About a week or so into my college career, I wrote "Down for the Count." I think this was intended to be a kind of Pink Floyd/Bob Dylan hybrid- not sure if I pulled that off. I think that the first time I played it in front of anybody was on the quad outside Lewis. Tricia McGinnis said it was too long, but I think the problem was that it doesn't work as a solo acoustic song. Later that fall, Anthony Galuzzo requested that I play something really depressing at Gund Coffeehouse, so I played this. He said it wasn't depressing enough.
I know that I had a problem with cynicism, and this song sort of plays out the cynical viewpoint to its extreme. In the absence of meaning, the world comes crashing down harder and harder until it ultimately destroys us. I have since come to see that cynics aren't crazy. Meaning does not exist in time and space, and it's easy to assume that it's simply an illusion. However, I still believe that the world is meaningful. Not because it is inherent, but because it is inevitable. We can't not create it.
In the theatre we are often asked to suspend our disbelief, which is an amazing ability that humans have. Children have this ability in spades. They can create entire worlds, and believe in them for an hour or so, and then just as quickly return to the "real world." I remember playing pretend once with my friends Branden, Amy and Bill. We were in high school, and we decided to dress up, go into my woods and we pretended that we were on a quest in a magical kingdom. We only did it that one time, but it was a lot of fun.
As adults, we get to engage in this meaning creation with children again, but at some point our kids grow up, and then for some reason we stop. Well, some of us do. I am reminded of my mother's doing a family reconstruction workshop. People in the workshop pretended to be members of this one woman's family, and it was a very therapeutic experience.
Aristotle suggested that we watch plays, and suspend our disbelief, so that we can experience catharsis- a purification of our emotions. This is something that we need to do. A person may be able to exist for a while without meaning, but inevitably it finds its way into your life. Those moments of my life that have seemed utterly meaningless to me were in fact, moments were I was in between meanings.
I wrote this song at such a time. The story that I had told myself was that I was a fearless artist, but that story turned out not to be true. I had failed to heed my calling, and instead wound up at Kenyon. I had been very afraid- afraid of being alone; afraid of being ignored. The story only works as long as you play along, and I had stopped playing along with my story.
And yet... I was still an artist. I continued to create, and I continued to seek out outlets for those creations. I needed to grieve for what I had lost, and I think that this song was an expression of that grief. I needed to play through a life without meaning. I don't think I knew that then, but I know it now.
About the recording:
Tonya Buckler: Backing Vocals
Jeff Faith: Upright Bass
Steve Sizemore: Percussion
Me: Everything else
On one level, Tricia was right. The song was too long. I cut out a verse, but I have always believed that if a song is true, it can never be too anything. As a producer, I have found that songs are like puzzles, and this one required that I introduce some new musical idea each verse to keep the song moving forward.
Tonya suggested banjo. Originally, I'd hoped that she would play it, but there was a moment during this process where it seemed like we weren't going to get Tonya in the studio, so I tried playing it myself. I didn't need anything fancy anyway.
At any rate, this song became the hardest one to mix, because there are a lot of different instruments coming in throughout the song. Hopefully, I pulled it off.
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