Half-lies
A couple of Tuesdays back, I was where I usually am on a Tuesday night; hanging out with my friends at Unbound — a community of criminal justice-affected (or interested) people who enjoy food, company and music-making together… See: https://www.voxliminis.co.uk/projects/unbound/
We often work on a theme for a few weeks or months, and that Tuesday we were getting into the topics of ‘heritage and superstition’. Quite an interesting juxtaposition of words that, as it turns out.
Our conversation got me thinking about my high school days and, specifically, about the pressure we feel (at that time in our lives) to find a way to make or remake ourselves so that we somehow fit in, hopefully without having to distort our sense of who we ‘really’ are too much.
The next day, this set of lyrics arrived, almost in one splurge (that’s a technical song-writing term by the way), and I’ve only edited them lightly since.
Lyrics
I knew where I came from
Not where I belonged
And I sensed the danger
Of writing that wrong
I looked through the red-glass
At the sepia lies
Saw the gold tarnish
Put on my disguise
Back in the old school
We warmed to the task
The struggle was real then
To defuse the past
But now from this distance
How little I feel
It was such a strange fiction
To choose to make real
Back in the old school
We warmed to the task
The struggle was real then
To defuse the past
The myth and the memory
All twisted and twined
Hang on to your half-truth
The half-lies are mine, all mine
Sonically, the muted guitar sound is produced by putting a bit of sponge under the bridge. The YouTube video below is just a single take, single-track guitar and vocal, with a bit of fake cello added (via a midi keyboard). I suppose the muted sound of it, and the rhythm (is it a waltz, or could it be?) allude to the tentative, uncertain dance that the words imply. The cello part just wanders here and there in the right key, again, trying to find its place, I guess?
Hope you like it.