Category: Dustbin

I do other stuff too, but mostly I amuse myself.

Perhaps this will be a new trend: Spending ten minutes laying down a rough acoustic demo, then half the day setting it to hundred-year-old silent movie footage. Copyright laws aside, I had fun with this:

When everything is dubious and put to the test
[Little fingers forget, little fingers forget]
Tied up and tedious, and dragged from the bed
[Little fingers forget, little fingers forget]
Surrounded by memories and lingering limbs
[Little fingers forget, little fingers forget]
Wandering, restless, and made of mistakes
[Little fingers forget, little fingers forget]
Heavy and heavenly, this weight on my chest
[Little fingers forget, little fingers forget]
Halfhearted melody, fragmented phrase
[Little fingers forget, little fingers forget]
Battered and Beautiful, like flickering flames
[Little fingers forget, little fingers forget]

It’s a been period of struggle, creatively, so it feels like parting with an enormous turd to get a tune out and into the world. Or a baby, or something. Yeah, a baby…

The recorded narration is the psychologist Wilhelm Reich, and the old man in the video is Henry Miller. What do these two men have in common, besides being deceased? Well, each man managed to intensely capture my interest several years ago, when I thought I was on the path to eventual enlightenment. I must have taken a wrong turn some where along the line… The song isn’t really about either one of them, of course. Or maybe it is, I don’t know. What I do know is that I enjoy this weird style of musical exploration, so I’m going to keep doing it as long as it feels interesting. And yeah, I also know that I’m breaking all kinds of copyright laws by playing around with audio and video footage created by others, but it’s only playing, after all. Fortunately, only a few people have ever paid the slightest attention to anything I’ve ever done, so I think I’ll avoid doing any hard time.

Henry Miller? Wilhelm Reich? Look, I’ve had a wee bit much to drink and I’ve handed the keys over to the “muse.”

Sometimes I think you faked your death
So I’d stop faking my whole life
I take and take till nothing’s left
I get it wrong till nothing’s right

It’s only hard to say goodbye
When you don’t really want to go
I never understood your pain
I never really wanted to know

And if you didn’t see the sun rise
Well at least you had a look at the stars
And if you didn’t play your cards right
At least you didn’t throw ‘em in
And while I was out sleepwalking
The sun burned up in your eyes
But then everything was taken

I got a secret to confess
I’m only in it for the love
Now you’ve gone and put me to the test
To live my life like I dreamed of

And every time I see sun rise
And whenever I look up at the stars
And when I’m singing to the ceiling
With everything I hold in my heart
I’ll remember what you told me
and the way the sun burned in your eyes
And the gift that I was given