As you can maybe tell from the video, this song was coming together just as spring was starting. I was trying to for something as ambient and minimalist as possible, knowing that I couldn’t keep it up, and that dynamics were going to happen. I like deliberately holding back creatively to see what surfaces – that which would otherwise get buried underneath the layers of obsessive overworking.
Of course, I couldn’t keep myself away from some weird, zen-like subject matter for the lyrics. The idea floating around there was that we all come from, and return to, a common place. All of existence is fair game, on a certain level, except for this becoming and returning. You can commit any wrong, any act of kindness, portray any virtue of truth or evil of sin, but you cannot penetrate the sacred. You have no access to any unrecorded thoughts, unprocessed images, or uncomposed ideas besides your own.
This may sound individualistic, but it’s not. Every social connection keeps our realm active. That’s why we mourn together when someone leaves us, and that’s how we can understand things today that began with a single thought a long time ago. But the rest ends up, forever untouched, as whispers in the fields. I also like the concept of fields because it’s used in quantum theory to describe the base of existence.
The B side happened very quickly and I really just wanted to get kind of loud and try layering multiple guitars again. Of course it had to get angsty and slightly us-against-them political. It’s not something I feel like is truly in my wheelhouse, and in the times I tried it, I’ve had to hold back a little just to stay on the edge.
It was fun to track those loud harmonies, and I connect that with all the Alice in Chains I’ve listened to. I don’t often get to cite that influence.