North Light Songs

About “Moon Song”

I distinctly remember this song’s origins for their humble–and heavenly–nature.

I wrote “Moon Song” on a cool night in mid-late May, 2016. After my kids and Abi were asleep, I went out to my newly converted garage/studio to write a song with my third cup of tea in hand. The tedious first minutes of the writing session stretched into a quarter of an hour, and I soon found myself too full of tea, and needing relief.

The moon was full; big and bright as I stood beneath it in the cold air, outside. It was just the inspiration I needed. I returned to the studio freshly relieved and ready to write…

The Lyrics

I watch that big, bright face in the moon
grow small as my lifetime waxes long,
and I remember that they call it “new”
and I wish that that age-old term were true.

Because March’s moon I’ll lionize—
see him larger than my tiny life—
with all the swelling buds
of the springtime thaws
chilled by the last breath of that old man…
But, by April I’ve grown sheepish again.

It seems by the time
the moon comes around
there is nothing new that I have found.
Just the same damn boys and girls of Father Time
wound up in their mother’s fateful line…

To the end we may twirl on this little blue ball—
summer after spring,
winter after fall.
Storming in with the rain,
toiling under the sun
to make something of all we think we have begun.

What comes in like a lion goes out like a lamb.
I’ve seen that over and over and over and over again.

So I watch that big, bright face in the moon
grow small as my lifetime waxes long,
and I remember that they call it “new”
and I wish that that age-old term were true.

The humble origins of this song suit it well. My 30th birthday hit me about five months before I wrote it, and I was still reconciling myself to being 30. For some reason the change from my 20’s to my 30’s made me feel time as I hadn’t quite felt it before.

It felt like I was watching time as I stared at the moon that spring night. The cyclical growth and decay we see in the phases of the moon mark our months, and pile up into our years and lifetimes.

I’ll permit myself the freedom to reason by analogy here not because it is valid, but because, to me, it is inviting. The cycles of the moon marking time’s movement are like the cycles of the seasons marking life’s movement. All such things turn and return, grow and decay, begin and end. But each ending lands in the midst of a million beginnings, and so on and so forth.

“In like a lion, out like a lamb.” They say March does that. I don’t know where the saying came from or what it really is supposed to mean, but it doesn’t matter. We can imagine that the moon of March heralds the coming of spring–that same spring for which we hoped in “A New Dawning”. That hope of spring is palpable, and a thing we’ve all known at some point. It is like our ambition to do something with our lives, which is a similar feeling that waxes and wanes with the passage of time and the seasons.

For me that ambition to make something of my life among all human lives comes in like the spring, and the big feeling of newness and possibility; but, it goes out, too, with a sinking sense of inferiority and failure. I am humbled on the one hand by the grandness of life, and on the other by the futility of it all.

This is the way time seems to pass. Its movement suggest progress; but things tend to remain basically the same. The same need, want, ambition, hope, fear, etc. Time doesn’t seem to progress in a line or a forward moving cycle. Instead, it looks and feels like a static cycle going around and around.

At least, that’s how time seemed to me when I was writing “Moon Song”. Life seemed fated to be as it was, it looked like we were all bound up in it, and unable to break the cycle.

Incidentally, the second verse “It seems by the time…boys and girls of Father time…etc,” is rife with loose mythological allusions. It is one of the verses in the album that I feel least satisfied with. It is supposed to be a reference to Father Time, erroneously associated with Chronos and/or Cronus, who may be married to Rhea, or some fictional goddess of my own creation who is the goddess of necessity. In my mind she held a distaff, on which she spun yarn representing the inevitability of time–if you follow the yarn from one end it will inevitably lead to the other end. And according the speaker in this song we are all wound up in this line that denotes our inescapable fate. We twirl on this “little blue ball” in perpetual insignificance, convinced of our importance, and convinced of our power to create, but it all ends the same way. And so it goes.

This song is, again, about learning humility. The irony of it is that I continue to wish for something truly new, that is, I continue to wish to break that cycle–however futile and audacious that wish may be. And that seems to be the nature and dynamism of life.

What You’re Hearing

That’s my old Harmony archtop again. I was going for a thumpy, facile waltz/carousel sound. The trumpet motive was one that I came up with early in this song’s life. The euphoniums following the bass line in the guitar was a later decision, but I liked the obviousness of it, and Abi said that it “made her happy” when she first heard it. So I left it.

The chord progression is cyclical, as is the whole structure of the song. It is obviously meant to reinforce the message of the song, and the fact that I end on the V7 instead of the I is also meant to underscore the endlessness of the cycle.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and thanks for listening. And if you do like these posts or this album, or if you hate them both, please let me know. I really do like to hear from you!

About “Robot Man”

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 “Grandfathers”

About “Grandfathers”

As with most of my songs, the inspiration for “Grandfathers” came from many sources. I was listening to Adam Ostrow’s TED Talk, “After Your Final Status Update” (in TED Radio Hour’s “Screen Time Part II“)while I was seeding millions of basil plants at work. I was considering myself, and my children, and my parents, and my grandparents. All the while I was recalling the most vivid images of my grandparents I could muster–old VHS videos and Polaroid pictures, and one oil painting.

The Lyrics

My mother’s father lives in a Polaroid
and he’s buried in a VHS.
My strongest memories of him are of those scenes—
a little more and just a little less.

Of our feet shuffling along the sidewalk
in front of his small Michigan home.
Of me leaning hard against his parked Ford
pushing with all of my boyish might.

Of him on our couch, striped denim blue
alongside a shade of working class gray,
with his arm around my five-year-old shoulder
and my knees pulled up against my chest.

He died before I turned six years old.
And all the stories he told
slowly fade.

My father’s father lives in some oil paint
that his son brushed out before I was born.
That lay for years unhung and unseen
in the attic of my parents’ house.

I know little more than what’s in that frame,
little more than what I’d so seldom seen.
But I’d like to think that it shows me something
about the man that I will one day be.

‘Cause in his left hand he held a fishing rod
and he wore a neat blue cardigan.
The way my father wept at The Death of a Salesman
told me much about what his dad did.

They say we all want to live
even after we die…
that in this information age
we’ll really find a way.
But, I just don’t know.

This song is pretty literal with the exception of some obvious wordplay, so I don’t feel the need to go into any convoluted decoding. Those videos and Polaroids of my mom’s dad exist. That painting of my dad’s dad is the one on the back cover of the album. The interesting thing about the lyrics is not in the varied shades of meaning, but instead in the significance of the whole and how it relates to North Light.

Adam Ostrow’s TED Talk focused on the fact that the amount of information individuals generate about themselves online is so great that it is likely that, with the aid of technology, analogues of our personalities will be able to live on into the future and communicate with our grandchildren. That is, computers will be able to simulate our responses, our thought patterns, and our behavior to such an extent that it is possible that our grandchildren will be able to come to our digital selves–after we have died–seeking life wisdom, and receive responses that closely approximate the way we would respond if we were physically alive with them.

This thought disconcerted me, and it made me think that there must be something that remains ineffable, even imperceptible, despite all of our best attempts to capture the essence of a person. I recognize that Ostrow was not claiming we could capture the essence of a person, yet it struck me that our efforts to represent anything somehow always come up short. Whether we try to capture a moment in a video or a photograph, or a person in a painting or a description, or an idea in words, or something that will never end in a memory or aspiration, we always fall short of the whole. Still, we remain motivated to try.

As a grandchild my knowledge of my grandfathers is remote, incomplete, and ultimately mythological. It is impressive to me that the majority of human existence fades away so quickly, and so completely.

Yet there remains a traceable line from parent to child through time that links the past, present, and future. Our knowledge of ourselves is incomplete at best (depending on our epistemology, it may even be nonexistent), and it would seem that our knowledge becomes even more incomplete when it comes to things of the past. Certainly few would ever claim that it is possible to know the future.

While this song remains deliberately unresolved, as we move through the album we find some hope when we let go of capturing, understanding, representing, or controlling, and instead accept the fragility and transience of all things as essential.

What You’re Hearing

I recorded the guitar and voice on my cell phone. While I was recording that I had a dynamic mic set up at a distance in the room, and a decent condenser mic close range.

In retrospect it was probably a silly idea, but I wanted to have the audio quality subtly improve as you move through the track. At the beginning the song emerges from the tail end of “A New Dawning” in a tinny recollection. By the time we reach the lyric “And all the stories he told slowly fade” the clarity has improved. It reaches its highest fidelity (and most intimate sound) in the second verse. I had hoped for the changes to be very subtle, and to have the effect of increasing the intimacy and vulnerability of the song as it progressed. Only the listener can be the judge. I’ll post a video of a guitar and bass live version of “Grandfathers” that Abi and I did this summer.

As I mentioned in “About A New Dawning” the chord progression for Grandfathers and the key I chose to record it in were influenced by certain aspects of the chord progression in the glass and piano section at the end of “A New Dawning”.

Thanks again for listening and reading.

About “A New Dawning”

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”

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.