This was the first song that I wrote for this project, and to be honest, I wasn’t really sure that I could make any music about losing Annie Kate. I had a voice memo of the piano melody that I really loved. What is now the piano line was actually a melody where I sang:
Here is the image of the main vision that I had after losing her. It was a dream I had, or a daydream. Or maybe I created it in my mind as a way of processing it subliminally. Maybe it happened in some alternate place…? I don’t think I know where it came from, which I’m fine with, but I know the scene, and it’s woven into these songs.
This song had a melody I loved, and I seemed to want to paint a vivid lyrical-picture of the scene, but honestly, the more I tried to articulate it, the more I felt like I couldn’t just spell it out and paint the picture. It felt like I was cheapening it or something by putting it into words. So I changed course, and made a session one night. In about an hour and a half, I made most of the final track that is here. It starts out with a synth making a pattern that is sort of a cross between waves and a church bell to me. It isn’t a loop, and isn’t perfect, and as soon as I found the sound and did that, I felt that I knew where to go with the rest of it. There is a take of the piano that I did a few times to get it right. There is an electric guitar doing the sporadic things through a gated reverb, a few synth string pads, and a synth called a Soma Lyra-8 that is a series of tone generators that you interact with with metal touch sensors, where you complete the circuit, physically. I made a new friend in the process of making this record named Corin Dubie. I always get to master things that he plays on, but this was my first chance to get to work with him, personally. He plays horns and processes sounds in an amazing way. He harmonized lines and added some textures and brought some great extra colors out, and the final version is what I did that first night plus Corin. I came into the house from the studio, and I played it for Nicole and it was clearly the first firm step planted in the ground for me on this project.
Somehow, I felt like I finally had something to say – right on the heels of feeling like saying nothing was the right decision.
