Beggar's Paradise

Beggar's Paradise

I wrote this my senior year at Kenyon.  I was having a bit of a renaissance that year, creatively speaking.  I had spent the year previous trying to get my band Satori to achieve something, and I had hit a creative dry spell.  When I first got back to Kenyon, I felt isolated and lost, but then I began writing up a storm.  This was well into the middle of that storm. 

I woke up from a dream, which I couldn't tell you about today, but remnants still hang in the shadows, if I try to picture them.  Something about the dream seemed important, even if there was no apparent logic to it. So I began to write the dream as a song. I think I had started the chorus a couple of days earlier and it was a chorus in search of a song.  I don't know what the song means, but it sure means something. For years, this was the song that I would play to myself as I snuck off to the woods, or stood on my roof in Brooklyn.  I was searching for a place where I could unload my music, but without anyone hearing, ironically. 

There's something about childhood in the song. Deflated party balloons, flashy hats.  I think there's a birthday party in the song. And yet, the song is about adulthood at the same time. The beautiful, beaten girl that you want to save.  That was true to who I was.  I did want to save that girl, but I may have realized that I would do so, by losing myself.  

The song suggests that there may be two of me.  The one in the dream who is the actor- the focus of the action. The one doing.  This is the one who seems so fallible.  The one who is trying to make sense of a bunch of madness, but ends up looking ridiculous.  The other one sings the song and narrates.  That might be what I would aspire to. Or perhaps a higher self.  I wrote a lot of songs with the pronoun "you" when I meant me.  

At any rate, I did write the chorus with some semblance of a level head, because I understand its sentiment.  Well, at least the first part.  See, life is easy when you know just who you are, or maybe if you follow a path that has been laid out for you.  You'll sleep easier that way.  But that doesn't mean you're not as foolish as the one riding out alone into the storm.  The beggar might be on to something. 

To Be Free: Song To You

So if, "Come On" was the beginning of the mini-rock opera, this was the closer.  This was also the only song that Dan Patterson ever played outside of Undulata.  Somewhere there is a recording of Dan and I playing this with our first attempt at a band- The Confused (a rare instance in truth in advertising). In the earliest recording, I played the lead guitar in the recording (albeit, with less finesse).

 If you listen closely, you can really hear the campfire on this one.  The song was our good night song for the rest of the summer.  I resurrected the song years later when I became a father.  It's a nice lullaby.  It's fitting that it ends the album.

                          Song to You

This is my song to you,

This is what I'll do for you,

I hope you like it when it's through.

Some people call it a sad song,

But don't get me wrong,

Just close your eyes and it won't be long.

This is your song from me,

I've tried my best to set you free,

Now you must be what you are going to be.

The stars are moving rapidly,

You are you and I am me,

I hope that you have learned to see.