Back in 2008 or so, I attended an all-day songwriting workshop with the late teacher Edwin Coppard from Victoria BC. I came out of that workshop with two songs. This is the only one that made it onto this album (the other will be on the next, I expect). His instruction for this first exercise was, “I want you to write the darkest song you can.” That was easy! The song flowed out in about ten minutes. It’s full of imagery that I didn’t understand, it just seemed dark and interesting to me. Like so many of my songs, over time it’s unfolded like a fractally complex work of origami, revealing deeper and darker layers of all my brrrr terrors and fears and traumas. Yet it came from a very bright and happy day in my life. It was a fabulous workshop, and songwriting is fun!
That first line, “Held-back hunger, return to womb,” reflects the inner feeling of having suffered lifetimes of never achieving, or even being in a position to try to achieve my dreams. I have always been filled with a sense of creative passion and desire to express myself in new ways, to take creative risks and find an audience. Yet where I lived for most of my early life, and possibly for many lifetimes before, was very far from a world where such things were not only possible but even considered as a possibility. Performing, writing songs, or for that matter, making any art beyond portraiture and landscapes as a hobby, was simply not a thing.
In the type of pioneer-roots wilderness culture I grew up in, it’s all about hard work, survival, playing hard and living fast in the moment. Risks were physical ones, risks to life and limb from hard work, accident and deprivation. Growing up without plumbing or electricity meant growing up without mass media or exposure to the culture of the day. The sixties passed me by except as the music I heard on our family’s battery powered turntable, all of which came from earlier decades. CBC Radio was mostly talk; the music was classical, and my parents promptly shut that off when it started. When I grew old enough to be aware of such things as dreams and ambitions, I was so beaten down by early and ongoing trauma, poverty, sexual abuse and the like, that I could not imagine what it might have to do with me. I had grown accustomed to my fate at the bottom of everything, crushed into darkness. My work was to put one foot in front of the other and survive the circumstances of my life, period. Dreams were for characters in the books I consumed voraciously.
Failure was not a consequence of not trying hard enough or working toward a goal, it was simply a fact of life, an unavoidable fate for such as myself. I had no image of ‘me’ that included the possibility of fulfilling any of the deep compressed hungers that lurked in the bottom of my oceanic consciousness. I had no idea what I was really writin, when I wrote this song, but it gives me deep chills now. It expressed all the ways I felt suppressed, compressed and eternally unfulfilled.
A few years ago I read a book called “Animate Earth” by Stephan Harding, about the life and interconnectedness of this planet, based upon Gaia Theory pioneered by James Lovelock. This book changed my life and consciousness in many ways. It inspired a few songs as well, but one image from it has haunted me: the carbon cycle. The carbon atoms that are the foundation of all life on the planet have a cycle that can take millions of years to complete. This most basic element of life is hidden in the deeps of the earth for most of its existence and only spends a brief moment in the sun existing as part of a living being, whether plant, animal, insect or other.
This cycle horrifies me on a visceral level—the proportion of darkness to light feels terribly unfair and reflects my own deepest terrors. Pressured down to the bottom of the sea, and having to go through so much time, pressure and changes before it ever becomes possible to become life again, the life of a carbon atom is a powerful, haunting metaphor for the journey of the spirit. When I learned about it, it made me think of this song. Yes, it is dark—the darkest. It is also playful, taking itself and its own darkness lightly, and I love it.
As much fun as this song was to write, it was even more fun to record. Marc asked me, “What kind of feel do you want for this one?” I promptly replied, “Deep, dark and intense.” He pulled out a pair of socks and wrapped them around the ends of his sticks to get that deep booming sound on the toms, and tossed off a killer psychedelic lead guitar track that he (inexplicably) thought should be mixed way down in the background. I begged him to turn it up, no, more, no, louder—that’s it! I love this version of this song, and as dark and deep as the subject matter turned out to be, it was wildly fun to create and I’m very happy with the creative collaboration between Marc and myself in coming up with this arrangement.
Lyrics:
The Hunger
Held-back hunger, return to womb
Prisoned in darkness turned to tomb
Like a neon fish in the bottom of the sea
This weighty feeling, this gravity
Oh the sea overhead is pressing me down
In the deep green darkness I drownOpening bottom, reaching for light
Sick of boredom, and itching for a fight
Who'll be my hero, where's my enemy?
Lurking in the shadows, wait and seeWhat are the questions for the answers I desire?
I sift through the brush but the woods grow higher
'Til the world has shrunk to the size of a pea
I swallow it like medicine to help me seeHold me in your arms and never let me go
I’ll sift through your cracks like drifting snow
Rhythms in the night, the great starry void
Chanting secret caverns, the truth I avoidTake me to the bottom and lift me in the light
Save me from my boredom and ready me for flight
Who’ll be my hero, where’s my enemy?
Hiding in the mirror, wait and seeHeld-back hunger, return to womb
Prisoned in darkness turned to tomb
Like a neon fish in the bottom of the sea
This weighty feeling, this gravity
Oh the sea overhead is pressing me down
In the deep sweet darkness I drown
Album news: the physical album has arrived, and it is beautiful. I didn’t order many copies; not many people listen to physical CDs any more. Still, on my island there are many Luddites who still cling to this technology and I am happy to provide for them. If you are one of these old-schoolers, please let me know and I will send you a copy asap.
I have a date for a CD release concert here locally, on August 23rd, and I am very excited about that! I’m being supported by our local Arts Council and it feels wonderful not to have to figure it all out for myself.
If you want to support my work, but don’t use physical CDs, you can purchase high quality .wav files from my Bandcamp page, below. If you just want to hear the tunes on your favourite streaming service, I’ve got you covered there, too.