Song #16: The River

When one allows the Tabla, a delay pedal, and an unbroken lyrical stream of consciousness to collide the result is... The River. I believe that this song symbolizes a new step on this journey- it was a rare occurrence during the writing of these vocals that I referred to the schizophrenic whispers of perceived popular opinion... I basically did not even consider what might "sound good" on this track, I just wrote. It was a playful and honest experience... It really does feels like a sacred event to write something entirely for oneself but to share it with others... thanks for eavesdropping :)




Song Title: The River
Song Length: 3:30
Contributions: The Screaming Room
Lyrics:

He said go when the captain said stay,
Now he's standing outside in the pouring rain,
But the Rain ain’t nothing but a river that strays,
And no river gonna wash him away.

And it better be I,
God damn it better be I...

Back to the paint can,

They scream like knives on canvas,
Carve Starry Nights like god then Gogh,
Keep Ear to the ground keep down,
Keep low like hopes in average homes.

And hope stands close to the well where the wishers go to wish in their Sunday clothes,
Little ones get grabbed by hope get tossed down the well when they get too close.

Oh hope you sexy harlot,
Please let our people go,
Tie the head of hope to my horse and the war-cry sounds like “OM”.

The incense is undressing itself, exposing its core revealed only by fire.
I dreamt a dream and it smelled of sandalwood.
It's ghost dancing like a strand of silk caught in a
Breeze, breeze,
We moved our feet, feet,
Like tin soldiers marching through a restless stream, stream.
I cant breathe, breathe,
No I cant breath, breathe,
There's something sitting on my chest that I cant see, see.

There's always angels at the bottom if you're willing to drown,
There's nothings new under the sun except all that above ground.
So I’m inventing the wheel from an old wheel that I found,

Voila

Gotta be, gotta-be, caught in the auto-dream,
I gotta a key to the cottage economy,
Calling me, Calling me, demanding all of me,
Slipping the dream beneath welcome-mat-ology,

Go, go,
and take your stones, stones,
I'm tired of feeling claustrophobic while at home alone,
They said roam, roam.
Within this zone, zone.
So I throw words into the night- follow the tone, tone.

Now I’ve got methods beyond magic that I use to deceive.
I've got a rabbit in my hat here and an ace up my sleeve,
I try make myself disappear each Saturday eve,
But it takes more than homemade vino to get my ego to leave.

So I breathe.

Stand to the sound of screams,
This rooms only got one key,
This wombs got a spot for me.
Bare floor begging for bare feet.
Now let a man sing off key,
Misspell every word he speaks,
Let laughter collide with grief,
Let reality collide with dreams.
Let me go mad, Mad,
Let me go mad, mad,
Let me explore each inch of suffering and laugh, laugh,
Let me go ja dra
Let me go spa bla
Let me just speak in my own language like gla ga gla.

So many pages of poems.
So many words pushed into existence by life-scented hands,
Calloused from hard work with delicate mediums.
Words that will not halt the passage of time or lunge steel rods deeply into the grinding gears of perennial change...
We write... and the restless train of progress screams through the night,
pushing up and down the same familiar tracks like an industrial age Sisyphus who speaks to a nodding shard of me...
but that shard of me is locked in a closet and whispers only in Greek.
I used to know Greek but have forgotten it entirely so as not to slip and understand,
to accidently stumble upon what I already know.
What I do know is that these words provide me with solace and insight but that is not why I write them,

I write them because it is as close as I will ever come to walking naked through time square.

Song #15: Happiest Man

This is a song I started years ago while Michelle and I were living in San Francisco... I had tried multiple times to finish this song but as long as my inner critic was looking over my shoulder it was an impossible feat. Well although my inner critic still stops by for tea he is no longer my roommate... its Song 15 for gods sake! So I pulled the shards of this song out and shared them with Evan and together, along with the beautiful voices of our wife/wife-to-be, we were able to fashion the shards of song into a something really satisfying. I would also like to send a special shout out to my always-amazing twin brother Mikkel who has been a lover of the shards of this song since the day they were forged, love you bro, bet you never thought this song would ever actually come together! I sure didnt but hell, there's no place for a critic in the screaming room.

Namaste.




Title: Happiest Man
Length: 5:07
Contributions: The Screaming Room, Mikkel for helping to keep this little seedling alive, the Sun for doing its thang so well this week, and a big shout out to the little red truck I just bought BOOM!

Lyrics:

I swear there's more homeless in this city
Than bedtime stories being read to the hopeful.
Sometimes I lay naked with the window wide
open and cold so I can feel like a local.
Outside North Beach is looking pretty
Like a scene from the fifties- the fog and neon lights,
And although the feigns are getting itchy
Its all poetry tonight... Right?
Its all poetry tonight...

Sweet something looking stranded on the corner
Miles away family dinner no one talks about the daughter.
And lord knows what she'd for five dollars,
On streets and backseats, blue, black, and white collar.

And its just another day in the neighbourhood,
Beautiful people doing what they think they should.

I don’t believe that seeing their pain as beautiful is a problem,
No, I believe its just bring their pain home.
And yes, this is just my opinion,
But its all opinion, so choose your truth well.
Its all perception,
So choose your truth well.

I’m the happiest man I know,
So why are the songs I sing so sad?
This beautiful world seems to be feeling low, low, low...
So I just smile and write it down.

I was sitting in a well, drowning in sorrow.
I was living in a lesson that I'll learn tomorrow.
But I found that well was dry and I was high on dying,
Oh ego, you slipped in while I was surviving.

And though the backdrop begged for dancing,
We chose to use these two old feet to pace.
While the ghosts of zen lunatics stumbled through San Francisco,
Our ghosts held us in place.

I’m the happiest man I know,
So why are the songs I sing so sad?
This beautiful world seems to be feeling low, low, low...
So I just smile and write it down.

The struggle seemed to serve the sour occasion,
Just scratching at the floor in heaven's basement.
Then I felt the wind from an open door brush against my wings,
Oh master, it was I who attached the strings,
Of freedom, it was I who attached the strings,
So I'm looking the mirror singing:

Unchain me now, Unchain me now,
Oh my ego, you've helped me to survive but,
Unchain me now, Unchain me now,

Song #14: Tiny Bird

When I sit down to write the words to a song I have no choice but to let the music itself do the writing. The music always is trying to say something but needs a translator such as myself to communicate the song’s story. I really have no choice in the matter- if I try and impose my own story onto a piece of music that is already telling a different story the result is confusing and never works. Of course, being that everything is everything and that one can find the whole world within a grain of sand, at times can be quite easy to find myself in the story that the song is insistent on telling. However, the fact remains that many of these stories are not my stories at all, there are times when I have trouble relating to the story in a personal sense- it is someone else’s story, some stranger’s struggle and victory and I am happy to relay the story for them.

This was certainly the case for this song. Evan came up with a brilliant melancholic tune that transforms into a jazzy groove and from the moment I heard it I knew what story the song was trying to tell (at least the story it was trying to tell me, perhaps other translators would have heard something else)... the story it was trying to tell was the story of the Tiny Robin.

The song has consumed me this week. The first part of the song left me in a state of creative hemmoraging, it flowed out of me without barrier. The second part of the song however, and what turned out to be the bulk of it, was groovy as hell but it wasn’t screaming at me to relay a message... I was at a loss. I spent days listening to the same 3 bars of music over and over waiting for it to whisper in my ear but nothing came. It was only when I heard my wife humming soulfully in the background over the music I had set on repeat that it became obvious that this section of the song was not for me... it was for Michelle Dack. I asked her to come into my studio space and once she had stood squarely in front of the microphone I pressed record and asked her to basically hum whatever was there for her. We did this only once and the melody she had come up with combined with her vocal tone was exactly what I needed to hear the other half of the story and so I took each syllable from her original freestyle humming session and attached the words. Every “dee” “dum” “oh” “ahh” and “la” received a new symbol, one found within the bounds of the English language and in the end the rest of the story was told. Thank you so much to my amazing wife and muse, Michelle Dack... you kicked some serious ass on this song.

I hope you all enjoy this song. This song is not about a truth but a perspective of hopelessness and detachment. It is about a couple looking, with somewhat of a resigned and cynical view, to the future they believe is culturally inescapable.

Much Love. Happy Sunday Evening.



Title: Tiny Robin
Length: 3:56
Contributions: The Screaming Room (a particularly generous contribution by Michelle Dack). Artwork- Thanks to Jordan Westre for the amazing artwork that accompanies this song.

Lyrics:


I would just read the paper in the kitchen,
And sip on my coffee and build my opinions,
And let the headlines interact with my bio that the world wrote some time ago.

And you would be rushing with your toast and briefcase,
So conscious of the lines that your holy smile makes,
And you'd spend your days becoming the master of... doing a thousand things .

The kids would be happy and we would be jealous now,
We would resent the wise things that they'd tell us 'bout,
We'd say the right things and think the wrong things,
And they'd be loved.

And we'd go to work, the kids would go to school,
for the most sacred hours, for our awakened hours.
And we would reconvene and as if we knew each other,
Just to fall asleep.

And we would make love like they told us on TV,
You'd wear the good stuff and I'd say the right things,
And I'd love you deeply, too deep for you to see,
We'd be the lucky ones.

What shall we do with this tiny robin?

Id live my life,
And you'd live yours...
I'll be home,
When you're gone.

We'd lose track of the dreams we once had,
As the days roll on,
And the years, and then gone.

And I'd smile, and you'd smile
just to fool ourselves,
I'll be home,
When you're gone.

I would try so hard,
To be all that a good wife should be,
But you'd lie, and I'd leave.

What should we do with this tiny robin?

And I would just live and do what Im supposed to,
Laugh at the right times and speak when I'm spoke to,
And do what it takes to prove to the world that I'm a "good man".

And I would just live and do all that I should do,
Scared to look too close at all that I could do.
Put on a brave face and prove to the world that Im a "strong woman".

And we would make love like they told us TV,
You'd wear the good stuff,
And I'd say the right things,
And I'd love you deeply,
Too deep for you to see.

So what shall we do now with this tiny robin,
That shoe box aint doing too much for this orphan,
We've fed her for months but summer is over and its time to pack it in,

So leave her some food and a few shiny things,
A bed made of cotton for her useless wings,
At least she's distracted at least she’s alive, what a lucky bird.

Song #13: Too Many Ghosts

Too many ghosts- This song is neat. It is a song about the shields we build in response to unfavorable events of the past, shields used unconsciously in the present as filters through which we interpret the world around us.

Oh perception, you are a fickle beast,
Serving the ghosts of the past,
While using the present to speak.
Boo hiss... Too Many Ghosts.




Title: Too Many Ghosts
Length: 2:45
Contributions: The Screaming Room
Lyrics:

Evidence in my head,
Puts you at the scene.
Tampered photographs,
Are clear enough for me.

Whispers from the well,
Were witness to the crime.
Voices young and scared,
I believe them every time.

Oh my insidious mind,
Open to kickbacks and bribes,
Always creates what it finds,
Truth in those plastercine eyes.
Let me shape them, let me change them
with hands of a child.

Evidence in my head,
proves you heard the scream,
Confessions left unsaid...

Boom- the shattering glass past is adamant,
blooms in sharp addicts that grasp to fast batterment.
Whom I ask, tattered the trust and then scattered it,
I hear the gossip of ghosts that got grab of it.

I got a hunch that this hunch is embedded,
Slipped between the covers of some fear I’m in bed with.
Like Sipping on the kool-aid with a cyanide edit.
It tastes so sweet but makes me feel deathish.

Evidence in my head,
Keeps me from your truth,

And I don’t know how,
I could've pulled you down,
and called this truth...
and now I know that the deepest beliefs need to be stripped of their crown.

Too many ghosts to see you now,
Too many words to hear a sound.
This old night, This old morning,
Nothing's true,
But somehow I know you.