This Is My Town
What do people think it's about?
"It's about knowing where you belong -- whether you want to or not." -- Vixy.
"'This is My Town' is about being confined by your circumstances to a place that, while it owns and holds you, does not recognize you, even as you struggle to recognize it." -- Mars.
"It feels like someone who knows they're trapped, living in a Stephen King novel, who'd love to change it, and can't, because this town's going to follow them, wherever they go." -- Jessica.
When presented with this question, what does Seanan say it's about?
"You can live in a place forever, call it home, totally accept and understand that you're never going to live anywhere else, no matter how much you might want to, but that doesn't mean that the people who live there with you will ever fully understand you, who you are, or where you come from. It's about looking out your window and realizing that you're an alien in a place that's a part of you, and about knowing that even if you run, it will follow you forever, because this is where you belong.
"In the end, 'This Is My Town' is about being trapped, and learning to live with it, because the alternatives are even worse."
What is it actually about?
'This Is My Town' is about living with the kind of secrets that can kill you for no reason beyond their existence, and the fact that you possess them. It's about walking through your days waiting for the hammer to come down, about giving up all hope of escape, and simply trying to get through your life. It's about loneliness, and belief that while there might be something better than what you have, you'll never deserve it.
It's also about a girl named Sarah Tapper, who did some very bad things in the name of love. But there's more about her a little further on.
Genesis of the song:
All right: this is actually the first The Watcher Diaries: Martin's Passage song on the album, so this is where you're going to get the thumbnail. Set in the town of Martin's Passage, Maine, Martin's Passage is 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. Just as an FYI.) I've written a lot of songs about this game. It comprises one of the two largest 'song cycles' I've written; the other is the songs of the Babylon Wood.
In late 2004, we started the second season of the game, shifting the relationships and situations of many of the characters. I began writing songs to describe these changed relationships, as much in an attempt to grasp the changes as anything else. I also began my annual reread of the complete works of Stephen King.
Trust me. This will make sense.
Like many other songs, 'This Is My Town' began with a long walk. I was wandering, humming a little snatch of looping, haunting tune that had been in my head for the better part of a week, when I sang:
We live in the sight of the mountain;
We live in the shade of the tree.
We trade today for tomorrow,
Making bets on destiny...
This was so perfectly Martin's Passage that I had to chase it down, even though I wasn't sure yet exactly which character it described. I spent the rest of my lunch that day walking in circles, trying to find out what it wanted to be. I returned to work with the first pair of verses, the chorus, and a strong feeling that this was a song about Sarah Tapper, one of my two primary characters in the game.
This was a very organic song, with each line leading itself into the next one, sometimes in surprising ways. There's a line in the bridge that goes:
This is my town, where you get what you pay for;
This is my town, where you own what you build.
Not remarkable, unless you happen to be a Stephen King fan; I was reading Pet Semetary when this song was written, and that little piece is a picture-perfect example of too much Maine-centric dialogue skewing the way I put words together. Fortunately, it was a POV song from a character from Maine, so hey, it's not like it hurts anything.
There sadly isn't that much to say about how this song was written: it was fast, it was painless, and it was sad, because I felt terrible for Sarah. But that, I think, is in the story...
Story of the Song.
Way back in season one of Martin's Passage, two crazy kids named Sarah Tapper and Harry Marshall decided to see if they could make things work between them. That went pretty well, until Harry got shot and Sarah allowed herself to be convinced to help the season's Big Bad destroy the world in order to get him back. Not all the way destroy it, oh, no; she'd just help him break it and remake it in his own desired image. Legion kept his end of the bargain. Harry didn't die. But Sarah makes a poor villain, and was eventually able to break free of Legion's control in order to help her friends destroy the world a second time. Because when the MP kids break something, they break it good.
A third world was created, this one as a sort of 'bandaid' for the cast to live in while the original world restored itself. Since the hopes, fears, and unspoken desires of the cast played a large role in designing this new world, Sarah -- who was deeply afraid of her powers and nature, and that being near her would get her friends killed -- wound up almost entirely isolated from the people who had been her friends. She couldn't be trusted not to hurt them, after all.
She also wound up isolated from Harry. But that's a story for a very different song.
Sarah took to wandering the town, trying to come to terms. Almost everything from the song is a direct reference to the game. 'Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long you.ll have good luck, / But the streets are bare and my pockets are empty' refers to a set of enchanted pennies she possessed in the original world, which she used to protect herself from the effects of Harry's powers. 'Pay the piper, pay your dues -- I don't have that much left to lose, / 'Cause I'm all alone, and I think someone left me' refers to the fact that she is, essentially, paying for the crime of having destroyed the world in the first place; she's all alone, because everyone left her. She may always be alone.
Of course, since Sarah felt on a deep and instictive level that this was entirely her fault, she didn't object to it too hard. She just resigned herself, and stayed aside...at least until the season ended.
But that's another story.
Arranging the Song.
If you've listened to my live album, Pretty Little Dead Girl, you've had already heard the original, basic arrangement of 'This Is My Town': leading vocals, backing vocals, guitar, fiddle. I love this song enough to want to record it in the studio even after recording it live, but in order to do that, I really wanted to find a way to deepen and broaden the potential of that initial arrangement. After all, what's the point of doing something that you've already done once before?
The first thing we did was seriously look at the backing vocals. The live arrangement was very simplistic; very clean. We wanted something deeper and more textured for the studio album, and so brought in two additional voices -- Paul, on a tenor harmony (this harmony had been intended for the live performance, but wasn't worked out in time), and Amy, providing an excellent alto line. I'd like to take this opportunity to note that Amy's vocal contributions to this track were somehow left out of the liner notes, which is a crying shame, because if you listen carefully enough to start pulling the individual voices apart, you'll find that her steady, low support is a lot of what gives the vocals their overall richness. All the backing vocalists are awesome on this track, and when I heard what they assembled into, I was overjoyed.
The studio setting allowed us to ornament the fiddle track in ways that live performance didn't really lend itself to, turning it into something detailed and exciting...and high. We had a very complex vocal line, coupled with relatively light and straightforward instrumentation. Excellent, but not complicated, and with no real bottom end.
After some discussion, Kristoph and I decided that the song as a whole would benefit from the addition of bass and an electric guitar -- not something I normally think of in conjunction with folk music, but I'll admit, my breath caught a little the first time I heard it walking into the melody line. The additional instruments really broadened the song into something amazing and new. And after hearing that, I had no qualms about agreeing to let Kristoph add drums to the track, thus creating a foundation for everything else to rest on.
The results speak for themselves.
Trivia About the Song.
'This Is My Town' was originally slated to serve as the title track for the studio album on which it appears. This was changed when it became clear that people tended to view it as both overly wordy and a little bit overly close to a few other albums or songs with the word 'town' in the title. Never let it be said that I go out of my way to be confusing!
'This Is My Town' is both the first Martin's Passage song and the first 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.
Factual Bits and Bobs.
Written on: December 23rd, 2004.
Structure: Verse/Verse/Chorus/Verse/Verse/Chorus/Bridge/Chorus/Chorus.
Arrangement: Lead vocal, backing vocals, guitar, bass guitar,
electric guitar, fiddle, drums.
Tempo: Moderate/low.
Length: 4:02.