Don't Keep Me Up Here: Notes on “The Ground” – track four from the CD "because there’s nothing outside," companion piece to the book, "god in chains"

Don't Keep Me Up Here: Notes on “The Ground” – track four from the CD because there’s nothing outside, companion piece to the book, god in chains:

  An Imagined Jesus is the voice telling the story in this song. An imagined Jesus (aren’t they all?!) who is tired of people placing him up there in the sky, pretending that he wasn’t really a man, but some god “out there” who put on a man-mask for theological purposes only…in other words, the belief is that there was nothing blessed or holy about Jesus’ humanness, because there is nothing blessed about “human” at all- and, while you’re at it, throw the earth in there as well.  

As you might guess, I believe differently.   My experience of human is that, yes, we are sometimes terrifying, AND that we are equally if not more beautiful; And the planet? Well, I have only experienced the “holy” and “blessed” here, in a million different ways.  I don’t know if it exists anywhere else.  I’d be afraid to miss something if I insisted that the “divine” was only, truly “out there” in some other place that isn’t here, and that can’t be found in humanity.  I understand someone feeling that way, but it simply is not my experience.

And so, we have these characters in the song, each wishing they were somewhere else besides here. And we have Jesus saying “Don’t keep me up here” with those earth- and human-hating beliefs.

The whispering at the top of the track is a prayer I learned in my childhood, The Act of Contrition.  It’s a truly terrifying homage to the hatred of one's humanness… “Oh my god I am heartily sorry for having offended thee…etc…etc...”

I have a memory of going to confession during catholic mass once when I was a kid. Up above the priest’s door the sign said "Fr. Harnett," which was the absolute worse thing for my siblings and I to see up there.  Father Harnett was something like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons: old and balding and eternally grouchy…It was no small act of bravery for me to enter that confessional.  Now, I was a good kid- I knew my prayers well, including the aforementioned god-I’m-a-piece-of-shit recital called the Act of Contrition. The problem was that just at the moment Father Burns asked me to say the stupid prayer, they broke into song outside in the church.  It was a song I liked- and, like today, my musical ear will easily take me away if entertained by a pleasant melody.  The best I could do was offer up to Father Burns, who obviously had no similar musical ear, nor a sense of humor, some kind of hybrid of the Act of Contrition and Hosanna In the Highest! I don’t remember his punishment- probably that I had to go home and say the prayer 200 times before I would be forgiven...
...and also, that I would remember displeasing Father Harnett for the rest of my life!

On the recording, the prayer-whispering was sent through a tape delay effect so that by the second half of the song it has fed back on itself so much that it has become the beautiful/ugly distortion you hear on the quiet verse and chorus.  Quite fitting, I think!

The chord changes on the chorus were suggested by my good friend, Danette Christine- I think it lifted the song to a more “divine” place than it was before…

The Ground

i know a girl named suzie who channels wisdom from the dead

they sit around mulling over the questions rolling ‘round her head

and the ghosts say “suzie your troubles soon will be gone

along with the hundred haunted memories you don’t want”

and there’s always marshall who dreams about moving up

in the office at midnight sipping on a bitter cup

haven’t seen him in a year now he’s got so many things to do

if you’re gonna get to heaven on earth you gotta push on through

all of these people who want to fly

i can’t blame them so did i

now that i’m up here on this cloud

i just want my feet back on the ground

for sweet maria life has been awful cruel

man if i was in her place i don’t know what i would do

when i drop by to see her i can tell she’s always crying

she’s watering the greener pastures swimming ‘round in her eyes

all of these people who want to fly

i can’t blame them so did i

now that i’m up here on this cloud

i just want my feet back on the ground

i just want my feet back on the ground

i just want to love and lose and hurt like you

i swear there’s nothing wrong

i just want live and die see through your eyes

i swear there’s nothing wrong

there’s nothing wrong

but for you there is a kingdom floating high above your head

and ‘cause you got faith now you’re gonna go there when you’re dead

and then you’re gonna be perfect you’re gonna be without sin

i can hear a billion voices crying “jesus won’t you let me in”

all of you people who want to fly

i can’t blame you so did i

you got me up here on this cloud

i just want my feet back on the ground

i just want my feet back on the ground

don’t keep me up here

don’t keep me up here

don’t keep me up here on this cloud

i just want my feet back on the ground

c 2012 Inkling Music/Strong Left Hook Music, all right reserved

www.godinchains.com
www.markdavisandtheinklings.com

Notes on Your Photograph, Track 3 from the CD because there's nothing outside, companion piece to the book God in Chains.

Notes on Your Photograph, Track 3 from the CD because there's nothing outside, companion piece to the book God in Chains. 

This melody and lyric came to me very quickly, again with no clear idea of what I was writing.  I do remember having the idea to start the melody/lyric on the second chord rather than the first- that is, once the singing starts we have switched the order of the chords.

With the lyrics: sometimes there’s simply an interior, intuitional logic that is at work- when a line like “Something your photograph doesn’t see” shows up, there’s a million possible meanings, yet also something that the line encompasses, some way that it drives what other lyrics will come along- I don’t know how else to explain it!  Clearly, I had spiritual things on my mind...

This recording was fun to cobble together.  Besides the basic rhythm guitar and vocal, much of it was accidental and experimental, one of my favorite ways to work. For instance, I had my friend, Simon Lynge (from Greenland), play guitar on this track with very little instruction. He did several passes. On a couple of them, he spontaneously broke into playing “drums” vocally- completely on his own volition. I ended up taking a couple measures of this and looping it, coming in on the second verse.  I also cut and pasted the guitar parts Simon played, moving them around to my fancy, sometimes repeating parts, sometimes using several parts at one time.  This is a sort of studio “sound painting” process that I enjoy very much.

This is the first track on the album to feature Al Wolovitch on bass guitar (I played the bass on the prior two).

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WacgKn_4Y_U

your photograph

because everything is moving/i know nothing is worth proving/is god love is god a monster?/sometimes love feels like a monster/not for you it must be/something your photograph doesn’t see/no one can make you make you believe/something your photograph doesn’t see/because i don’t trust the surface/these two eyes just make me nervous/is she real is she a vision?/‘cause right now she is my religion/not for you she must be/something your photograph doesn’t see/i’ll never make you make you believe/something your photograph doesn’t see/because everything is shifting/i know i can’t keep this with me/all that’s mine is only borrowed/gone today back tomorrow/not for you it must be/something your photograph doesn’t see/i’ll never get through it’s plain to me/something your photograph doesn’t see/something your photograph doesn’t see/something your photograph doesn’t see/it’s something, your photograph

c 2012 Inkling Music/all rights reserved

www.markdavisandtheinklings.com
www.godinchains.com

Notes on "Spoiling The Game" Track 2 from the CD "because there's nothing outside", companion piece to the book, "god in chains"

Notes on "Spoiling The Game" Track 2 from the CD because there's nothing outside, companion piece to the book, god in chains:

Whenever I’ve made an album of songs, I’ve gravitated toward some kind of consistent approach in the recording process of the songs because I was looking for a way to connect them together, even if it is in very subtle ways.  One of these ways that I stumbled upon with Because There’s Nothing Outside was the use of a tape delay effect in the recording software. I actually don’t even know what it’s technically doing , but I found myself running already recorded parts through different effects just to see what would happen. And what happens with the tape delay if you bring it up to a certain point, it starts feeding back on itself, adding more and more effect on top of what you just effected. One thing that’s fun about that is that you can’t start the track in the middle, say at 2 minutes in and have the same result- that’s because the effect would start being applied where you start- this can be frustrating if you’re trying to mix just one specific spot but you don’t have all the parts there! However, I really like the “live” aspect of this effect- that’s it’s happening as you listen.

Anyway, on Spoiling the Game, you hear a little of this on the last verse- I took a clip of David’s (Zink) guitar part – that you here clean earlier in the song- and looped it and ran it through some distortion and tape delay. I love the way it just sits there and floats…

As for the lyric, this is one of those that just came to me in about 10 minutes and while I was writing it I had really no idea where it was taking me- or only intuitively maybe.  The idea that we can get stuck in an identity (a “game”) and not realize we’re choosing it, the sheer will with which we are capable of defending them, whether or not it’s wise to let go of such a construct- it’s all there… It’s amusing (to me) that the narrator’s is admitting his game is threatened at the end, though he also is wishing for someone else’s game to be shut down/shut up… Throughout my life, I have found myself letting go of many different contructs that I have made (as those who read God in Chains will see)- it could happen again for all I know… What scares me is when someone is unwilling to be wrong.  How can that possibly leave room for growth?

spoiling the game

sally looks into the mirror/but she doesn’t see her face/just a wrinkle she despises/needs to be erased/she knows a doctor ‘round the corner/she knows he’ll do his trick again/she can’t resist his magic fingers/no and he won’t spoil her game/billy joe he has a problem/he wants to find his way back home/but the streets all look the same here/no matter where he roams/he’s been walking for so long now/that he’s senile blind and lame/could have always hailed a taxi/but he did not want to spoil his game/eve and adam ate the apple/and the rest was then arranged/there’s a price for every pleasure/a loss in every gain/but there’s no good in throwing stones now/‘cause you and i we’d choose the same/who’d want to go and start from scratch anyway?/who’d want to go and spoil the game?/jesus was a story spinner/at least that’s what the stories say/seems he’d only gotten started/when they took his tongue away/now i just can’t get away from/people spinning in his name/i wish he’d come back shut them all up keep them all from/spoiling the game/‘cause they’re trying to spoil my game

c 2012 Inkling Music/all rights reserved