To This Land

I have to say, this is one of my favorites. This song is probably at least four years old, it's one of two acoustic guitar songs I wrote with the same four chords.
I may have said this before, but when it comes to a lot of these songs I truly don't feel like a "composer." I feel more like a miner. It's more like you just start fiddling around with notes until something predetermined and buried is uncovered. Now that I've studied music quite a bit I fashion it more into what I planned for it to be, but the material there is not something I can build. But this early song was definitely one of only a few that I immediately recognized as a little vein of gold.

I went through a lot of strife, I remember, in trying to name this song because I didn't want people to get presuppose that it's patriotic. It's not. In fact, when I wrote this song I was still relatively unsullied with the study of politics.
It's about waking up for the second time. I went through a very dark phase of life in middle and high school that made me numb and disillusioned, but then coming out of high school I started to notice things again. I started taking walks in the park and seeing the glint of the ripples in the gray Columbia River. I noticed the pavement, how it was broken out of place by tree roots, and it reminded me of being very small. I must have walked here once before. I remembered for the first time that I used to be the youngest part of a young family. The rows of carefully planted trees on the crest of the hill across the river, the bright leaves storming down like colored snow in late fall, the fragrance of the grapes of distant vineyards in the summer. All those things surrounded me when I was a child but I never recognized them. Then I went away for a long time, but now I was back home.
That's what this song is about.




I recall younger days when life was more than just work and play,
when all that we could not explain was something we could celebrate.
And I recall joyful tears, smiles spread from ears to ears,
before everything was measured, before we counted out our years,
and before boredom explained away all our fears.

Come into my heart, Dear. Complicated my life.
Something deep inside me here is screaming it's not right. It's not right.

I'm convinced that our lives were not meant to simply ignore one-another until we've been spent.
To be worn, as with erosion. And I will not be disillusioned,
for I feel the Love You've sent me.

So come into my heart, Dear. Complicate my life.
Something deep inside me here is screaming it's not right.

And all I need is something I can't understand.
And all I need is something I can't comprehend.
And all I need is something not concrete to hold within my hand,
within my hand.

And so You brought me to this land.




When I wrote the song I was still young and naive enough to honestly desire some girl to come into my life and complicate everything around me, and maybe I haven't quite overcome that weakness.
I know it's kind of a counter-intuitive idea, because typically we think in terms of how complicated this adult life is compared to what we call the simple life, being a kid in the backyard dirt. But that's not what I feel. Invoking these childhood feelings complicates my worldview with a desire for adventure, looking at life with newness, enjoying the mysteries of life without always feeling a need to explain them away.
It's also kind of strange still to use the word Dear, when there's really no girl that I can apply this kind of inspiration to. Somehow I was envisioning a girl when I wrote the song, but it was really was always very clear who the song really was about.

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