“Spirit Song” - a song about possibility
When I was in second grade our teacher, Miss Hunt, asked the class to draw their dream homes. I spent the next 30 minutes drawing up the “blueprints” (a very loosely used term) to a house built entirely of swords. I was certain there was no finer dwelling to be had.
It’s amazing what we can think of before someone tells us we are wrong. I wonder how many times the one telling us “no” is a little piece of ourselves.
*On an unrelated note I also remember getting in trouble in that class for a take home assignment where we had to ask our parents their work. My dad told me he was a panty inspector… Miss Hunt was not amused.
Backstory
I spent the majority of my 20’s applying my college degree to the corporate world. I started out as a marketing director at an industrial company, moved to supply chain in the grain industry, and then to event marketing in the tech sector. Every job I did before music felt like I was drifting farther and farther away from my inner child. To most, that may seem like a logical move, grow up, get a real job, get your head out of the clouds, bite your tongue, and buckle down. For me it always felt like I was trying to trick myself.
This song was written on a work trip. I had chose to get into town a day early and I spent most of the morning in my hotel. It was an Aloft in San Jose. I remember it well as it was next to a train track, and trains would pass by every morning around 6am. Personally it didn’t really bother me, but I recall how much of a stink that the people I was there with would make. Adults complaining about things that most children would find wonder in always sits oddly with me, and I have trouble relating to the grump.
Anyway, the bathrooms in Aloft hotels are really just the back portion of the room partitioned by a wall and a loose sliding door. If I opened the shower door, and closed the sliding door, there was a lovely chamber of sound, and I sat most mornings and late evenings in that chamber practicing on my Taylor GS mini. I remember telling myself to really try not to become a grumpy whiney person as I grew older, falling farther down the hole of comfort and detachment from the unwritten potential we all start life with.
These sort of thoughts were what made way to this song. I think that we all have a “spirit” that knows we can be anything we want, we can have our houses made of swords. It’s when we turn our back on that spirit that we fall out of touch with our potential, and get pulled into the constructed societal flow, the place where the lost can find a whisper of purpose. Just enough to help them forget about what could have been.
Writing Process
I wrote this back in 2018, so I don’t recall too much of it. I know that at the time the little finger picking roll on the G shape was just about the hardest thing I could do. Because of that I never really played this song.
That roll was one I learned from listening to Tallest Man on Earth, and this song’s movement feels like it was inspired by his style.
I do remember that I was messing around with the key of the song, sliding the capo all over the place. I sent one of the voice memos to my friend Ralph, who politely encouraged the lower key. I have to agree as well, the lower register feels more emotive.
Voice Memos
Notebook Page.
Nov. 2018
Lost to time…
Lyrics
Be silent screaming spirit in the belly of the beast
You're throat is dripping blood from every word you try to speak
It's not that I don't hear you, it's not that I don't care
Just it's getting harder to reach you way down there
Way down there
Remember all the pictures of the dreams that we both drew
Smiled still in ignorance, but all the while you knew
You looked on with hopeful eyes something would come along
Free us from this downward spin where we just don't belong
We don't belong, we don't belong
I never listened, to your words so sweet
I had to move, for greener grass beneath my feet
This freedom that I craved, was calling all the while
My spirit now a ghost since it's defeat
I've taken in just giving up, my sword lays in the dust
Dragons all destroy the town, their spirit says they must
You may call it evil, and I a coward through
I sit and shake in jealousy that you all knew
You all knew, you all knew
I never listened, to your words so sweet
I had to move, for greener grass beneath my feet
This freedom that I craved, was calling all the while
My spirit now a ghost since it's defeat
I finally made it through all the darkness and the bile
Found you laying in that filth, you died wearing a smile
Trudge back through that sea of gray, those sheep, your fellow man
Never have the chances that we did when we began
When we began, we began
I never listened, to your words so sweet
I had to move, for greener grass beneath my feet
This freedom that I craved, was calling all the while
My spirit now a ghost since it's defeat
This freedom that I craved, was calling all the while
My spirit now a ghost since it's defeat