- stonebreaker (song for leo) – as the title says, this is a song in which i wrote for my little boy leo. i found there to be a flower called saxifrage (rockfoils) – it’s nicknamed stonebreaker as it has the medicinal quality of breaking kidney stones. according to legend its roots also has the ability to break apart rocks – but that might just be romanticising. if there is a flower that can break apart a rock, what other subtle, small things have great power? – a word, an idea, a child.. not all power is the brutal violent type, some powers are more subtle and complex. “we’ll find a way to navigate this strange land…” being the key line here, in a rapidly changing world, we’ll find a way to overcome it’s challenges.
- dust clouds – a search for a father’s presence both internal – in the body, memories and physical sensations “feel your weight upon my shoulders…” as well as on the outside in the stars and the cosmos “windblown old man swept away..”. dust clouds contrasts and balances the intimate emotions of grief with the more cosmic philosophical questions of what does this all mean and where do we end up after life ends? there are questions that we put off addressing – the great conundrum of life and its mysteries – but there comes a time when these issues force themselves into your awareness and they can no longer be ignored..
- little blood – a deep dive into the depths of the psyche looking for the root of the pain. feeling disoriented and lost, a long way from home and so many things in flux and confusion – the sensation was losing vital energy and life force. i imagined it draining out of me like blood. what the song communicates are the self reprimands that came from those depths in which the inner voice unequivocally tells you what’s what “i didn’t try, i didn’t fight, i didn’t dare..”
- broken ladders – a desert space, not too unlike rural chile. a desert in which you are alone and lost, where nothing is familiar and everything is completely disorientated. such is the effect of a desert – and such is it’s function in many spiritual traditions. to one who is alone and undistracted, nature holds up a mirror and allows you to see yourself as you truly are. it’s domain of the symbolic and archetypal. to one who sees themself as a nomadic, one who treads lightly and never settles, settling down to start a family involves a grief and disorientation. the option of escape plays directly against the possibility of belonging, here is the struggle..
- oklahoma – two people somewhere in america decide for an unspecified reason to leave their hometown and escape to somewhere like oklahoma “where nights are cold and the beer is bitter”. they meet at a 7/11 and head off into the night on the open road only to find that whatever it was that they were trying to escape found a way of catching up with them..
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