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Early Morning Silence

October 10, 2019 No Comment

The best part of 6 a.m. is that, except for the dog, I generally have the house to myself.

I’m not a naturally linear thinker. My mind tends to go all over the place, and I’m wired for sound. Any possible auditory distraction has the potential to send me off track. It’s part of why I like music – it combines sounds into purposeful direction, and often in community. But being easily distractible and non-linear, it’s tough for me to get organized to successfully accomplish what needs to be done in a day.

So I’ve come to love those early mornings when everyone else is asleep. I can look over my tasks, assemble a list, and also just drink my coffee and watch the sun rise (depending on the time of year, of course). Nurturing positive thoughts and generally getting into a productive mindset for the day is part of it too.

When I wrote the song Early Morning Silence, I wanted to express all of that, because if such a time is precious to me I thought there must be others somewhere in the world who might be able to relate. Just expressing the ideas in words, though, seemed wrong. I didn’t want the song itself to function as an intrusion on someone’s thinking time because of an excessive and unnecessary repetition of lyrics.

So even though whistling is a really unusual accompaniment to songs in our time, I decided that whistling the melody to accompany the chords the second time through would function as a non-verbal portion of time that represents a kind of purposeful wordless background that a person could just think their own thoughts to.

Speaking of lyrics, here they are;

Early Morning Silence

Wishing I could gather
this early morning silence –
save it for sometime later
in the day –

When everything around me
is full of sound and fury, need
a space in my mind
to make noise go away.

And I would just remember
all the time we’ve spent together
so even in the moments you’re not near…
all the love and warmth of those thoughts would close around me
like a blanket guards from coldness and fear.

As the sun rises
and the world begins to wake,
my soul energizes –
I will do what it takes.

But as I take my place,
I’ll bring along a little space
that the early morning silence gave.

…

But as I take my place,
I’ll bring along a little space
that the early morning silence gave.

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Express-sing the Inbetweens

December 15, 2018 No Comment

Sure, celebrating big moments & mourning big losses really is important. But every moment is worth our awareness, and all of life should be lived fully.

Songs often are about our high points and our low points. Part of what I hope to do is express those emotions that are in between the extremes.

There’s a risk of confusing action or drama for meaning. Sometimes I think I get bored and try to find a way to make a fresh storyline for my life. I don’t think I’m alone in that… in our fast-paced world, we develop a taste for drama like wild predators develop a taste for blood. Action and the high and low emotions help us to avoid or forget our true anxieties and existential concerns.

So what I want to do is bring out the middle colours of emotion – like doubt, hope, concern, caring, anxiety, dissatisfaction, contentment. Maybe if we can more fully express the range of our emotions, we can avoid leaping from one extreme to another too. Maybe we can more fully live our lives in the day-to-day, and feel alive doing it – or at least have a greater acceptance of ourselves and our emotions because we are more able to name our experience.

My songs ‘I Don’t Know What I Want’ and ‘When I’m Dissatisfied’ are two of those in which I try to express some of those midpoints; indecision, regret, and discontent that seems to arise for no reason.

The lyrics for those 2 songs follow. First, “I Don’t Know What I Want�.

I don’t know what I want
Many good thing pass me by
I don’t know what I want
Many good thing pass me by
Hope something’s still out there
When I make up my mind

Well, it might have been love
Maybe just infatuation
…but it might have been love
Hope someone will have me
In the fullness of time

Maybe should have said yes
Maybe it just as well
Maybe should have said yes
Maybe it just as well
I don’t know what I want
I don’t know what I want
I don’t know what I want
…many good thing pass me by

The ‘No Regrets’ slogan irritates me at times. Maybe I’m the only one. I realize that it’s supposed to be about living to the fullest and not being afraid to make mistakes.

But I think the idea of denying any regret also kind of denies that what I do has impacts on other people, and that sometimes those impacts could be more positive. That’s where I carry regret – when I know that things I have said or done were self-serving or ignorant. Of course I don’t want that regret to paralyze me and lead to inaction, because that could only compound harm or fail to serve the good.

So yeah, ‘I Don’t Know What I Want’ is about having that regret and uncertainty, and being in the moment of it, and recognizing that sometimes the loss we experience comes from not taking the opportunities that we had when they were offered, and those missed opportunities affect ourselves and others too.

When I’m Dissatisfied

When I’m dissatisfied
I can’t find a reason
No matter what I try
There’s no pleasin’ me

I get anxious and impatient
Though I have no place to be
And my family starts wondering
What’s going on with me

When I’m dissatisfied
When I’m dissatisfied

When I’m dissatisfied
I can’t find peace
Every song on the radio
Sounds like noise to me

When I’m dissatisfied
I’m dying by degrees
I get soul-weary, tired
And I’m filled with apathy

When I’m dissatisfied
When I’m dissatisfied

Seldom do things seem to matter

Often time feels blah at best

Nothing ever really seems to
Change the east or move the west

Then I try to mix it up
Try to get out of my rut
Do different things, change my routine
Try to move myself, but

When I’m dissatisfied
I am dissatisfied
When I’m dissatisfied
I am dissatisfied

… I think ‘When I’m Dissatisfied’ is worth my time to sing because simply expressing discontent is sometimes enough for me to feel a bit better. Also, it’s a song that doesn’t blame anyone or anything for the fact that I’m feeling a bit grumpy or a bit off. Sometimes a person just feels off, and that’s okay, and it’s probably better to recognize that and accept it than to look for a scapegoat for that sense of discontent.

So to sum up, I believe that if we come to better understand and express the daily emotions that we feel in all of their complexity, we may ultimately feel more at peace and content. Forging such a connection to our emotions – a kind of spiritual connection, I believe – may help us to avoid the pitfalls of seeking more drama or action in a misguided quest to fill the void we feel when we don’t understand the root of the emotions that we have.

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