Dickens

listen to the song here: https://soundcloud.com/joel-crow/04-dickens



All that I ask is that your heart be softened as you walk in the sunlight, remembering me.
Many will speak of the sins I've committed.
I don't ask you to doubt, but I beg for mercy on my memory.




I've only ever played this song once publicly in this recorded version. I always talk myself up to playing these kind of songs but then when it comes time I back down because I think nobody will care to hear something like this at a coffee shop. I feel like most people just don't care for more depressing contemplative music, which describes many of the songs I've written. But I hope there is some kindred spirit out there who will appreciate this very short song based on a much more eloquent passage out of the book Great Expectations by Charles Dickens:
"For the very breath of beans and clover whispered to me that the day must come when it would be well for my memory that others walking in sunlight be softened as they thought of me."

Though I'm only a self-educated student of Dickens' work, I think I'm right in saying that Great Expectations is the most auto-biographical novel he ever wrote. Around the time he wrote it he was making what may have been the single greatest mistake of his lifetime, leaving his wife for another woman. Had he been a mere commoner again, as he was born, the separation from his wife would have been considered scandalous. But as it was, he was by now a hugely successful author, and men of his social standing could have certain indiscretions with impunity. But I believe that he knew it was all wrong, and I believe that in this one line he was speaking more for himself than he was for Pip.
There's been a novel and a movie made based on this scandal, and while I believe the truth should be told, I fully believe that they will portray Dickens as a far less honorable man than he really was. And while I know that I never will come to fame as he did, I feel this same yearning, I believe we all do. So let us do unto others as we would have posterity do unto us, and be softened as we walk in the sunlight remembering the good men and good women who lived, as we all do, in dire need of the Grace of Jesus Christ to cover our sins.

Buried

listen to the song here: https://soundcloud.com/joel-crow/buried


I will not fall, like over-ripe fruit, into your hands.
If one of us stalls, it does not then mean the other will stand,
so pound your shoe, you little boy!
Will envy and hate divide our state, the haves and have-nots?
Will there be revolt like a thunderbolt? Or slow drop-by-drop, dividing our Republic here?
Will all democracy disappear?

Khrushchev, Khrushchev, so confidently you said you knew.
Oh, Khrushchev, Khrushchev. Your prophecy came but only half-true.
Do you want the full truth?

We will be buried, we all will be buried in dust.
We'll be forgotten, we all will become what we must.
And our finest freedom fighters will go the way of all men,
but Freedom, Freedom will live again!

So you sing with the voice of the people, the complete collective agrees
to downsize the successful to keep the feeble on their knees!
So you ostracize! You cut down to size! A perfect-people machine!
A distressing dystopian scene!
But you are the voice of the people? Well, the future sounds different to me.

Khrushchev, Khrushchev, all of your cities, and all of ours, will be rubble.
Khrushchev. And all of your sons, and all of ours, will soon wield the shovel.
And we will be buried in dust, because we must.
And our finest freedom fighters will go the way of all men.
But freedom, precious freedom. Freedom will live again!







I wrote this song, it must have been almost a year ago now, and all that time William and I have been attempting to reconcile the very different sounds of piano and electric guitar into an audible track. It's been slow-going, as we've both been very busy. But if we receive enough positive feedback, I'm sure we'll be able to turn out more songs very quickly to complete this project. I've already written several songs for the purpose, hopefully some of them will be usable. We're already planning to use the song Legalized Infanticide, a song I wrote several years ago, as it has a similar heavy sound. You can read about that song here: http://crowlyricjournal.blogspot.com/2013/04/legalized-infanticide.html
And you can listen to it here: (link coming soon)

This song includes many references, some rather obscure, so I'll do my best to briefly explain. It's largely centered around the threats and assurances of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He reportedly told Ezra Taft Benson, during a private meeting, that slowly but surely Communism would overtake Capitalism. That with slow doses of Socialist policies we would become just like the Soviet Union. "You will fall, like overripe fruit into our hands." he said. The much more famous line he shouted during a public meeting is the one that the chorus of this song is drawn from, "We will bury you!" It's the same idea, Khrushchev persistently believes and proclaims that Communism will bury Capitalism, that freedom of the individual will be buried for the sake of the collective.
This song is my answer to that claim, and many still today claim it. Many are convinced that our country is traveling along a teleological road, where the future will always be more righteous than the past, hence such phrases like "the wrong side of history." Of course the unspoken assumption in that phrase is that future historians will definitely have a stronger moral code than we do today, but history itself shares a different perspective. Some of these revolutionaries, who are convinced that we can form a society based on Communism that, unlike ever other Communist society that's ever existed, will not end with the deaths of many innocents, some of these revolutionaries believe it will come like a thunderbolt, a violent coup of our government. Others, like Khrushchev, and like our current president, believe it will be a slow drop-by-drop. The government begins with socialized medicine, and from there stems our complete dependence on their plans for us. The current situation looks very bleak for freedom indeed.
However, I do not believe that Communism will bury Capitalism. I believe that they both will be buried. We all will be buried in dust, in time. And no matter how tyrannical the government becomes, Freedom will always live in the hearts of men. Those of us who value Freedom will fight for it, and we will all die and be buried, but Freedom will always live again. If Communism does overtake this country, it will not be the Communism Khrushchev had in mind. Or if Capitalism reemerges in all its former glory, it also will be a new brand of Capitalism. Perhaps not something better or worse, but certainly something different. Never will we construct a system on this earth so perfect that it will not spoil with time, wood rots and gold corrodes, but in time they both will be long gone.
When this country has become a mere shadow of its former magnificence, perhaps no other country will ever again rise to the same level, where the Freedom of our hearts is enshrined in law so that the leaders' hands will be tied from building barricades against the fulfillment of dreams and opportunities of the common citizens (the leaders' motives may be nefarious, or may be for the common good, but it comes to the same result). Maybe no other country will praise Freedom again, as we have done, and if that's the case, then the loss is great indeed. But whatever the future holds, we should throw our fists into the air together and be empowered by the knowledge that in our children's hearts, and in our grandchildren's hearts, Freedom will live again.

The World is Wide

http://youtu.be/KtapRafZANs


The world is wide, the fields shine white like a bride in the warm sun.
My feet stride with joy like the adventurous young boy... that I never was...
so much life to make up for days I've spent in books, so here we go.

The world is wide, the grass is alive with the wind from the river where you bathe your feet.
The birds sing a song, melodious and long, just to talk, just to comment on the heat.
I sometimes wish that we could be that way, singing just to communicate.
I think I know what I'd say.
I'd say

"Home, home! Someday we'll be home! We're going home!
Home, home! Someday we'll see home! We're going home!
And you were not made for this."

The world is wide, but far too narrow to be mine, where I'm trapped inside this skin.
I become what I detest, and I can't save myself from this ruin within.
So I long to be free... I long to be home-free.
I long to be home.

And you were not made for this. It's why you feel so restless.
No, you were not made for this. You were made for home.

Someday, you'll see, we're going home.











There are two main points to this song, that the world is beautiful and that the world is unfulfilling. But even less fulfilling is the fantasy where I've always lived. Growing up I guess I used to think that it's only in books that the hills really roll green with grass and the mountains stand crisp with snow and fog settles into the crevices, only in books that strangers say kind things and offer companionship. Tolkien loved those marvelous landscapes, so he created a world full of them, and I desired to live there not knowing that all those things were really a shadow of what this world has to offer, and I neglected to notice the beautiful things that I was already surrounded with. My mom's garden, it might well be a Hobbiton garden. And when I began to take myself for walks along the side of the Columbia River, I noticed that some houses looked positively Hobbit-like. But it wasn't until I read a book called "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" that I began to truly realize that all those beautiful things Tolkien wrote about really exist in full on this earth. Ironic, that a book would show me how to look outside.

The band Switchfoot wrote a song called "This is Home" for the Prince Caspian movie. So at least I'm not the only one that views these far-off shores as the true reality. Jon Foreman must have been captivated by Narnia just as I was by Middle-Earth. The song is also a thinly-veiled praise of our ultimate destination, (the word heaven doesn't do it justice, I will call it Zion), and obviously this song also carries that theme. The images I wrote of are definitely from the Columbia River, as I walked through Leslie Groves Park to Howard Amon. Most people don't like the wind, as it gets very strong in the Tri-Cities, but I've always loved it. It's another one of those things, I guess that connect me to Tolkien's world.

So why do I feel such a longing to see another world? Even if I made the most of the world I'm in, I know I would long for the unfelt breezes around the broken watchtower at Weathertop, and the howls of the wolves in the distance? The sparkling Grey Havens, the forest of Ithilien, the strange Withywindle. Why do I feel so restless? Why has this world, in all its glory, left me unfulfilled?
And even if I cut away all my anchors and lived to the fullest, going broke for the sake of adventure, I somehow know that it would never give me the kind of permanent satisfaction I'm after, the kind that only an unreachable world has to offer. It's only because I was not made for this.
And if you, too, feel restless, know that you were not made for this. We will reach the other side and find it to be more spectacular than any book could speak of. Perhaps the only one to come close is at the end of C.S. Lewis', The Final Battle. He says that the colors became more vivid, everything become more real, and the Pevensies were finally home.