On Abigail

Abigail was not her real name, and the story is hardly important. I barely knew the girl, to be honest. I met Abigail at an acquaintances' barbecue. She reminded me of Diane Keaton at her loveliest, or maybe a slightly more jewish version of that. We spoke, but I hardly remember about what, maybe it was about wine, maybe it was about her. I remember the night closing in around the backyard, I remember the instant sense of longing, and the impossible tallness of her boyfriend.

Abigail was not her real name. None of my female-name-titled songs feature a real name, perhaps because of privacy considerations, but also maybe to lend some fiction that enables me to fudge the truth just so, just enough to make meaning out of the mundane. Sometimes one person will take on different names at different times; Colleen was at one point Coraline and Genevieve, and maybe the state of Carolina. At one point I thought I might make an album with only female names in the title.

Abigail was not her real name. When I ran into her again we spoke, smoked cigarettes and laughed. I was with an acquaintance who has a unexpected charm with women, something that he's honed for years, a tongue sharpened on the needs of the girls he captures, a face played for sympathy and mockery. He did the heavy lifting and I sat at the table, playing the "slightly more sane" card. When we left, the embrace from Abigail was sudden, and unexpectedly close.

Abigail was not her real name. My mind held on. Internets were stalked. Plots and plans were drawn up, friends were drawn into Roman councils of heart-stealing. Nothing ever came of it, of course. But working with Amit had enabled me to explore something so grotesque and childish. One day I instant messaged him "I'm going to write a song for Abigail." And the song came easily, and just as easily the obsession slipped gently away.

Oh, if I had you 
Oh, if I had you
A familiar battle-cry on dungeons and dragons night 
Of all the lonely boys
Who mark the minutes clicking through the slideshows of your life

Oh, if I had you
Oh, if I had you
But I can't overthrow the tyrant 
Who toasts each lonely whisky to your loveliness
Who lays across your days

And I'm sick to death of dreams, I'm sick to death of fantasies
I'd love to hold you close, I'd love to hold you next to me it's true
I ain't got much, I ain't got you.

Oh, if I had you 
Oh, if I had you 
I'd never need again to daydream of you waking 
Or invent all of the things you'd like to do on Saturday
I read them all on your Facebook anyway.

Ten to One

"I feel that so much of my life around you has been sleuthing, prodding, collecting notes in a little spiral bound book, playing the ever tempermental sherlock trying to piece together clues about who you are, where you've been, and why I couldn't ever feel you."

-- from my journal, about 2 years ago.

I've been singing to the less attractive sides of myself of late. It's a pleasant thing, really - you take this gnarled, ugly part of yourself and lullaby it to sleep, cooing prettily at it while you tell it all the ways it's fucking up your life. I wrote Abigail about my obsessive nature, and Another Song (as well as most of my recent songs) about my constant desire to be someone's shiny, saving, knight.

Of late, I've been becoming rationally aware of my paranoid tendencies. They are brought up often in relationships, and the general gist is:

1. Something small happens. A distance in someone's voice, an unreturned text message.
2. I extrapolate an entire universe of rejection, pain, and loneliness around the event.

I could never find a way to wrap the concept precisely enough in a song, it seemed too heavy and intellectual a topic to really address properly. I made a very literal attempt at it with a song called "Everything Given", but I lost whatever I was driving at. It's common enough for me to lose fire on a song after writing a verse and chorus, I'm not sure if the feeling simply passes, or if I there just wasn't enough resonance in the first place, but I'm much more likely to starve than to smother the baby.

The other week, though, after a particularly unpleasant episode of worry and paranoia, I found this song lying on the ground, whining to be picked up. I've had a story in my head for awhile about a guy who, after his girlfriend leaves him, gets so stoned that he starts to believe that it fell apart because his cell phone dropped a call at a particular moment. It wasn't a big leap from there to my own craziness, to the part of me that believes - on some level - that a dropped call means someone will ultimately reject me. The bits where the character starts blaming flocks of birds for foretelling the end of love is, I dunno, just for fun.

Here's the lyrics.

When the odds are ten to one
And your legs are on their last
And the night is closing fast

And all the birds are mocking you
Singing "nothing ever lasts"
And the night is closing fast

Damn the odds and damn the birds
It's not a sign, they just sweep the sky and it's absurd
All you think you know 
From just a disconnection of the telephone
In her arms be still

Yeah the signal's weak in here
Though the light shines effortless
And your mind is such a mess

Every night and every day
Study every little breath
And they all say nothing lasts

Goddamn the odds goddamn these birds
It's not a sign, they just sweep the sky and it's absurd
How all I've known
I've spent my whole life as some sorrowful Sherlock Holmes
Her hands sweep it away