Baby, I’m A Black Cloud (download here)

(To your untrained eyes, I appear foreboding, dangerous.  I make you feel uneasy.  You shield your eyes, you point me out to those around you, and you bemoan my sudden, unanounced appearance in the sky.  Yet you could not survive without what I have stored within me. I mean no harm, no ill will.  I exist only to replenish the cracked earth; you have misread me since the day you were born)

***

When I began writing this song, I was in the midst of a small, completely manageable personal crisis.  Within 24 hours, I had finished both the song and the crisis.

A few nights later, I sat down with a friend and we had between two and four beers and talked through the respective emergencies that were threatening our very existences, and it was there that I was able to draw the connection - that my crisis management is directly related to my creativity.

And this, at least to me, is what art is about.  We don’t create to beat deadlines, or to garner affection or fame.  We create because we see a small sliver of something in ourselves that fits a small crack in the world around us.  If we didn’t let our insides see the light of day, that crack would stay there, and bother us, and possibly grow even bigger and scarier.  We are forever plugging up holes and cracks with our art.

***

Baby I’m a radio
Transmitting to your flesh and bone
Begging you to take me home
And let me breathe

Baby I’m a redwood tree
Cut me down and count my rings
‘Cause every single song I sing
Is history

Baby I’m a black cloud
Looking for some dry ground
Falling hard without a sound

Baby I’m a whispered prayer
Following you everywhere
Listen to me if you dare
It won’t take long

Baby I’m a car alarm
Set off by a shooting star
They tried to keep our hands apart
But we were strong

***

So, one day after I decided to stave off emergency with a few loping guitar chords and the phrase “baby, I’m a radio”, my writing/singing companion came over, and we sat on the back porch and listened to planes fly overhead and finished writing this song, which is is exactly how we want it.  No major hook, no bridge or mature structure, just a thin frame of bone with the slightest bit of flesh on it.

We can honor our work by letting it breathe by itself. That’s what this blog is about.  Part of me is scared to take this group of songs I’ve been sharing with you and take them out of the world of harsh lo-fi, out of the world of planes overhead and static clawing at the edges, and into an environment where they can be messed with, or overproduced, or made unpure.  As Rachel and I prepare to bring the Northern District album in our heads into the world of the living, please remember us, striving to make something real and direct; something honest.

***

“Yeah, they’re good songs.  The recordings could be better, though,” some dude sniffed at me recently, and I wanted to politely kick him, let him know, through gritted teeth, that he was missing the point.  They’re narratives.  Narratives don’t need bells, whistles, glitter, or Christmas lights.  Narratives simply exist.