This week's ghost

In addition to obsessing over Time and the Sea (which is a working title for a future album), I also find myself leaning on the ghost... and what the ghost means and how it represents the relationship between the past and the future and the passage of time. Not a particularly groundbreaking lyrical convention, but a useful and effective one.

What raised the specter of the ghost this week, was that I'm starting to sort through the lyrics to all the new tunes and look for possible themes for the new recording project... most of the songs have been written over the last 6 months, with over half in the last 3 months, and that writing window lends itself to subliminal (or sometimes superliminal) overarching ideas and imagery.

One of the things I liked about naming the album Bottle Boy is that when I looked at all the lyrics, it seemed like an album about the past, about memories, and about, well, ghosts... things that continue to haunt you which you think are temporary but come to realize, after months or years, that they might just be a part of you forever.

So you have:

Nothing's Changed - that very idea of thinking you've escaped something from your past only to have it there again 

Revenant - almost exactly the same theme as Nothing's Changed... "coming back again..."

The Darkness - about those people (well, person) who help(s) you deal with time and ghosts

Four Words - sometimes, the ghosts get a little too loud and you give up

Bombs Away - walking that line between the past and future... trying to move forward

Fallout Grace - the wildcard... progress and the unknown... from all these ghosts come songs

Mermaid - as mentioned in previous entries, this song is the "ghost" of the album... seemed like it would haunt me until we put it out there.

The Soft Drown - overwhelmed by the ghosts

Seraphim do Mar - what's left when it's all gone?

And Bottle Boy... this song was on our first EP (a ghost of a song), and it's remained a bit of a mystery to me. It's about being between the past and the future, between the ghosts of the past and the ghosts of the future (I feel like I'm stuck in a Dickens' story now)... and that feeling of knowing that there will always be those ghosts there... so it seemed an appropriate title for the album.

When I wrote these lyrics, which I did in a cafe up in Madison, Wisconsin, on a napkin in 2003 (still have the napkin), I wasn't sure what they meant, specifically the choruses and the title. I'd had the phrase Bottle Boy kicking around for a bit, and really loved the imagery and what it evoked, but had no context in which to put it. And these fairly straightforward verse lyrics came pouring out of me in a cafe where I spent many a night during my four important years in Madison, and I was remembering all the ghosts, good and bad, and thinking about what they meant to me and how they made and continued to make me who I was on that day... and Bottle Boy was born.

Aimless AM radio, spinning through the dial I'm falling into silence, I've gone another mile When that feeling of suspense meets the skyline heading north Going down that road you've gone down many times before Like a moth into the light, I neglect the consequence Or perhaps it was the lure of electric eloquence One thing is for certain, the burn is something real The scar is just a shadow of the innocence I feel I'm in between the signal I'm in between the static I'm lightening in a bottle I'm thinking something tragic And on past the journey to the place where we were born On that quiet winter's night when the clocks had struck forlorn There's something stark and fleeting in walking down these streets There's something to the myth that quickens my heart as it beats I'm in between the signal I'm in between the static I'm lightening in a bottle I'm thinking something tragic I'm in between the moonlight The currency of strangers The noise is in the moonlight And the moonlight is the danger to me And back into the night, the sky is pushing me Back on down that road to the places I should be How can I forget the way you won weary eyes? Well I will not go dreaming as the days just pass me by ******* 

So now I can see that everybody's lives are made up of these choruses of ghosts... and maybe I'm just trying to get mine to sing in tune.

Cheers. Go Bears.

jbg