Come Back As A Flower (Stevie Wonder cover)

Live from Station 234

Come Back As A Flower is one of only a few vocal-centric songs from Stevie Wonder’s soundtrack to the documentary The Secret Life of Plants. Syreeta Wright provides the beautiful, child-like vocals and lyrics for this song about reincarnation and being “at one” with the earth.

Sometimes a song enters into your life at a time when your ears and heart are primed for it to be truly heard. When the full scope of it can bloom into life all at once.

In the winter preceding my encounter with “Come Back as a Flower,” I read for the first time my Dad’s thoughts on reincarnation.

I’ve never known my dad to be a particularly spiritual or religious person. Skeptical, maybe. Questioning, yes. My father is about the facts. “No nonsense” is how is he often described. It is one of his great gifts. To the point. Logical. Fair. Little time for bullshit.

But never self-righteous. Never claiming there was one right way to do; to answer; to approach anything. A man of great humility.

And so “the door”—even on something as contested, debated and philosophized over as reincarnation—was left open. I think. I never asked him. From what I remember he didn’t talk about such things with me, unless I prompted him. And then he’d answer, in brief, and not without effort.

As might be expected, I was surprised to read his response, recorded in the winter of 2023, to this very question:

“Maybe I will be reincarnated into another form—…a flower…”

A flower?

“Keith Richards,” I could see see him saying.

But a flower?

There was something so delicate and sweet about the answer, even if I could imagine him saying it with a certain amount of agitation and perhaps, annoyance.

I suppose I shouldn’t be wholly surprised. My father has always had a strong connection with nature and he is a large part of the reason for mine. Travelling together through the island chains of Desolation Sound every summer, he would often marvel at the surrounding trees, the lichen covered granite shores and the open blue sky and say, “Look at this. Isn’t this beautiful. Look at it.”

It makes sense that he would want to be enfolded into this; to bloom within it; to come back as a flower.

And while he may outwardly cringe at Wright’s lyric that follows the title line, “I wish that I could come back as a flower,” I’d like to think it’s exactly what he’ll do…

“…spread the sweetness of love.”

Love,
David

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Mixed by Scott Rogers.
🎥 and Recorded at Blue Light Studios in 2023.
🎹 by Jonny Tobin.
Song Title: Come Back As A Flower
Album: The Secret Life of Plants
Artist: Stevie Wonder and Syreeta Wright (vocals by Syreeta Wright)