North Light Songs

About “Robot Man” 

Like “Grandfathers”, a podcast was also an inspiration for “Robot Man.” I can’t remember the exact episode of the TED Radio Hour I was listening to, and I haven’t been able to find it, but I know it touched on cyborgs. Modifying the human senses, body, brain, or voice with technology is not strictly the stuff of fantastic science fiction. It is simple reality, and biotech–as people like Elon Musk are wont to remind us–is likely the field of the future.

The notion that we strive for a better self, whether as a collective or as individuals, and that we are dissatisfied with the current self, fit well with the theme of the album. The song that came from my musings functions as a kind of companion piece to “Grandfathers”, and it serves as a slight change in the tone of the album up to this point.

The Lyrics: 

If I were a robot man
I think I’d give myself new eyes.
I’d use them to see into
the dusty halls of time.

Looking back I’d seek your face
among the paintings on the wall.

I might find you in
some unnatural pose
made to conform to
an ideal no one knows.

I might see it in your face—
in an incidental line—
that disappointment
that would show up more in time.

If I were a robot man
I think I’d just replace my mind
with one that was fast and true—
the only one of its kind.

I know I’d figure a new way
to clear the dust from what has been.

I might find things
no one else has known—
like a doorway
through which no one has gone.

I might see the
very end of time
where paint and canvas
give way to a new mankind.

If I were a robot man…
some kind of robot man…

 

 

It should go without saying that this song can’t be taken at face value. Being a “robot man” is just an imaginary means to create a new self, whether as an individual, or as a people.

The first kind of robot man I’d be here is one with eyes that permit me to overcome my limitations in time. Instead of being a static captive in time, like the subject of a painting, I would be free to observe it, to look and move through it in any direction I please.

If I were to look back through the “hall of time,” I would see the way we have failed to achieve an ideal despite our best attempts to define one. We can imagine this in the many subtle falsehoods of a portrait, such as the awkward idealized figure, or the painter’s chosen focus. But we may also see it in what we incidentally include in such representations: faults revealed in hindsight. It would become apparent that every time we try to define an ideal we fall short because we just can’t see what we can’t see.

Ironically, I wouldn’t be content to simply observe these imperfections; instead I’d seek to understand the things that have gone before as no one ever has.  If I could just change myself more deeply than at the level of perception, change who I am at the level of understanding and identity, I could then achieve unprecedented things. With a new mind I’d be able to do what no one else could, understand who we fundamentally are, and ultimately introduce a truly new mankind. This mankind would not be limited by time and space, or sense and wit.

In the context of the album, we are here confronting the futility of seeking change and absolute resolution. We apparently cannot capture the essence of a thing, we cannot clearly understand our past, present, or future selves, and things have always been that way. Maybe they always will be that way. Though the song doesn’t say as much, its tongue-in-cheek message hobbles the optimism of the lyrical and musical tone.

These ideas have already shown up, and they will be continually explored as we move on through the album. While “Robot Man” is slightly more impersonal than, say, “Grandfathers”, I felt it was important to lift the listener out a little bit at this point, both lyrically and musically.

What You’re Hearing

The main structures of this song came pretty fast. Not all of them shape up so quickly, but it is a relief when they do. The lyrics and music mostly developed together. From the very start I had that basic chord movement from G to Eb7 (I to bVI), and then I really just puzzled out the chord progression and melody by ear. I tend to be a little more dominant than that in writing a song, but in this case I basically imagined or hummed the roots of the chord progression as I was working it out, imagining the sound of the next chord in the sequence, and then figured out what that chord would be by playing the guitar.

The song just wanted to meander, apparently, and so it ended up modulating from G major/em to F major/dm and back. Overall, that meandering via borrowed chords gives the song the feeling of forward movement, almost like you are walking along the hall of time to uncover something. I felt that it needed some kind of relief from the wandering, and so I added the “arrival” at the very end with a new chord progression and different feel.

I initially wrote the song in about an hour or two, and then recorded a rough version of it right away. In that initial recording, as I layered parts (at the time, just guitar, voice, shaker, piano, glock, and vocal harmonies, I think) I had the monitor speakers on in the room when I was recording. This ended up layering all the tracks on one another at slightly misaligned times, which created a kind of slap-back reverb effect. It was a silly accident, but charming in its own way.  It felt like the natural reverb in a hallway. Fitting, I thought. When doing the final version of the song, I mentioned that to Clyde (the great audio engineer I was privileged to work with), and he did a grown-up’s job of conveying that feel through careful mixing, I think.

I sat on my initial recording for a while, debating whether to use it as the final one, but eventually decided to re-record it. At that point I settled on using my old Harmony archtop guitar, I decided to add in some brass, suspended cymbal, and second verse harmonies, and chose to include some bongos drummed with mallets at the end. When the recording was done, I sat on it for a while, unhappy. After about a month, I had the inspiration to add some extra piano parts. This resulted in the middle piano (sans guitar) section and the other vamping piano parts. I also added what I affectionately think of as mariachi trumpet parts at the end. It has a celebratory effect, I think…

All in all, I think this song could make a great music video. A character moving through a hall and emerging, at the end, through an uncovered door into a blinding white light only to soar up into the sky on wings like Daedalus’. Paper cut outs or stop action clay, maybe.

 

Thanks for listening, as always!

 

About “A New Dawning” 

“A New Dawning” was written to be something like a quintessential first song. As it turns out, it is the second song on the finished album, but that’s only because “Note to the Listener” became the prelude.

“A New Dawning”  is still, in my mind, like the first chapter of the rest of North Light.

The Lyrics: 

In winter’s feeble light
broken rays, like forgetting,
claim our afternoon,
and in the turning
earth clothe our sleeping seeds
with foretastes of spring.
Sweet sleep of promised life–
you soon will end in morning!
After these long nights,
and in a new dawning.
Then will we be strong.
Then will be be strong.

As with all the songs on North Light to greater or lesser degrees, this song can be taken both literally and figuratively (if not definitively).

On the one hand this is a real winter in which the light from the sun is actually weaker because of Earth’s tilt. These are rays from the sun that are broken by, perhaps, the shadows of tree branches. They warm the soil in which dormant seeds lie. And after the long nights (and short days) of winter, something new and strong will come of it all.

But obviously there is more here. The first person plural possessive “our” clues us in. This winter afternoon is a thing that is shared; it is a day’s ending in a season of endings, of dormancy, of waiting. In my case it is a time shared with my closest companions: my wife and children. The listener will fill in the “our”.

Though this light is weak, it is apparently promising, and affective. Again, this light carries notions of perception, seeing, knowing, or understanding as in the rest of the album. The interesting thing here is that it is not just the light, but also the shadows that punctuate it that seem to take up–and offer some king of resolution to–this shared afternoon. This lack in our understanding or knowing, this forgetting, is just as important as the knowing, the remembering. Together they “clothe” the seeds (of promised life, hope) in the turning earth–in time, or in the turned soil (both meanings apply).

In time the long night will end with a new dawn. The season of waiting and bitterness will end, and then we will be strong. This is a song about the triumph of hope through accepting all we have and all we don’t, all we know and all we do not. These times of transition, of seemingly interminable waiting, are not for nothing either. They are a needed “sweet sleep of promised life”.

In terms of the album’s progression, the ideas of forgetting and remembering, light and dark, a new dawn, a new rising of the sun, or the hope of new life are touched on again and again in every song on the album. If you listen for the ideas you will find them. I could list specifics about every song, and more specifics than the ones I’ll point out in the following songs, but take special note of these for starters:

remembering and forgetting in “Grandfathers” and “Mourning Dove”

the passage of time in “Moon” and “Beneath the Sun”

longing for resolution to the present in “Robot Man” and “Bird”

accepting imperfection (e.g. not knowing) in “We’re all Broken”, “Long Thoughts”, and “30 Pieces”

What You’re Hearing

I tried to convey the sense of dawning in the chord progression, the instrumentation, and the structure.

The opening chord progression moves from tension in the borrowed dm  and d#dim to resolution in the E and the A.

The basic movement from tension in the borrowed and diminished chords to release in the major continues all the way through the lyric section and the brass section. However, there is a subtle modulation from A major in the opening section to E major in the section that begins with “Sweet sleep…” which conveys subtle change in perspective, the promise of something new. The euphoniums come in at the final “strong” reflecting strength, and the dawn, in the rising melodic motive. After the brass arrives we return to the key of A major and remain there through the end.

Just as the euphs, the piano and guitar reach their cadence, the high resonant sound of a crystal glass comes in. This is supposed to convey the light of the dawn. The rooster crow that you can faintly hear after the guitar cuts out was, believe it or not, complete serendipity. My rooster just started to crow outside my garage/studio door as I finished tracking the guitar part. I liked where it ended up so much that I asked my great audio engineer, Clyde, to boost it in the mix. It perfectly evokes the dawn.

The piano at the end was entirely improvised, but some aspects of the chord progression that emerged inspired the chord progression for “Grandfathers” (the vi to V movement and the iii to IV movement). “Grandfathers” was always intended to come in exactly at the final cadence of “A New Dawning” on A major.

 

Thanks again, for listening, and for reading! I do value your consideration so much.

About “Note to the Listener”

The opening track of North Light was almost the last track to be written and recorded for the album. I wanted it to be something like a key to the album, while still standing alone as an earnest and universal plea to be heard.

I’ll try to give an explanation for it, which will be incomplete, I’m sure.

First, the words; to read before, as, or after you listen:

It feels like a cloudy sunrise.
It feels like a caged bird.
It feels like a lonely baby.
That’s how it feels.
That’s how it feels…to sing…
to sing songs,
to live life,
to be in time.
But—if you’re there—
be the eye to my light,
and the hand to mine,
and the ear to my song.

The images here are all allusions to the images that litter the rest of the album: the light, the bird, the child, the song, life, time. Each is mutually descriptive and intertwined with the other. I made a half-hearted attempt to create a chiasm–but, it’s not quite right.

The sunrise is to time as the bird is to the song, or the child to life. They are at once the incarnation of the abstract idea and the things that shape the idea. So it is with the knower and the known. The one informs the other and cannot exist without changing the other.

Our effort to sing a song–to tell something of ourselves–is something like the shame of a bird–a picture of freedom, beauty, hope, and possibility–that is bound. It seems futile for it to sing. And yet it can’t help but be heard. So despite its shame, and all it lacks, it can still change those who hear it.

Our lives seem to pass in loneliness like that of a child, longing for company. We look for comfort, for companionship, for touch, for love. But, perhaps there is something in that need that is redemptive. This is an idea that will be explored further especially in “Frozen Lake/This Old World”.

Time is oppressive, and unrelenting at that; but, while the sun’s rising is a reminder of time’s endless cycle, it is also the thing by which we see everything else. Obscured light is therefore some kind of lack, and one unseen sunrise is one that is forever lost to the viewer.  The notion of light informing perception is fundamental, and the idea of seeing or perceiving is likewise central.

In all these aspects we find ourselves longing to know and to be known.

As you listen through the album, try to pay attention to these themes. Hopefully you’ll see how they are woven throughout.

What you are hearing: 

I prepared my old, neglected piano for this piece by isolating the strings I would be using. I muted most of them with a strip of tuner’s felt and I positioned some loose-leaf paper over the C to give it that buzzing sound.

I wanted the rhythm to be nearly predictable, but also unsettling, so I didn’t keep the pulse steady. After recording the initial pulsing piano, I cut out parts of the track in Audacity, and reversed some sections to make the pulse nearly regular, but unsteady. I recorded a few piano parts and then layered them.

The melodic motive in the trumpet part became the basis of “This Old World”, which was intended to be both a reprise and a resolution to some of the themes in the album. Listen for it.

I wanted the trumpet parts to proceed like a round and become oppressive to work with and against the piano. In so doing, I was trying to evoke the sense of longing that the album and this song explore.

Somewhere near the track’s golden mean (“to be in time”) the cacophony clears a bit to highlight the voice, and little by little, parts drop off. Finally the voice is left alone to plead that the listener “be the ear to my song”. This sentiment is of course, personal, but also universal.

 

Let that be a start. Thank you for listening.