I don’t have the time to write a description for this episode. That’s how you know it’s a quality episode of improvised guitar tunes.

I won’t post next week, I’m out and about and focused on other things. See you in two!

We venture into another song.land, a meaningless meandering through my verbose thoughts set to improvisational music.

If you listen, thank you! If not, spend the 20 minutes you would listening to this in a healthy way—let a plant grow, reassure someone of your love for them because you matter and they matter, too, and/or eat an apple and consume the seeds for their healthy bacteria.

Transcript

Falling
So far from
The place you call your home

Nearly
Find a mystery
You do know your own

Someone
Never
Let it go for you

Someone
Never
Have what you did need

They were not there with you
Finding all the things wrong with you
And they were not there with you
Finding all, finding all

2:30

But their solace came on trains from the south
In distorted perspectives

When I thought that reality was a construct of their heart

You and I
Know better now
We know better now
We know better now

You and me
We know better now
We know better now

I want to see your body move
In the ways of the ocean
Pulled by the moon
Back to where we began
Where we began

Pulled by the moon
Into the sea
Where we began
Where we began

Ooh, where we began
Where we began

Repeats

And life calls to you from higher places

Don’t let it all go to waste
Don’t let it all go to waste

6:00

‘Cause when we fall apart
We fall so hard

Don’t let your self-sabotage lead you astray
What do you want?

7:30

What do you want?
What do you want?

In your life, in love
In all relationships
What do you want?

In my loneliness
I seek to be found out

And in my loneliness
I need to be found out
I need to be found out
I need to be found out

9:30

And life was all, falling all to pieces
The light was so much more
If you could look beyond a day’s pain
What can you be grateful for?
In the midst of so much pain?

What can you be grateful for
In the midst of so much pain?

11:10

Riptides pull us down into the darkness of the water
And of the night
I can’t see anything

Riptides pull me down into the water
Into the sea

I see the jellyfish flapping toward me

Oh my life, what are you leaving me with now?
Me with now?

12:10

I sing a song with chords
And love is lost

Oh

13:45

I sing this song to you so that you can see that love has something left to give
Even if it’s temporary
The short-term admonition to your soul

I’m all on fire for you
I’m all on fire for you
I’m all on fire for you

16:00

I know the basket of pears that you left at my doorstep
Guide me on

Like Greek mythology
Is there some chase that I must find out?

Like all the fears I felt
All the years I felt
I’ll find out

Like you with your shirt tucked in
Walking around again
You are so unbelievable

I can’t believe that fate has brought us here
It’s hard to see how it’s all so clear

Can I impress with my skills
Like a peacock searching for
Validation?
Oh, what a search it has raught

One, four, five six (this is wrong)
Six, four, one, five (this is right)

18:55

And I know life is all you need
Never looking beyond the seas
Where you planted all that you gave

We have something special
When we met together
Talking and walking and sharing each other
And knowing and looking and finding and seeing

And all I gave up was substantial to me
And all I gave up was substantial to me

20:00

Love
(laugh at ending)

song.land returns for weekly episodes of this silly podcast project. Auto-tune brings the digital to the acoustic.

And our fears, don’t let it get to you
Anxiety may never come true

So, what, me worry?
So, what, me worry?
So, what, me worry?
Why?

9:45

A new song.land podcast drop is epic! I remain without a recording location so am not following a weekly schedule.

I am working to remedy this situation as song.land is important to me.

(Every blog has to have a “I haven’t blogged in a while” post. That’s what 30% of all blog posts say. I’m happy to contribute to that statistic.)

Please enjoy! I did in making it.

The first 20 minutes are much stronger than the rest of the episode.

Shame—what’s the solution to such a universal emotion? This song.land explores the feelings and ideas of shame and its cure, showing up in vulnerability.

Grab a cup of coffee and share with me while we explore.

I changed guitar strings before recording and the room was very humid. The strings sound more jangly than I’d like.

We get to spend near an hour together making up songs and stories and singing about the wisdom and lessons of life.

This is episode 10. We’re halfway to 20! Thank you for checking out my silly song adventure podcast.

I think in the future, I will consider live streaming the Song Land performance. In that case, an evening time makes perfect sense. I may change the day from Monday to another day. We’ll see.

Show Note

• 10:45—the welcome to song.land, and the invitation to join in this silliness.
• 15—there is an extended section sung in the falsetto vocal range.
• It’s Christmas Eve!

Like a harmony in perfect tune
I only want to sing with you
Like my favorite song that brings tears every time
I only want to dance with you
—minute 7

song.land takes us into the world of being in tune. On the surface, that’s a musical term referring to each note an instrument produces being in tune to the expectation one has in Western music. On a deeper level, being in tune alludes to the most powerful force humanity has: working together.

A basic chord comes from three different notes that create a unified note together. If three different notes can work together, I think we people can, too.

• Begin: The first song has some electronic drums programmed at a very quick beat.
• 5: the songs pick back up into a song about tuning a guitar!
• 5:50: Walking down the street, spirit run.
• 6: Mighty Wave of Love. “This mighty wave is washing over me / it’s washing, it’s washing over me / and I feel like I am washed away, am washed through the sea.”
• 8: I purposefully played broken and increasingly cacauphonous chords. The purpose behind this is to show how disunity of chords creates such turmoil.
• 11: There is a break in the song. The 9v battery in my guitar died and caused the lower guitar volume and introduced the noise in the line. I swap the battery and try to jump back into the flow of the song adventure.
• 13: Ramblin’ Man
• 14:30: “I’m in Ur of the Chaldeans”—this is a reference to the ancient city in modern day Iraq. More deeply, though, it’s a reference to the decision point Abram (later, called Abraham) was at in the Biblical story in which God calls Abram to leave his family and his people. Abram trusts God and leaves. What will I do, though? What will you do?
• 22:30: I had started a song that I cut out of tonight’s recording. It didn’t get far because it came across to me as too male-centric. When I recorded it, I realized this as it was happening and transitioned into the clarification that begins here. Please change any pronouns :-). This leads into the beautiful “Hold on / hold on / hold on to us.”
• 25: begins the fingerpicking section. “I’m not going home tonight by myself / Do not fear the things I do not”
• 31-33: This section has some beautiful melodies. “Cause if I do I know that something is wrong.”
• 35: I introduce this as the final song, That Tells Us of How We Should Love (though I don’t think it can be the last song, there’s still 15 minutes of song to go!)
• 39:14 (possibly two minutes before) Shoutout to Sasha Stone, my life coach: http://sashamariestone.com
• After this point, the music has some lovely moments, but they are a bit broken up. I cut about 10 minutes of the improv because I’m not comfortable with how much I sang about my Christian background in such a specific way. I think there is a way to talk about this but this wasn’t it. I want it to be open and welcoming to all, reflective of the universal benefits of my history and my future. Thank you for listening!

Today’s song.land explores a theme of terrible circumstances and then the fallout and resolution after an event. Almost all of them are inspired by Nintendo.

First is The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker storyline of the pirates taking away Link’s sister. They stole her away.

After that, I play After Andrew, a song inspired by what comes the day after a storm, when the danger is past but our lives are in rubble.

I then jump into a song straight up about Nintendo and my history with it.

I like today’s music, but I recorded it when I was tired. I like what came out, but they tend to end before the song has been realized before the energy of the song has run its course.

7:45:

“We can say to our friends and our neighbors (we can say)
It will all be ok (we can say)
We have each other (we can say)
All this pain won’t have to be a part of the narrative
All this pain won’t have to be part of the narrative”

Dent In? No is an anagram of Nintendo. Enjoy these silly songs!

Journey with me through the beautiful adventures of Song Land. Song Land is a mountainous landscape of sound and song, of weird words and phrases next to colorful exploration of voice and chord.

“Together we can be so much.”

My second song from this Song Land comes in with this potent refrain.

Notes

• Minute 5:35 has one of my favorite melodic jumps and chord changes.
• 9:45 mentions Give and Take by Adam Grant (Amazon page).
• 11:00 speaks about Heidi Gilson. See more of her music on her Facebook page.
• At about 21 minutes, you get to hear my thoughts on Multi-Level Marketing businesses. My knowledge about this comes from personal experience of considering one MLM business very seriously and this amazing new podcast with an in-depth journey in the MLM money-making machine: The Dream. If I were such a person, I would found an MLM where the business is website creation. I’m not interested in becoming wealthy at the expense of the many, though.

Today’s Song Long celebrates the role of songs in my life.

I make songs up all the time. It’s one of my favorite things to do. Yet I’ll go to a concert or put on an album that moves me in deep ways. What songs move you?

There are a few moments in this set I especially like. I sang about when I was a boy making up songs. What makes my heart sing? “For me, it was the sound of a song” (hear this over the minute beginning at 11:30). I also drop names of some of my favorite friends with whom I get to make music.

I sang a song about wisdom from a bear. That one is similar to a bedtime story I made up for my kids about an old, wise Raccoon that teaches a sophomoric bear how to catch honey.

At 27 minutes, I cherish this lyric at the end of such an emotive song:

“It’s a beautiful thing that I never seem to remember: I love the song.”

I find that my voice sounds crisper and clearer than it has since I’ve started singing consistently again.