This was one of the songs that I wrote in the fall of my freshman year at Ballard. They say write what you know, but I knew nothing about bars and failed relationships. And yet, there's a lot of truth to the song. This may be the first song where I created a persona to say what I wanted to say, without the song being about me. While I was a very loud 14 year old boy at the time, I was very shy about who I really was. I didn't want anyone to know. When I wrote songs, I always felt like I was a wide-open book. So I unconsciously created a persona to express something that I needed to express- not fitting in, and being unable to connect.
In this case, the disconnection was with someone that I love, or loved. Now, I had never kissed a girl at this point in my life, which seems ironic, because I'd had a crush on someone for as long as I can remember. I can go all the way to pre-school, and find someone that I was interested in. It usually meant that there was someone that I would watch. I don't think that I could even get close to the person that I had a crush on. Not until middle school. By then I could be in the same room, and even talk to them, but I would pretty much act like a goofball.
I pined away for these different crushes, and I would feel the butterflies in my stomach even when I was home alone. I would have dreams in which the two of use would be together, and I would wake up and I would feel just how far away I was from that reality. Like a dream in which I could fly, I would wake up and be so very disappointed with myself. It's interesting looking back at this moment in my life, because so much of my creative expression was fueled by this sense of disconnection.
Writing songs was still hard for me, and whenever played music, I couldn't help but feel how far away I was from what I wanted to be creatively. I LOVED music, but I wasn't making the music I loved. The music I was making was therapy. It helped me cope with distances in my life, just as it had when I was 7 and singing to myself over my friend Ryan who had moved away. I played this song a lot, but I never played it for anybody.
The song never felt finished. For a while it was just the last verse. I couldn't tell you when I settled on the last two lines. But this song has a dynamic early on that made me have to record it in order to complete it. "What We Both Know" has a descending guitar part that is introduced in the second verse. That was part of the arrangement for as long as I remember. I had a microphone and I remember that I could overdub by playing something I had recorded and playing it back, and recording along with myself. I could only do two tracks this way, but one of the first things I recorded was this song so I could add the descending guitar part.
Years later when I was sixteen, I rented a four track recorder that would record on cassettes. This was the first song that I recorded. I finally was able to record the two guitars, and then I came up with a third guitar part (which comes in before the third verse). Then I recorded a bunch of voices singing along (which you can hear on the third verse). I think it was the very next day that I played what I had recorded for my friend Amy Richardson. I have added to the arrangement since then, but I have never changed those fundamental parts.
Every song has its own soul. It knows what it wants to be, even if you don't. Some songs are like giant slabs of rock, and thy are already fully-formed. You simply have to chip away at the right places until they reveal themselves. Even now as I write this, I think, "Maybe I should have faded that song out, because it still feels unfinished."
What we Both Know
I won't say I don't see you there,
I won't lie and say that I don't care,
Tonight is movin' kind of slow,
I won't say what we both know.
Sometimes its hard to understand,
We're both right from where we stand,
And we've got nothin' left to say,
Our eyes collide then drift away.
Sometimes I wonder where I fit in,
It seems like a game that I can't win.
I reach out to shadows I once knew,
I wake in the night and I think of you.
I see you there across the bar,
You're so close and you're so far,
I'd like to say I'm feelin' low,
But I won't say what we both know.
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