Again, I realize that, going chronologically, I skipped a tune. I wrote “No Cause for Grieving” my senior year, after “Imagine You’re Flying” and before “Footsteps,” which came that following summer. I was immensely relieved when I finished it, as I felt that at long last I’d written something that was better than any of the first five good tunes I wrote and cut demos for. However neurotic one might find the lyrics, they’re both honest and well-executed:
Her footsteps move quiet like stealing
Her scent rose like smoke to the ceiling
Her dress was just barely revealing
And it captured my wandering eyes
She leaves here, her memory lingers
Feel the touch of her ice cube fingers
I’ve been caught by her claws and her stingers
It’s as if I’ve been hypnotizedHer hands move, two butterflies dancing
So controlled yet so casually entrancing
I saw them last night, I was glancing
Struck dumb, waiting for a word
Smooth like a mirror reflecting
Her eyes hide her secrets protecting
One word, now she speaks. She’s rejecting
The ones that would care for her.
She’s stepping away
And I watch, she’s leaving
She never can stay
But it’s no cause for grievingShe could never pretend to be homely
Not alone, only ever so lonely
And this I could cancel if only
She’d let me get close to her
She cuts me without blades or violence
But her lips can speak nothing but silence
It’s been more than just a while since
She’s stepping away
And I watch, she’s leaving
She never can stay
But it’s no cause for grieving
I actually had a person in mind when I wrote this, and in hindsight I realize how deeply self-absorbed I was at the time. I had a good friendship with a fairly close enounter that more or less ended the friendship. No alcohol was involved on my end, and I don’t think so on hers either. I imagined I wanted to be in a relationship with her, and the fact that I was unwilling to actually discuss what had happened between us is a good indicator that, desires aside, I wasn’t ready for one.
I have, since I’ve started playing, felt that music was my saving grace as a person, even though I don’t believe in salvation outside of one’s present moment and, were I to, I wouldn’t think it a matter of grace but of works. That said, once one has made something beautiful, it can’t be erased from the world, no matter what. This is a great example. Beauty in art, at least as I take it to apply to my work, is how clearly the piece reflects a reality. The reality can be fictional, to be sure. This is not an original idea but it fits with me. This tune is as real, in its details, as anything I’ve written.
Lyrics have always taken me more labor time than music–I’m not different that most musicians I know or read about–but they are of secondary importance. To clarify: it is of primary importance that one’s lyrics are excellent, so that they don’t draw attention away from the beauty of the music. Bad lyrics distract. With good lyrics, one can accept the music on its own terms. It is the music of the piece that taps into whatever part it is of people that is deep, spiritual, and opening to the world. That’s what music needs to do: open one up to the world. It’s at that point that one can re-encounter the words in a piece in a way in which they don’t hit one at a merely intellectual level. At first, the primary thing with words is that they not distract from the music. Moved through the sound, the words themselves become music. That happens in this piece, and in my best ones generally.
I later recorded a country version of this with Peter. The tune fit the genre nicely. A few friends familiar with this original recording gave me hell about our arrangement–the banjo is corny, etc.–but I stand by it. We were ahead of Wilco by I don’t know how many years but somehow never made the pages of No Depression. Imagine that…This original recording, however well we rearranged it, is the better version.
