to grow without asking, to bloom without approval, and to embody contradictions -- tenderness and fury, brokenness and strength. At its core, this piece is about authentic emergence: a man who doesn't bloom on command but breaks open in his own time, as nature does. With echoes of spoken word, folk storytelling, and the pulse of elemental truth, this piece is for anyone who's ever felt both fractured and fierce -- a flame held together by the cracks.

Lyrics

Does a Seed Ask Permission?
Copyright © 1998 David Baumgarten
Key: G major

Does a seed ask permission 'fore it splits open to begin?
Does the dark shame the bud for shedding its skin?
Does the rain check the sky before falling with grace,
or the wind bow its head to a silent place?

Does nature not stand in dispute with itself,
lightning in branches, a storm in the root?
Yet still it does seek the curve of our sun, the rhythm and reason, the unspoken run.

I was born with a holler stitched deep in my skinwith colors that bleed from the marrow within.
Not brave. Not a beacon.
Not built for applause, just a pulse in the wild with untold flaws.

But flaws feed this flower and cracks hold this flame and I wear scars and fractures with no fear nor shame.
My lips don't ask favor before they speak red.
My hips hold a battle that silence once fed.

Is the tide shy when it's time to arrive?
No! It crashes, it lashes, and comes full alive.

I am tree, I am stone, I am ash, I am fire,
not built to be mild but to foment desire.

A man, a wound walking, an unyielding light, I don't bloom on command nor recoil from a fight.

And yet, not some hero, but don't soften the song, I'm just part of an earth that's known wild all along.

Playlist Creator	Playlist Name	Date Added
Lyfe Concierge Publishing	BEST SONGS ON BROADJAM	4/9/2025