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| It was sometime in December, I think, even while I was still working on "OoOH," when she and I were talking about all these songs that used the same certain words, give or take a word. And then I went to my room and started playing a lyric-less chord progression that I had been working on a couple months earlier, and this materialized in less than half an hour.
As I tried it out, during those last weeks in China, my roommate would ask, "Weien, is this about...?"
...He was a keen guy. smile
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Hope, Love, and Glory
(Click to download from vs)
Tell me about hope
Is it that kind of dream
Where you open your eyes
Then close and try to reprise
What's gone
What's gone
Tell me about hope
Tell me about love
Is it some kind of sweet
Thing whose taste you can't define
But know you want to redesign
What's there
What's there
Tell me about love
And then I'll tell you
Tell you about reality
I'll tell you
Tell you about distance
But you'll say hope, say love, say glory
Tell me about glory
Is it kind of what you feel
When your soul finishes a fast
And figures out how to contrast
What's gone
What's there
Tell me about glory
And then I'll tell you
Tell you about reality
I'll tell you
Tell you about time
And you'll say hope, say love, say glory
And then I'll tell you
Tell you about reality
I'll tell you
Tell you about Faith
Please say hope, say love, say glory
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| It was early December when I finally got a chance to write a song in China; I was several miles in the air, flying home to Beijing from ice-city Harbin, before I was able to start work on this one, work that was mostly brainstorming. There's over a page of preliminary notes that attest to the fact that for a while I had both too much material for one song as well as not enough direction to put together a single cohesive work.
I think it was a while later, back in Beijing, when I finally started to see what this song was going to talk about, about confusion, contusion, concern paving way to something that isn't instantly understandable, or maybe simply isn't ours to understand... all wrapped in a story that hopefully avoids obtuseness while remaining, well, believable. smile Thanks to [糖葫芦] for lending her singular voice as well as a great deal of inspiration, exposition, vindication to this project.
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Out of Our Hands
(Click to listen/download from vs)
I think it started up when we found
That for music we liked the same sound
And I asked what you sang when you sang in the shower
Then we ended up talking for three or four hours
And then I gasped when I saw the time
I thought we'd fallen out of our minds
And then you went to the door and in silhouette
Sighed agreement that there was nothing to regret
I can't explain how it seems wrong
How our time's never long enough
But we don't even try, and both understand
That what's happened already is out of our hands
What's going to happen is out of our hands
That first song was a long time ago
Back when I stressed to stay apropos
How it scared me to touch or even sit close
And my expressions of feeling were distant at most
Had my own apprehensions, too
About our easily misconstrued
Situation I found I constantly thought
About how all at once it was both perfect and not
I can't explain how it seems wrong
How our time's never long enough
But we don't even try, and both understand
That what's happened already is out of our hands
What's going to happen is out of our hands
Don't need to explain how we feel blessed
And Your grace is more than enough
So we don't even try, and both understand
That what's happening here is out of our hands
And what happens next is in more capable hands
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| I was kind of (really) congested so this recording features a pleasant nasal quality. Which kind of fits what the song is about. Maybe. Built backwards from a couple lines in the middle of the chorus. A bit of a departure.
Thanks to Joydita S. for cello interlude and effects.
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Something More
(Click to listen/download)
They say I have too much emotion
Ever since I tempo-rubato'd the Bach
But why my heart took a più mosso notion, when I met you
Why my cowlick fell over in shock
My still-a-child brain didn't know
What my heart started shouting in fortissimo
(CHORUS)
Maybe you'll shoot me a glance
That I'll imagine or not
And if not then I'll try and make sure
That's when I'll jump at the chance
To show you that I like you a lot
Or maybe I'll say - something more
I rejoiced when you answered smiling
Yes, you were free tomorrow at five
Then for the next several weeks we were Jane Austen-styling
We were acting out love stories, live
At the same time my voice wasn't where
My feelings were dancing ten feet in the air
And all at once we heard the clock strike
A quarter till our final goodbye
What I felt then was urgent or chilling or even like
The cuckoo had a glint in his eyes
I think that was when I understood
What it takes for forever, even knocking on wood
(...or take the fact I'm alive as my cue...) | | |
| Decided to write this one day in spring when a classmate of mine in History of Ideas II (Roman and Christian thought) described to me how one of our texts -- Lucretius' On the Nature of the Universe -- was getting him down. The verses reference class discussions and sections from the text; the chorus references Roman writer Cicero's ultimate failure to "achieve" happiness despite his statements on the subject. Apologies for the messy, too-folksy vocals.
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Hey There Venus
(Click to listen/download -- Thanks, Victoria!)
(Book 1)
Hey there Venus, honey my glass
Filled with this wormwooded genius, I'll feed to the class
Although you're high and mighty, on your unruffled clouds
But that's the same insighty that we're talking about
Yet these atoms and vacuums in their infinite field
With no purpose or center lack a certain appeal
(CHORUS)
(What I'm saying is) Lucretius
Please just
Leave us
Alone
(I know you want us all to) Be serene
But it remains to be seen
That you're any happier than Cicero
(Book 2)
Then there's this calc-based notion of matter and space
That's all a shameless promotion of your civil case
Where you relate your relativity and call it profound
But if we throw creativity from an uttermost bound
It either bounces or travels another ten feet
And either way we've got to admit defeat
(Book 4)
Of course you know that our senses cannot be denied
As clear as people with jaundice see through yellow eyes
So you'll deduce, if unconvincingly, the mind is to blame
Cause even optical illusions remain a brain game
Just know if licorice atoms cause your tongue misery
That your taste buds are telling the truth, yesiree
(Book 4/5)
Let's get this straight, you think that love is something we should avoid
But all your hauntings and heartaches sound a bit paranoid
And then your talk of self-deception and pretty rank paramours
Sounds more like bitter reminiscence of the ones who were yours
In the end this serenity's an unpleasant affair
What with those flimsy old goddesses who don't really care | | |
| (Influences: "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer, II Timothy 1:7-8, recent personal experience.)
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Vampire's Sins
When you walked through that gust of wind
When my eyes turned you cerise-skinned
I breathed to heart
How your blood red
Made my throat ache
Made my mind dread
How you stepped slow but far too close
How your scent pushed me past eros
I seized my thirst
And pinched it down
I couldn't breathe
Or think, and found
That all that I could do was run
Away until my thoughts were done
With your allure
And I'd be sure
That this was love and I'd come to
The point where we would not kill you
What I did when I ran from here
What I saw in my kind of fear:
I thought of you
And hopelessly
Tried to forget
Your taste to me
But then I felt this psyche-flame
As if a Holy Spirit came
To burn me clean
And soundly heal
Me where I would
No longer feel
That all that I could do was run
Away until my thoughts were done
With your allure
And I'd be sure
That this was love and I could see
The point where we would not kill me
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