Suspended Disbelief

Lyrical selections from the 1990s

Entering the Dream

As red as living blood,
as green as the green, green grass of home,
a home so far away.
A place I've never known,
a place I've only seen in dreams,
vanishing with the day.

But how can you miss
something that you've never had
and how can you cry for someone
you've never known?

As tears is the rain this day,
falling from heaven, shed by the gods,
they weep with me.
I lost you once,
I lost you a long, long time ago.
How could I know...

That I'd see you every day,
in everything I do
and sometimes in the night
I still reach for you.

Just one more time I've tried and failed.
Just one more night I'll watch the pale moon sink like my soul.

How sweet are the sounds I hear,
the wind through the trees,
the song of the birds in the air,
the whispers of night.
The night that closes in,
the night like a warm blanket
that smothers me
until I can't breathe.

And so I say good-bye
to those I leave behind,
all I ask is please,
remember me.

end-of-the-line resignation, Key of D
Vox, acoustic (drop D tuning) woodwinds, strings,

I've always been proud of this piece, both musically and lyrically. Musically, it was the first time I'd ever experimented with different tunings and in this case, I dropped both the high and low E strings down to D. Lyrically, it was part autobigraphical and part extrapolation. The loneliness was mine. The extrapolation was about a former friend's recent suicide and my own wondering what emotions lead to such an act. More about that can be found here in this article.