Ocean Sky - The words

Writing words for Sestina is all about stories.

Somewhere along the way, I got tired of writing the garden-variety semi- or fully autobiographical confessionals for song lyrics. That seems to be what everyone is expecting from singers: Singing is such a personal, naked act that people tend to automatically assume that you're singing about yourself and your own real-life experiences. I think most singer-songwriters more or less have to deal with peoples expectations of them being the protagonist in their songs, and for many, this is a comfortable, natural route to take in writing.

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The ghost of crooners past 

Ocean Sky was one of the first songs where I made the conscious choice of just writing a story about something other than myself, just anything that suited the music best. This was a liberating experience - for the first time, I didn't have to exaggerate the modest dramas of my own, rather placid life, but I had the freedom to create a story I felt strongly about, one that I really wanted to tell.

My initial concern was that I wouldn't be able to react emotionally as strongly to this new "fiction" as when singing about personal matters. Interestingly, it proved to be the opposite; I was quite surprised how hard the song hit me when I finished the words. It's a very simple story, but there's something going on beneath the surface that, in some ways, is just as much a piece of myself as a memory or an experience.

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The lyrics for Ocean Sky were written piece by piece. The story is based on a short poem I wrote years ago on a Summer day while sitting in a train, waiting for departure. A long time afterwards, when the music for the song was completed, I happened to be going through my sketchbook and rediscovered the poem. It felt right for what we were working on, so I took the title and a few lines, and it ballooned into a story.

So nowadays, practically all the words for Sestina songs are stories. I'm having a lot of fun painting with these new colors, letting the song reveal what it wants to tell. Kind of like having beats and notes giving birth to places and dreams.

As far as past-times go, I think I'm pretty happy with this one.

.

Ocean Sky

under the ocean sky

you drown in sighs

you remember

sometimes

under the ocean sky

steps that cross the shoreline

are taken by the tide

and by dawn

you'll be gone

and close the door

head on out

and sink the oars

drift on with the flow

with the autumn tide

you leave your home

come morning light

you leave the shore

follow until you're lost

under the ocean sky

you miss but can't recall

her eyes and how she smiled

when she thought that no-one saw

and how she used to lay

awake before the dawn

in a bedroom full of flowers

with a window out to sea

you gave out for the waves

that dress she never wore

quit hoping many times

until one day you saw

with shards of wood and quills

it washed back on the shore

white as it ever was

her hair caught in its straps

take me down

take me below

show me where

the rivers are born

take me down

take me below

show me where

the buried go

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Music to trigger inferiority complexes to:

Radiohead - The King of Limbs

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