The God Song

It's been a while. I have been absent.

Life happened and didn't happen in equally devastating measures, but it appears the seas are finally settling.

During this vacation I began to write terrible amounts of words and during this proliferation I reconsidered some of the words I had written previously. Sometimes I don't know what I'm writing about until its done and then I have to apply it to my life like a horoscope to decipher the meaning. Sometimes that's the final stage in the writing. Once a chord progression and beat have been found, i mumble the lines i have come up with over the music and edit out the less lucid parts for more appropriate phrases. I'm kinda equal parts when it comes to composition. At times I write music to a lyric and at times I write lyrics to a music. But the most common scenario is this kind of edited autowittering translated into a story, sung over the bare bones and given flesh afterwards.

The words to The God Song happened more or less in this fashion.

There was a time in my life when i considered myself a viciously silent religious person. Troubled as I was and most everybody is, i could roll my eyes closed and bathe in a blonde light of comfort in times torment or stare at some invisible entity in dark formless clouds and feel connected to it.

I never really spoke about it and never attended a church, for it was a private experience and so greatly enriched by its secrecy. I think back to that time now and realise i was addicted to secrets. The pleasure and trauma of having something unknown to anyone but you. Terrible things really. i try not to have any secrets these days. I am fairly certain this happened because of all the X-Men and Spider-Man comics i consumed. Ha.

A few of my friends had deep seated, sturdy christian beliefs which could not have been more alien to my personal beliefs. They would effervesce communally and loudly over the correct approach to sex in the eyes of god. I would listen and offer a view based only on fact or logic, deadpan and devoid of religious overtones. The straight man. Secretly i would converse with my Cloudman in pictures, not words. I would ride out the detriment of homophobes and bullies with knowing but desperate looks upward and feel protected. It was better on the darker cloudy days cuz it added to the whole drama of the thing. It was more satisfying and dramatic to imagine and Old Testament god looking directly at me atop a huge fucking thundercloud. And on sunny days i didn't really think about it.

And then one day it stopped. I'm not sure what happened, but it was like my access was rejected. The pleasures of comforts I had had during times of torment were now defunct and non renewable. A gloom would well beneath me and I couldn't tilt my head to see beyond it. That's probably enough metaphors about that.

I mean I tried to rejuvenate it. I bumbled with guilt and puzzled over standard thoughts of the forgotten sinner. I looked to more conventional means of contact to try and sidestep the malfunction and for a time began praying nightly. But it would not work.

Perhaps I grew up? I don't know what happened, but something ticked over in my head and I wasn't as easily rewarded. Which is probably a good thing. After a while I stopped even thinking about it. I got over the drama of having lost my imagined connection and got on with life.

And so the words to The God Song are largely about this time. My state as a marionette and the horrible moment an unseen crow snipped the strings to the sky. I actually thought about that image as I composed and tried to represent the crow by the marauding brass in verse two. just so you know to look out for it.

But I'm not REALLY a snipped puppet, and far from lifeless. As it is you find other ways to connect as we bumble along. to each other, and perhaps thats what I was looking for at that point in history and didnt realise.

This was a rather sombre one folks, so i'll stop there. I promise to be more fun next time. I will tell you about all fun things about shooting the Captain America Video Video, Maida Vale Studios, Radio One, Manchester, Gay Festivals, Chicks On Speed and Radio Plays with Blevin. Oh and remixes.

MORE (cheerful) SOON

AMX

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