This is an old favourite of mine, mostly because of the arrangement.1 The song seems to unfold according to its own sense of twisty freedom. It breaths and undulates. Each section doesn’t give a good idea of what will follow, but it all seems to make coherent sense, at least to me.
After I’d finished In Open Light in spring 2020 — a sunny, open-hearted album — I wanted to get back to the spookier sound world of A Life A Day (which I haven’t yet shared any of via this newsletter, but will get to eventually). The initial sketch for this is from June 2020, but I didn’t work on it again until July 2021, when I finished it alongside another tune from Ghosts (last week’s is from the same album). At that point, the vague working title for the album was Spooky Voices. The idea was to infuse the bleaker, more apocalyptic side of folk music with eerie but contemporary vocal production. I’d just done sunrise in the desert — it was time for haunted dreams.
I can’t recall exactly, but it seems possible some of the more cyclical tendencies in the lyrics might influenced by reading Lao Tzu. I was also skimming through Milton’s Paradise Lost for inspiration around the time of the initial idea, but more on that some another time.
The commands of the sun, And the mouth that you run, And the land that you tend, Won't be around, No, you won't be around. And the beasts of the field, And the stones in your heel, The kisses that you feel, Won't be around, And won't bring you down. And the wheat that you eat, And the weeds that you need, The creatures that you breed, The wind and the dust, Your shame and your lust. The heart that you carved, That concealed your love, That exalts what you hold, The blood of your kin, And the blood of your sins. The words you withheld, The desires you quelled, The blame in your nerves, Comments that gnaw, The answers you saw. The waters, and the death, The woods, and the breath, Your god and your friend, The bright and the best, The bowed and the rest. The praise and the mirth, The anguish and hurt. The start of it all, The harp and the earth, My name and my birth. I can't sing your name. And even though I need you, In my life. And even though I need you, In my mind. The praise and the mirth. The anguish and hurt. The start of it all. The harp and the earth. My name and my birth.
I also love the main synth sound, which I made using an instrument that is very dear to me, Madrona Labs’ excellent Kaivo synth.