Final Title: Can of Worms
A little more about this YouTube project: I always do “sketches” in the early stages of songwriting. I used to hum and form melodies on a little tape recorder, then write the song later. Some songs were purely constructed in a notebook. For almost everything I’ve done in the past year, I would record the “sketch” directly onto the computer and then build the final track on top of it. I always forget about the raw character of the song in each of those methods, so recently I’ve been making quick videos of new songs instead. I work a little harder to get it working as a song, but don’t really worry about the production. Unfinished things can be beautiful in their own way. There’s sort of this uninhibited mixture of mining from my life and gratuitous fictionalizing going on in these songs, which can be tricky territory. A good song should feel like a friend telling you something, but a good songwriter shouldn’t treat songwriting as a substitution for talking to a friend. It’s weird because on the one hand, you need distance from your work to ensure that you’re expressing something universal, and on the other hand it needs to be close to your heart so you know it’s real.

So as far as these sketches go, I guess there’s a lot of sadness in my heart. I admit that. But I’m trying to leave the details of these stories open to your own interpretation. These aren’t my stories. Ideally they’re a collage of everything I’ve ever touched, and I like to believe that I share those things with the rest of you humans breathing the same air as me. Go figure I feel the need to explain so much when I actually decide to use the word “love” in a song!

Final Title: Can of Worms

take apart my love
and everything I tried hide it wrapped in time
I’m sick of all this stuff
it’s hard to feel alive, this time
even though I survived
the darker stuff I want it back again
set aside my faults
to diverge in a glacial unwind
it seems I’m badly designed
my heart’s a spark in the twisted sky

you keep it all inside
and find it hard to hide
you got the means to cut
the ties from what you find
you won’t be coming back
until these days run dry
until these days run dry
away from your eyes
so shy away from the times you lied
and even still you’ll be lost inside
I’m not about to look up
I’m not about to look side to side

take apart my head life
kill the light inside
forget what I said
loneliness is the logical end
open up this mess
I’ll see you when it’s all better described
I can’t won’t pretend I’m just fine
but that’s ok cause goes to show that this life’s not mine

Original Demo

Final track from “Between the Walls and the Sea”