Nature
I have long been taken with the notion of the long now, and the relatively miniscule amount of time that humans have spent on this earth. In Nature, I present four songs that deal with elements of the earth that were here before us, and will remain once we've seen ourselves out. We start with the birds we see everyday through our windows that descended from the dinosaurs that walked the earth 245 million years ago before being Taken by the Wind. Then we marvel at the Majesty of Trees who we've come to learn to communicate with each other through vast underground fungal networks. (The Wood-Wide Web!) Next up is a tour through the vast and colourful world of beetles for whom any potential creator must have had An Inordinate Fondness. Finally, we do our best to grasp the sheer ancientness of the earth's ocean whose age is measured in increments of a billion. We can study its formation, but as long as any human knows, It's Just Always Been There.
Taken by the Wind
I spend a lot of time watching the birds that hang around outside my house. We humans like to think that we're something special among the animals, but really, we're not all that different. Like us, the birds get up in the morning, go to work to find food and shelter. Bring home the bacon. Sit around with their friends and neighbours having a yarn. Join the local running group. Go to bed. Wake up in the morning. Do it all over again. And they've been doing this for a really long time. Longer than we've been at it.
This has become one of my favourite songs to play live.
Majesty of Trees
I had a vague memory that I'd heard something about scientists discovering that trees talk to each other through underground fungal networks. A quick internet search and yes, this is a thing. Naturally, I had to write about it. There's a bunch of dude-bros who love the idea of nature being this dog eat dog world where every living thing is out for itself and only the strong survive. Nature is a pretty brutal place, however the things that survive more often have formed relationships with the other life forms around them to help get through the day. Turns out trees are no different. Not only do they share information through their fungal networks, they also share nutrients with the plants that are having a rough time.
This song was written and recorded live in front of an audience on my Twitch show. I usually record a demo on my electric classical and then swap in the acoustic for the release. In this case, I found I really liked the sound of the electric, so I overdubbed with the acoustic which gives it a slightly more majestic feel I think.
An Inordinate Fondness
I've always been a big fan of insects in general. I remember getting a massive tome from the library when I was a kid called 'An Inordinate Fondness' that was filled with marvellous pictures of beetles. It is from a quote attributed to John Haldane, a British Naturalist who, when asked if he'd discovered any proof for the existence of a creator said something along the lines of, well, if there is a creator, they have an inordinate fondness for beetles. They are found everywhere, in every type of climate. They come in all sorts of sizes and colours. I wrote this on my Twitch writing show, and while I was writing, my friend and bandmate Ed Hudson popped into the chat and said: Oh! You're writing about beetles! My dad studied beetles! So I picked his brain for interesting beetles to write about. I never thought I would use the word dung in a song, but here we are. Once it was recorded, I determined that it was clearly missing some mellotron, so I did my best.
It’s Just Always Been There
I had a prompt that asked me to describe the first time I ever saw the ocean. I grew up on an island, so when I thought about it I said, well, there must have been a first time, because I was born in Alberta and my family moved back to Newfoundland when I was three, but I don't remember it. It's just always been there. Oh. I guess that's my song! I called on a fisherman friend to give me some descriptors of the ocean from his point of view. He had a lot of very poetic things to say, so I hope he'll write a song, but one thing that stood out was he described "moments of loneliness and peace that in another place is unreachable" which led me to the 'lonely and eternal' line in the chorus.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I think the best medium for expressing the unknowable is the electric guitar, so we have a little here.