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Sycamore Tree

Genesis of the song.

Ironic footnote number one: this song almost didn't get written. No, seriously. 'Sycamore Tree' began in June of 2005, as I was running down Fourth Street to make it to the station before I missed my train, having left the office later than I actually intended to. This is, quite possibly, responsible for the generally breathless quality at the beginning of the verses -- it had to be breathless, I was running when I wrote it, and didn't have any oxygen to spare. There was just no air available. (I was also chanting the first two lines under my breath, over and over again, almost like a chant, the whole time. And then I wonder why people on the street sometimes assume that I'm insane.)

I raced down the stairs and straight onto the train, where the doors were just about to close (they did close on the trailing hem of my jacket, which tells you what a close call it was). I dropped myself into a seat, fumbled out the notebook I'd been using for notes on my upcoming Toastmistress concert at OVFF, and scribbled down the part I had so far, which consisted of:

I found our names carved in the bark of the old sycamore tree;
Who do you think put 'em there, your initials wrapped around mine?

...and then I stopped. It didn't seem to want to go anywhere. Having shown up, it was perfectly content to just sit there, clearly not a poem, substantially less than a song, and exist. Bastard. I looked at this fragment for a while, considering it with the sort of doleful solemnity that I generally abhor in the songwriting process -- usually, for me, it's something very quick and organic if it's going to happen at all -- and finally decided that it was really too simple of a sentiment to sustain a full-length song. I doodled some little bat-winged hearts on the page, since I had it open, closed the notebook, and, I thought, closed the book on 'Sycamore Tree'. More fool me.

I have a tendency to doze on the train when not actively editing something, since the ride is over an hour long, and I'm often exhausted at the end of the workday. On that day, I dozed...and dreamt of 'Sycamore Tree'. Just the first two lines, at first, looping over and over again, but then more and more of the song, until, by the time I woke up and started walking home, I had this:

I found our names carved in the bark of the old sycamore tree;
Who do you think put them there, your initials wrapped around mine?
There was a time I thought you had the strangest hold over me,
But now I'm miles away from there, and I'm still doing just fine...

On the day I found my wings
I spread them wide and flew away,
I was always bound for better things,
You never wanted me to stay,
And now when the telephone rings
I know there's nothing left to say --
I don't wonder if it's you at all.

Still no real hint of the insane complexity that would become the song's hallmark, but really, when I dream something like that, I tend to become a lot more interested in finishing it. Me and dreams, we have a special relationship, where they make me crazy and I let them do it. I was also starting to get the vague idea that this might be a Martin's Passage/Sarah and Harry song, which seemed like hammered awesome -- I didn't have one yet, after all. I walked home that way, singing the piece I had so far at the top of my lungs, and by the time I was halfway there, I'd found the chorus and the original bridge (more on this later). These were the discoveries that cinched the song's fate. You see...

I am truly fascinated by artists like Dave Carter and Stephen Sondheim, whose only evident commonality is their capacity to take two completely different vocal lines and use them to tell a third story in the way they interact. (Need examples? Go and listen to 'Tanglewood Tree' or the Act I Finale from Into the Woods. You should do these things anyway, so I'm perfectly willing to wait.) I've always wanted to write a piece or pieces of that nature. And in the chorus and the bridge, I finally saw the opportunity to do so, because they were very modular, and allowed for a lot of room for layering.

Maybe this song wasn't going to be so simple after all.

I spent the next several days poking the song with sticks, until it had managed to develop not only a first verse and chorus, but the verse and chorus following, along with a large percentage of the inserted and underlain lyrics to go with same (thus guaranteeing that I would never be able to sing it alone, since those lyrics were so entirely integral to the structure that they couldn't be removed without changing everything). Then came the fun part: looking for an exit.

'Sycamore Tree' is structured in such a way that it really didn't seem to have an exit, per se. Songs normally have some sort of hook that I can use to swing myself out of them; 'Sycamore Tree' is more like a snake swallowing its own tail, and seemed happy to keep going forever (quite literally -- at one point Kristoph was threatening to do a cut that just looped the song back into itself, and do the sixty-minute 'Sycamore Tree'). Not exactly a good thing in a song you'd like to stop writing someday. I shook it. Briskly.

The vocal spaghetti fell out.

The vocal spaghetti is literally constructed from bits of every other part of the song, mixed up, layered, and mashed together until you have three completely different narratives running at any given time, frequently constructing a fourth narrative from the way they fit together. When I say 'every other part of the song', I mean it; the 'every' includes parts of the song that don't technically exist anymore.

To fit the vocal spaghetti together, I literally called Batya in New York, sang her bars of the melody, and then had her sing them back to me while I experimented with different ways of fitting the counterpoints in. This was very surreal for both of us, due to the whole 'cellular phones sometimes have a slight delay in transmission' thing, but worked out pretty well, on the whole.

About three days after I charged into 'Sycamore Tree' by mistake, I emerged out the other side, clutching the end of the vocal spaghetti in one hand, slightly dazed...and totally delighted. It was a challenge and a half, and now? I'm so very glad I took it.

So very, very glad.

Story of the Song.

'Sycamore Tree' is the second song on Stars Fall Home to be written around The Watcher Diaries: Martin's Passage, an online roleplaying game based around the series Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, which was created by Joss Whedon. For more information on Martin's Passage, see the sidebar link on this page. (Buffy is owned entirely by Joss; Martin's Passage is owned by its creator and players. 'Sycamore Tree' contains no material owned by anyone but me. Just as an FYI.) Like 'This Is My Town', 'Sycamore Tree' is told from the point of view of Sarah Tapper, a half-demon who also happens to be a teenage girl, hopelessly, helplessly in love, as so many teenage girls are, with a guy who doesn't even realize she exists.

Only the thing is, in Sarah's case? It's her fault he doesn't know. Follow carefully, now, because this is gonna get weird.

Now, you may recall that, at the end of season one of the 'show', a demon named Legion had managed to use Harry's death to convince Sarah to help him remake the world in his own image. Maybe that wouldn't have mattered with a normal teenage girl, but Sarah's demonic blood was provided by a race called the Johrlac, who exist, effectively, in a permanent state of pan-dimensional dispersal. Helping him tap into the magical energy of the town and create a new universe was practically child's play for her. In exchange for doing this for him, he would see to it that Harry didn't die. Sarah was too shattered by grief over Harry's death to realize what she was agreeing to, and she helped him. They found themselves in a new world, and Harry was alive again. Everything should have been perfect...

...except for the part where everything was wrong. A part of Sarah was able to understand just how horribly broken this new reality was, and when the chance arose, she broke free and helped the rest of the good guys to seize control back from Legion. Good idea, slightly bad execution, since Legion's earlier tampering had caused the entire world to become unstable -- plus, several of the people doing the seizing were technically dead at the time, once his power was removed from the equation. It became necessary for all the magic users in the group to band together to, effectively, create a third world for them to shunt everyone into while the original world recovered.

Confused yet? Because pretty much everyone in the cast definitely was, by this point.

Unfortunately, the move caused everyone's memories to become scrambled as they fit themselves into the new reality, as the spell started reacting to the subconscious hopes and fears of those who had been involved in casting it. Some people changed more than others, Harry and Sarah included. Harry manifested his demonic traits earlier and with more awareness that they'd be coming; Sarah, meanwhile, became substantially more isolated, as her own self-loathing over having given in to Legion caused her to sever her ties with the rest of the cast. At the start of season two, Harry and Sarah, who had previously been very much in love with each other, each barely knew that the other existed. Sarah's best friend from the original world, Donna Norton, was now Harry's best friend, and had substantially less to do with Sarah, who spent more and more time alone.

Even more unfortunately, Sarah is a telepath, and began, fairly quickly, picking up on emotional resonances everyone, including her, had forgotten. As a consequence, she once again fell in love with Harry Marshall, not entirely sure why, but unable to keep herself from loving him. Harry, however...well, Harry just didn't love her back. She remembered more and more, and still he didn't love her; he seemed to be unable to love her. So she decided not to love him, either. To fly away home.

That didn't so much work out for her, in the long run, but the point at which she made the decision is the point that the song comes from; the point of coming to understand that you can't make someone love you, however much you want to, however much you try.

It's never been possible.

Arranging the Song.

The first steps towards arranging 'Sycamore Tree' were taken in the living room of Paul Kwinn and Beckett Gladney, in the summer of 2005. Paul was going to be doing the bulk of the accompanyment for my OVFF concert, but I had asked Tony if he would learn the guitar line for 'Sycamore Tree', which he was also going to be singing on. More specifically, I had asked Tony and Vixy if they'd be willing to learn and perform a 'surprise' song with me at the convention -- unlike most of my lyrics, which are posted publicly shortly after they're written, the lyrics to 'Sycamore Tree' had been kept tightly under wraps. Even most of the people I discuss songs with while writing them had only the vaguest idea that such a song existed. The reason for this is simple: in the RPG the song is based on, I play Sarah Tapper, and my friend Phil plays Harry Marshall. Phil was going to be at OVFF, and I wanted to see if he'd die.

From such simple, affectionate malice can amazing things be born.

Now, it should be noted that when I asked Tony and Vixy to learn and sing this song, I sent them the lyrics. No matter what they may try to tell you, they were warned. And yet they, trusting in the fact that many of my songs are musically simple and lyrically complex, had decided not to study them before our first attempt at rehearsal. Those poor, dear, sweet fools. We ran through the rest of my set, in order, and then I produced the printed lyrics for 'Sycamore Tree', setting them out for my musical partners to study.

I'd never made Vixy cry with a song before. That was an interesting experience, and one that I have since gone on to repeat as often as possible, because it's neat. But I digress.

After the tears and recriminations (I kid, I kid, it wasn't that bad) were over with, we settled down to chord and arrange the guitar part of the song...and quickly discovered that I, enthralled by the process of composition, had written a harmony line that required either identical twins or extra lungs. Also, the tempo was such that if we didn't trim some of the pieces, it might actually make Tony's hand fall off, or possibly kill a vocalist. (This will be addressed more in the 'Trivia' section.) We spent several hours, with Paul, Beckett, Chris and Amy looking on tolerantly, just working out the chords and re-working the backing lines. At the end of the night, we had what would turn into the base arrangement for 'Sycamore Tree'.

The first recording of the song was made the next afternoon in my back room, using my tiny little hand-held recorder. The sound quality was terrible, the tempo was practically a trainwreck...and yet I can listen to that recording and see where the song was going to go. I really wanted to see it get there. We performed that first arrangement live at OVFF 2005, and it's preserved on the album released from that concert, Pretty Little Dead Girl. The timing isn't always perfect, but it's somehow very real, and I love it very much.

'Sycamore Tree' was always earmarked for inclusion on Stars Fall Home; while I didn't really think there would be much to do with the instruments -- more fool I -- I wanted to have a recording where the timing was exactly the way it is in my head. (Yes, I can be just that picky. The live recording was ninety percent perfect, timing-wise. And I wanted a hundred percent.) The guitar part you hear on the album, by the by, was recorded in a single take. Kristoph called Tony 'the machine' for that one, because it was awesome.

We started by recording the guitar and all three voices, and left the song in Kristoph's tender care. He worked on balancing things, getting all three voices into a truly elegant mix -- seriously, it brought tears to my eyes, it was so right -- and then asked me, with the off-handed casualness that marks so many of his good ideas, if I'd mind him adding a little bottom end to the piece. Drums and bass and electric guitar, oh my. I expressed some doubts, but agreed to let him do it, since he had yet to lead me wrong.

He didn't lead me wrong here, either.

This is 'Sycamore Tree'; this is what it sounds like when your heart, your mind, and your sense of right and wrong collide. And I'm so very glad that I got the chance to share it. Thanks to Tony, Vixy, and Kristoph; without them, it could never have been arranged. And thanks to Phil, too. For letting me live.

The Missing Bridge

Despite being a pretty substantial piece of music -- 'Sycamore Tree' clocks in at over six minutes in length -- it was originally even longer, with two bridges, one following each of the 'small town boy' choruses. Each bridge was two verses long. Had they remained in the song, they would have brought it to a final length of almost eight minutes, which is, sadly, a bit much.

After the first 'small town boy' chorus, you had this bridge:

Who are you, who am I, I'm just a bird who sings this song.
Who am I, who are you, you never learned to sing along,
Who are you, who am I, so if it happens that I get the words all wrong --
You'll never know.

Who am I, who are you, I loved you first, I loved you best,
Who are you, who am I, so if it happens that you're tired of the rest --
Just let me know.

Later, following the 'small town boy' verse leading into the extended vocal spaghetti at the end of the song, you had this bridge:

Who are you, who am I, I'm just the one who had to fly,
Who am I, who are you, you never asked the reasons why,
Who are you, who am I, so if it happens that I didn't say goodbye --
Well, who's to know?

Who are you, who am I, I'm just a cuckoo in her tree.
Who am I, who are you, you kept the very best of me,
Who are you, who am I, so if it happens that I'll never quite be free --
Who needs to know?

Fragments of the melody survive in the way the vocal spaghetti fits together, but on the whole, that particular musical movement went the way of the dodo. I'd feel worse about this, but Menkin and Ashman did it with one of my favorite songs from Little Shop of Horrors (a duet called 'We'll Have Tomorrow', which most people have never heard), so I figure it happens to the best of us. It even makes me feel deliciously wasteful -- here's this splendid bit of music, bam, into the wastebin! Ha!

More seriously, I may reuse the bridge tune at some point, because it really was lovely, and made me very happy, but the song came out more than long enough, and the alternate bridges had the unfortunate side effect of making the singer seem more distanced from the situation than she really is. She doesn't have the emotional distance to ask who needs to know -- as far as she's concerned, everyone does.

Trivia About the Song

The player of Harry Marshall had no idea this song existed until it was performed live in concert, and turned a really impressive shade of purple when he heard it. Which was awesome.

'Sycamore Tree' is my most commonly parodied song, despite being made entirely of spaghetti. A mashup of 'Pretty Little Dead Girl' and 'Sycamore Tree' called 'Damn the Sirens' was written by Bob Kanefsky, who somehow managed to catch the fact that 'cemetery' and 'sycamore tree' scan exactly the same way. He got three of my four original OVFF musical collaborators to help him spring the song on me, and I turned a really impressive shade of purple. Which was, I suppose, also awesome.

'Sycamore Tree' has also been parodied by Rob Wynne, who mashed it into Great Big Sea's 'Ordinary Day' to present Sarah Tapper's dilemma to a somewhat less sadistic tune, and Mary Bertke, who turned it into a hysterically twisted bit of Harry Potter fanfilk.

In addition to the above, 'Sycamore Tree' is actually the song of my own that I have parodied in the most horrible ways, as I first re-wrote Michelle Dockrey's 'Girl That's Never Been' to the tune of 'Sycamore Tree', producing 'Children's Fiction (Sycamore Remix)', and then did the same in reverse, to get 'Girl That Almost Was (Looking Glass Remix)'.

'Sycamore Tree' was covered by Lady Mondegreen at D'zenove, the nineteenth annual United Kingdom filk con. For this arrangement, I sang lead, Merav Hoffman sang first harmony, and Batya Wittenberg sang third harmony. This is notable partially because of Batya's assistance in originally figuring out how the vocal layering worked.

'Sycamore Tree' is both the second Martin's Passage song and the second song from Pretty Little Dead Girl to appear on Stars Fall Home. It was one of the first songs selected for inclusion in the studio album.

Sarah and Harry have gotten back together. Finally.

Factual Bits and Bobs.

Written on: June 17th, 2005.
Structure: Verse (in two parts)/Chorus/Repeat/HORRIBLE VOCAL SPAGHETTI THAT HATES ALL ORGANIC LIFE.
Arrangement: Three voices (soprano, second soprano, tenor/alto), guitar, bass guitar, drums, electric guitar.
Tempo: High.
Length: 6:12.

Click here for the full lyrics.
Listen to a sample.