SAW 2009 #17: Naked by Chris Devine

I'll be honest ... I have NO idea what this song means.

After delving seriously into the experimental (and instrumental) with my previous Song-a-Week contender, I wanted to write something a little more ordinary. I came up with a chord progression that I liked even though it sounded suspiciously Erik Hendel-like, and then proceeded to more or less pull words out of the air without much forethought. I think of this as my 'Dada' technique, ignoring the conscious mind and its volition and plonking down the words that just seem like they belong there. As a result, we have lyrics that at times seem to mean something but, taken as a whole, really seem all over the place. Maybe with time it'll all make sense. That happens to me sometimes.

But if anyone can tell me who the hell the 'wizards of the interstice' are and what they're doing in my song, please do!

The arrangement was intentionally really simple -- acoustic guitar, bass guitar, and a little bit of drum loop-ness. Initially, I'd put drum loops under the whole thing, but since it wasn't recorded with the drums, things really didn't match up perfectly and my attempt to audio-snap things to match them up failed miserably. So I dumped most of the drums, except to work as punctuation.

And since I'd been meaning to include lyrics in my blog posts but had forgotten to till now, here are the words ... I'll soon amend my earlier posts, too, to include the words where the songs actually have them:

The taste of the fruit
Is a bitter pursuit
When with the force of a brute
In an Italian black suit
You shamed me.

Dust from the trail
And the horse's long tail
Make it easy to fail
To see through the veil,
Then you claimed me.

Wizards of the interstice, and pillars of the circumstance,
Given rise to we have, taking stock of what we gave,
Made of flesh and made of stone, made of water, made of bone,
Made for this and this alone, made to bring us safely home.

Too long ago to remember the words
Too long abed to rise up with the birds
So I can act like it never occurred,
Do what I want and not what's preferred.

The hand in the dark
Never leaves a mark
But the hint of a spark
Reveals all that's stark
And naked.