This is one of my oldest surviving demos, from 2009. I remember singing it in my mom’s house, it was very sunny and there was good energy around. The lyrics are from a Hart Crane poem. It is very simple but conjures up a lot of feelings, I like how open it is. I like how the ending could be sad, but the world they created together won out over the real one. Still makes you cry though, that the real world has to come in at all.
Listening to it back today I kept singing a harmony at the end. I decided to record it, which I had never considered before - the idea of singing or adding things to old demos. I tend to just make entirely new things when it is time to write again. There wasn’t a mic in the house, all of my equipment is packed up and in transit to our upcoming shows. I had to sing straight in to the internal microphone on my laptop, which is how the original was recorded to begin with. I’m still on the same computer too, I’ve written every album on this 2008 Macbook.
It was emotional singing over myself from 10+ years ago. Sometimes when I think about myself and how I felt a long time ago I wish I could comfort that version of me. This felt like the other way around.
Interior
By: Hart Crane
It sheds a shy solemnity,
This lamp in our poor room.
O grey and gold amenity, —
Silence and gentle gloom!
Wide from the world, a stolen hour
We claim, and none may know
How love blooms like a tardy flower
Here in the day’s after-glow.
And even should the world break in
With jealous threat and guile,
The world, at last, must bow and win
Our pity and a smile.
Hart Crane
Interior (demo)