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.

The Plight

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Joel-Crow/105195016743?id=105195016743&sk=app_2405167945


All my world held in suspense.
Time breaks, nothing makes sense.
When I turn my back on You
do You hurt like this too?

Do You weep for me like Lazarus
when death takes me to the tomb?
Have we cast stones while You were writing in the dust?
Why does the bride despise the Groom?

You're the home I cannot find.
I'm the blind leading the blind.
Please, rescue these souls from me,
and if You will... please come rescue me.

Let me just hear Your voice, and know it
like a child, like a sheep.
All of the beauty in the sky, and in the earth below it
speaks, it speaks to me.

Speak, speak to me.
Lord, come and rescue me.



This is one of very few songs I've written that speaks of God and religion in a forthright way, though many other songs speak of a similar struggle less blatantly.
The melody to this song was written, I believe, while I was still in high-school, or maybe in the year after I graduated. I remember it was an early morning, and I was tired, and I sat down at my first keyboard and started recording one track on another. Some time later I refined it and re-recorded it.
That recording became what I viewed as a nice musical interlude to what would surely be an epic album someday. I called it "A Dark Prelude." I transferred it to the computer and some weeks afterwards I was messing around with reversing tracks to see how they would sound. Reversing this track, though brought to my ears something incredibly beautiful. It had an element of ambient sound to it, and yet there were unmistakable and brilliant lines of melody woven within it. I made a few alterations to the track and called it "A Healing Epilogue." Surely one day it would be the perfect closing to an epic album.

The melody continued to haunt me, and so I began to give it words. This was probably one year later. At least one person has told me that they like this song because of the words, so that must mean it was worth it. The idea behind the song is quite simple, and entirely true.
During this time I was putting to myself the age-old question: Why would Jesus weep for Lazarus? Didn't He know that He could bring him back to life? The first several lines of this song were written in the mindset of a conclusion that I had come to, and something that makes sense to me.
When we read of death in the Psalms, it's generally understood that we should think of a spiritual death as well as a physical one. It's understood that Jesus saves us from death, a death that is inextricably linked to the physical death that even atheists cannot deny. There is nothing more natural in the world than for us to mourn the passing of our loved ones. Perhaps this part of our DNA is in itself a kind of a prophecy. Perhaps this is given to us to help us understand the way God views a spiritual death.
And perhaps that is why Jesus wept. Because He witnessed firsthand the separation of the physically living from the physically dead, and understood the significance in it that pertains to the separation between the spiritually living and the spiritually dead.
Then, of course, I think any of us who call ourselves Christians here on earth would be lying if we did not admit that at one time we threw stones at the fallen adulteresses we've seen in the world, even while Jesus was reminding us in our hearts that we ourselves are not without sin. And then, similar to the story of Jonah (although I did not have him in mind while I wrote the song), we have sometimes despised our Groom because of His unending mercy. If this is not true of all Christians, then I will at least confidently say that it has been true of me. But I think that it is true of all Christians, at some point in each individual's life.

I've tried often to help others with my words, to help them understand God, or to help them overcome certain situations. But so often I have been the blind leading the blind. If these people are taken in by my eloquent words, they quickly find me leading them onto a dark road, adding my blindness to their own. I hope that I have done more good than harm, but I have not sufficiently reminded my friends that they ought to read the bible and seek out God on their own, and for their own sake.
Please, God, rescue these souls from me. And although I may doubt it sometimes when I view the past, I know confidently in my heart that He will come back to rescue me as well.

And this is where the song should end. Looking back now it occurs to me that this is the most Psalm-like thing I have ever written. Like so many of David's poems, this song goes through the trials of depression and earnest begging questions, but the end is inevitable.
All that truly matters is that God is good. I hear it in His voice.

Grieving H.

"No one ever told me grief felt so like fear."
The poison, paralyzing me here.
And now am I building card houses just to please my own muses?
What would she say, if she turned this way?

She was the Joy. Oh, God, help me to love You
for taking her home into Your arms.
She was the Joy, but I'm looking for You.
If I scream, let it do me no harm.

Will You go on cutting?
The Surgeon's knife is something to be feared.
Well, I'm afraid. Afraid that You Love me too dear!
You crucified Your Own Son. I know You won't spare me what I need
or what I've learned.
I've learned that You crucified Your Own Son
so You could spare me what I have earned. what I have earned.

She was the Joy. Oh, God, help me to love You
for taking her (taking her) out of my arms.
She was the Joy but I'm looking for You.
If I scream let it do me no harm.
She was the Joy. You gave and You took her away.
She was the Joy that made me come near to You,
and You have surprised me today.





I've only had one or two chances to perform this song, both times with my brother Will, who also has a deep emotional bind to it. These are all ideas adapted from the most passionate and soulful book I've ever read, a very short autobiography of C.S. Lewis that was so personal to him that he wouldn't let it be published under his real name until after he'd passed away. I used to hope that people would be interested in the song enough to take a few seconds out of their day to research it and find out what it was about. It wouldn't have been hard. If they had researched the first line of the song they would find that it is, word for word, the first line of the book. But to the best of my knowledge nobody ever did find it out on their own, so I lost quite a bit of faith in humanity. It destroyed a little bit of my naivety I suppose. It was about losing his wonderful wife to cancer. (No, it's not like A Walk to Remember. For one thing, they were both over fifty when they got married.) If you want to know the details, I highly recommend you read the book. It's very short. I am still naive enough I guess to suppose that my fervent supplication will motivate somebody out there to pick up this incredible journal. You'll also want to read about the situation from some other source, because C.S. Lewis intentionally wrote the book so that readers would not guess that it was from him. That's why he gave his love the ambiguous title, H.
One of the most emotional parts of the book for me is the part I adapted in the second verse, the part about the Surgeon and His knife. Here is the idea. Lewis is questioning whether God might be a Great Sadist instead of a Great Healer. Yes, even C.S. Lewis was struggling so much over the death of his wife that he committed this blasphemous thought. But he was being honest.
Here's the terrifying thought that he comes to. If God was a Sadist, then probably at some point he would grow weary of torturing his creations.
But if God is not a Sadist, if instead He Is the Great Healer, the Great Surgeon, if He Is cutting us open for our own good, then we have no hope of reprieve. If by the surgery He Is saving our souls, then we have no guarantee that the bodily torture will stop anytime soon. Out of this idea comes probably my most favorite quote of all time from C.S. Lewis:
"What do people mean when they say, 'I don't fear God, because I know He Is Good?' Have they never been to a dentist?"

So that's what the second verse is all about. I'm afraid that God Loves me too dearly. It's because He Loves me that He continues to cut me.
Now understand, I am really a wimp. God has not been truly brutal to me in any way. I've actually been incredibly blessed all my life. But nevertheless I relate to everything C.S. Lewis is saying here.

The rest of the song will be easily related to the book if you pick it up and read it (one more time I must highly recommend that you do). It takes less than two hours to read the whole thing from cover to cover.

I will mention one more thing. I did a little play on words. I enjoy plays on words. Probably nobody would catch it if I didn't point it out, which would be ok. But anyways.
"You gave and You took her away."
Of course, this is a rendition of the old adage, "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away." This has a very settled meaning. But in the context of the song, the way the grammar works, you could interpret it the old way but you could also interpret it so that the phrase "her away" is connected to the phrase "You gave" as well as "You took." I bet that's confusing. What I'm meaning to say is this. If "her away" is applied to "You gave," then you get a different picture. "You gave her away." You know, like at a wedding. The Father gives His daughter away. If you still don't understand, don't sweat it. It's not even worth spending this paragraph on to explain a little play on words.

My Dear, Will You Return?

When, when, my Dear, will you return? Will you return to me, to me?
When, when, my Dear, will you return?
Come when the hills are gently lit against the sky.
Come when the soldiers kiss their lovers all goodbye.
Come in black, come in white.

Where, where my Dear, will you return? Will you return to me, to me?
Where, where, my Dear, will you return?
Come to the meadow where we walked among the grain.
Come to the window where we watched the moonlight wane.
Come through fog, come through rain.

How could all these heartfelt words fade without a single sigh?
The reason why I inward turn, the hope with which my spirit burns.
Will you return, my Love? Will you return?

Will you return?




I like the vagueness of this song.

I could write a story around it. I could describe in detail what exactly the situation is that made these feelings well up inside some fake character's chest. I could write a Dickensian novel and describe the small town he grew up in, the moment when he saw his Love for the first time, the unlikely circumstances that brought them together and then the unlikelier circumstances that ripped them apart so suddenly that all those words simply faded without even a sigh. Ok, I probably couldn't. Or if I did, it wouldn't be worth scratch. But I'd probably like to leave the situation open-ended even if I could fill in every detail of the history surrounding this moment.
I think some things are better this way. It's kind of nice just to sit back and speculate what this guy might have been going through when he wrote this song. One question haunts me more than any other. Could it be that the girl is dead?
Normally I despise repetitive lyrics, but this one seems okay to me, maybe because the music is so unique. Then there are enough details to build up the illusion of a complete story: walks through fields of grain and watching the moon from the windowsill. I've never before written a song that was so little substance, so much pure feeling.

But, as I've probably written before, I don't truly feel that I've written this tune. More like it was buried somewhere and I dug it up and dusted it off. But that digging was some hard work. I'm not meaning to say that I didn't have to work hard at the song, but the ultimate result is hardly something I can think of taking back down and changing it around again. Some chump said that art is never finished, only abandoned. That's a crock.

I invite you to invent your own story around this little ditty. Maybe someday I'll be brave enough to make my own concrete.

video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSKqYWP1vdM

By the Morning

I shall wait here, wait 'til daybreak, 'til the sun lights up the windowsill.
The fog lies thick and opaque on the houses, and on the hills,
and still my heart is longing for some change to come on the landscape.

To show me that the night would finally end,
and that you'd be here by the morning.

I can hear the train, it rumbles far away, but still I know
it carries on, taking its people to places where they long to go.
It swells my heart to think that I'm moving so slow
from night to night with nowhere else to go

but you show me that the night would finally end...

and that you'll be here by the morning.






I wrote this song probably about 6 months ago. It's always been one of my favorites because of its succinctness.
That's the hardest thing for me in music, is to portray an idea with enough vagueness so that the listener can fill in the cracks. So many songs I've written have been five or six minutes long because I felt a need at the time to make crystal clear what I was communicating, then more often than not I ended up with a throw-away song. But this song is very short, and very small in scope. It's a simple song about hope and anticipation.
It's got a train in it, which I like.

It swells my heart to think that I'm moving so slow, from night to night with nowhere else to go.
It's true, I am behind. I've never had a chance to make any real quality recordings of the songs I love. I have written a plethora of songs but I've always seemed to lack the chance to share them with someone. I do love these songs, but something like that doesn't really reach its potential until you can share it with someone else and see that it touches them. I'd like my music to touch someone someday. It has happened in fleeting moments in the past, but seldom. More often I've been told that my music makes for a great sedative.