Four-Color Love
What do people think it's about?
"Doing things because the doing is important, especially when you know the consequences. Or maybe not important but right. I don't know the exact word for the idea." -- Roach.
"It's about...knowing when you have to let go, and doing it with grace. And love. Also, it's about awesome harmonies I get to sing." -- Vixy.
"It's loving something you know you can never keep, and cherishing it all the more for that." -- Shawn.
"No, seriously, some men never learn when it comes to nailing the wrong girl." -- Mars.
When presented with this question, what does Seanan say it's about?
""Love isn't something you only allow yourself to feel because you know it's going to last. Sometimes, love is in admitting that you're going to lose whatever it is you want to hold onto, and daring to hold onto it anyway, because you love it. Love isn't forever. Love is here to go, and love is right now, and love is a circle you follow to an inevitable conclusion, just because you can't see any other way. Love is kissing the girl even when she's going to be seafoam by morning. Love lets go."
What is it actually about?
If you only let yourself love when you have a guarantee that it's going to last, you're not letting yourself love at all; not really. You're just letting yourself avoid getting hurt, while you pretend that it's love. This is a song about loving whether it's safe to love or not; loving even when you know what it's going to do to you. And this is a song about a man who always loves the lily-maids, no matter what it's going to cost him, because he made a promise, once upon a time.
Genesis of the song:
'In This Sea' began as an Iron Poet request -- so many of my better songs do, these days -- with the words 'neck', 'comb', and 'lighthouse', and the form specification of 'something with meter'. Good words. Good request, all the way around. But somehow, for the longest time, they just rattled around in my head, not specifically seeming to want to go anywhere. They were...waiting, I suppose, for the right moment to come. That happens sometimes, and I just roll with it; after all, I have time for the songs to come. (Also, at that point, I wasn't actively demanding that it be a song; it could have been a poem, if it wanted to. Luckily for me, it decided that it didn't want to.)
Eventually, however, I realized that the poem just plain wasn't coming. And the thing about Iron Poet -- the way I have to approach it if I want it to work both as a writing exercise and as a sanity-saving measure -- is that I take the requests in order. If there's a request that speaks to me more than another one does, it becomes my reward for making it that far. This prevents me 'cherry-picking' the easy ones, and winding up with thirty end-of-round poems that hurt my brain. So I sat down, banged my head against the desk a few times, and produced:
Let me kiss your cheek and chin, and tell you I forgive you;
I always knew, my Liz, my love, how much you lied to me.
Let me kiss your neck and hand; your memory will outlive you.
Your laughter and your sorrow are forever in this sea.
Well, I had the most difficult of my three words in that stanza -- 'neck' had been the one that seemed the hardest to work into something logical -- and the very fact that it was playing on oceanic images meant that it would be easy to get to the lighthouse. Yippee! And then...
...I rammed into the shoals of my own over-confidence. See, I write a lot of stuff centering around the water. Rivers are a traditional metaphor for betrayal in my personal language; my inner landscape is littered with mermaids, selkie girls, lily-maids, ferrymen, and lighthouse keeper's daughters. This seemed like a cakewalk, and so, of course, it wasn't. I stared at what I had, circling around it again and again, like a ship looking for a way into the harbor.
In the end, it was a single syllable that saved me: Liz. Why had I named the lover, the betrayer, the one who told her sweetheart lies? Why was it important that she have that specific name? Once I asked myself that question, the story unspooled rapidly, and I had all the answers I needed. I just had to chase them down.
Finishing the original poem took me about an hour. It had a very balladic structure, going 'chorus, verse, verse, chorus, verse, verse, chorus', with no bridge or real melodic variation...but it wasn't a song. I put it down, content with what I had, and moved on to the next request in the round. Only this one -- which I had originally titled 'To Love the Sea' -- wouldn't leave me alone. And that's why I went back, the very next day, to re-assess my word choices, adjust the scansion where it was necessary, and turn a poem into a song.
That's how we got from three little words to 'In This Sea'.
Thanks, Griffen, for the request.
Story of the Song.
By the time you've made it this far into our little expose on Stars Fall Home, you've probably already encountered the story behind 'River Lies', which I called 'the story of a fairy tale romance gone horribly off the rails'. 'In This Sea' deals with the consequences of that romance, at least as they impact Ole Ryan, the male half of the pair.
Now, it should be noted here that of all the songs on Stars Fall Home, 'In This Sea' is one of the easiest to take as read, no background, no Cliff's Notes. Men lose women to the sea all the time in songs like this; selkie brides and captive mermaids aren't exactly something you can depend on. Read as the song of a man who married a selkie knowing exactly what she was and exactly what that meant, 'In This Sea' hangs together perfectly well, and doesn't need anything more. If you're happy with that? Please, feel free to skip the rest of this section, and just move on to the bits about arranging the song and its complicated harmony line. If you want to know what else is going on, well, say it with me: once upon a time...
Once upon a time, there was a man and a woman who loved one another more than stars or sand, but had the grave misfortune to be living and loving in someone else's fairy tale. And so, when 'happy ever after' rolled, it didn't roll for them; they wound up eternally separated, with her marooned forever on a river outside of time itself, and him being born over and over again down through the ages, always the same soul, always almost remembering the woman he'd been forced to leave behind. They made each other promises, once upon a never-was, and she'd promised to be faithful forever, while he'd promised to be fickle and false and always come back to her. So there he went, life after life, falling in love with women unlucky enough to remind him of a woman he'd forgotten, breaking their hearts and having his heart broken when they always failed to be her.
And then, one day, he reached what we'd call 'modern times': the electronic age, all information and stories and ironic deconstruction of the fairy tales. And there, he encountered a story with a life of its own -- literally. Vivaine, the Lady of the Lake, had gotten herself trapped inside of a fiction, and was twisting it as best she could, using it to give her the power to guide the world's various fractured fairy tales towards something like a happy ending. Unfortunately, she couldn't really touch the world as herself; she was too trapped for that. So she told other, better lies, lies that could stand up to the challenge of pretending to be people, in order to let her interact with the story she was struggling to re-write.
One of those women was a selkie storyteller named Elizabeth Norton, who laughed too loud and drank too much, and claimed to be the great-granddaughter of Emperor Norton herself. Everyone knew she was lying, but they let those little lies distract them from the greater lies underneath, and no one ever bothered to look into her eyes and see what she was hiding.
No one but Ole. A man cursed to fall in love, again and again, with the daughters of the rivers and lakes, suddenly faced with the last daughter of the first lake of them all. He always knew. That was what really mattered, to the both of them; she lied to him because she had to, but he never believed her, not even as he was falling in love with a lie. Liz was a story told by a woman who had no other choice, and Ole loved her because she was perfect for him, for at least a little while, while they were both wait on the shore -- he for a girl who didn't exist anymore, she for the day when she'd finally stop existing altogether.
'In This Sea' is Ole's song for the day when Liz, inevitably, has to slide out of existence and leave him behind forever, because she has no part in his happy ending. He's always known it was coming.
That doesn't mean he'll have to like it when it comes.
Arranging the Song.
We started simply: I recorded a vocal line using my cheap little at-home system, and sent it to Vixy, so that she could come up with a harmony line. I also sent the vocal line to Kristoph, who was going to be playing the guitar on this track, so that he could work out the necessary chords and fingering patterns. I already knew that we'd be asking someone to play flute on this track, which very much needed something lilting and ethereal over the top of it. Voices, guitar, flute, we're done, right?
Only, as it turns out, wrong...because 'In This Sea', despite being in a fairly standard time signature, has timing bizarre enough to utterly thwart Kristoph. This is an impressive feat, if you've ever met Kristoph; the man can deconstruct damn near anything, and yet, somehow, my simple little song was able to defeat him royally, at least until Vixy had the sense to say the one thing that could make everything better:
"The chorus starts on the second beat of the measure, not the first."
After that, everything just fell into place. We recorded the base guitar line and both vocal lines on the same day, and this is where I want to stress that Vixy's harmony line was all her. Neither Kristoph nor I made any suggestions or gave her any pointers; she just looked at the song and came out with that. I was blown away, and I still am, because -- at least in my opinion -- the slight, plaintive dissonance between the two voices is really what elevates the song into something with the potential to be heartbreaking, if it hits you right.
We took the original, fairly sparse recording to Monkey Brains in Seattle, where our original flute player unfortunately proved unavailable. Luckily for me, Callie Hills was already in the studio for the recording of 'Evil Laugh', and she put down her flute track with style, grace, and speed. (In this case, 'speed' really was at the top of our list of necessities, since we only had a day at the Brainpan.) The flute track was returned to Kristoph, who began balancing it with what we already had.
This is where we get into the land of things that are, well, slightly esoteric to me. Kristoph contacted me while he was recording the bass guitar, and said "You know what this song needs? Slide guitar!". My response was the utterly informed "Uh...sure.". This is because I have learned that, where guitar needs are concerned, I should trust Kristoph and Jeff in all ways and in all things, and simply not argue with anything that they feel really strongly about. This philosophy has served me well thus far, and it definitely served me well this time.
We balanced the vocals to bring Vixy and I to equal prominance, and that was that. 'In This Sea', from poem to one of my favorite tracks on the album.
So happy.
The Harmony Line.
One of the most common questions about 'In This Sea' is 'what, exactly, is the second voice singing?'. The harmony line which Vixy provided to the song is almost, but not quite, identical to the melody line. So here, for the first time, is Vixy's harmony, transcribed for your viewing pleasure. (Just to make the overlay more clear, I've also provided the original lyrics, listed above the harmony line. Harmony is in italics, melody is bold, and unison is bold italics.)
In This Sea.
Let me kiss your cheek and chin, and tell you I forgive you;
I always knew, my Liz, my love, how much you lied to me.
Let me kiss your neck and hand; your memory will outlive you.
Your sorrow and your joy will live forever in this sea.
I've always loved the lily-maids, the lighthouse keepers' daughters,
I've always loved the lighthouse keepers' daughters,
The children of the river and the keepers of the waves.
The children of the river and the waves.
I take them to my bed and let them take me to the waters,
I take them to my bed and to the waters,
To the mysteries and silences no hero ever saves.
Mysteries and silences no hero ever saves.
I've always loved what's best unloved, the ones bound fast to leave me,
I've always loved the ones bound fast to leave me,
The empty-handed maidens who have placed their swords in stones.
The maidens who have placed their swords in stones.
I take them to my bed, although I know that they'll deceive me;
I take them to my bed and they deceive me,
It's better to be lost at sea than found, but all alone.
Let me kiss your lips and hair, and say my eyes were open;
I always knew, my Liz, my love, what you would do to me.
Let me kiss your face and eyes; no promises were broken.
Your darkness and your light will shine forever in this sea.
I've always loved the ones we'll lose, the sybils of the shoreline,
I've always loved the sybils of the shoreline,
Who comb their hair with driftwood, and whose skies are never clear.
Who comb their hair, whose skies are never clear.
They take me to the rocks, and I pretend that they can be mine;
They take me to the rocks, but they can't be mine.
They leave me as they will, and still, the next will find me here.
Don't think that I'm an innocent, although I've played the fool;
Don't think that I'm an innocent or fool;
Don't think I've ever been betrayed, for that was never true.
Don't think I've ever been betrayed by you.
I knew the game each time I played. I've never changed a rule.
I knew the game, and never changed a rule.
So don't you cry, my Liz, my love. I went to sea for you.
Let me kiss you one last time; the morning light is breaking.
I always knew, my Liz, my love, just what the end would be.
Let me send you on your way, for there is no mistaking
The cost that every man must pay who comes to love the sea.
...it just plain takes my breath away.
The Original Poem
There weren't that many changes between 'To Love the Sea' and 'In This Sea', but there were some, and so, in the interest of being thorough, here you are -- the original.
To Love the Sea.
Let me kiss your cheek and chin, and tell you I forgive you;
I always knew, my Liz, my love, how much you lied to me.
Let me kiss your neck and hand; your memory will outlive you.
Your laughter and your sorrow are forever in this sea.
I've always loved the lily-maids, the lighthouse keepers' daughters,
The children of the river, and the keepers of the waves.
I take them to my bed and let them take me to the waters,
To the mysteries and silences no hero ever saves.
I've always loved what's best unloved, the ones bound fast to leave me,
The ones whose eyes are drowning in the sorrows yet unknown.
I take them to my bed, although I know that they'll deceive me;
It's better to be lost at sea than found, but all alone.
Let me kiss your lips and hair, and say my eyes were open;
I always knew, my Liz, my love, what you would do to me.
Let me kiss your face and eyes; no promises were broken.
Your darkness and your light will shine forever in this sea.
I've always loved the ones we'll lose, the sybils of the shoreline,
Who comb their hair with driftwood, and skies are never clear.
I take them to my bed, and for an hour, they can be mine;
They leave me as they will, and still, the next will find me here.
Do not think me an innocent, although I've played the fool;
Do not think that I've been betrayed, for that was never true.
I knew the game each time I played. I've never changed a rule.
So don't you cry, my Liz, my love. I went to sea for you.
Let me kiss you one last time; the morning light is breaking.
I always knew, my Liz, my love, just what the end would be.
Let me send you on your way, for there is no mistaking
The cost that every man must pay who comes to love the sea.
Factual Bits and Bobs.
Written on: October 14th, 2005.
Structure: Chorus/Verse/Verse/Chorus/Verse/Verse/Chorus.
Arrangement: Lead vocal, harmony vocal, guitar, bass guitar, slide guitar, flute.
Tempo: Ballad.
Length: 5:23.