River Now

Keeping on with the perky section of the record, we come to the song about Death. Well, there had to be one, it's just the way it goes. I was going to ditch it but Gretchen had a dream about it right before she ever heard it, so it sort of had to be on there. I was thinking of having lived in Santa Cruz, right by where the river meets the sea - supposedly a native American burial ground. I was thinking of Virginia Woolf, putting stones in her pocket and walking out into the river. I was thinking about where your mind must be to do that. Seems like it wouldn't feel tragic at that point. Seems like it would feel like a relief. I was happy I wasn't there.

There were many many incarnations of this song (it sort of rose from the dead, sorry for the very easy pun). It's really hard to sing a song about your own demise without sounding very embarrasingly melodramatic, I've discovered. I don't have a real terrible feeling about death, and I wanted to convey this sort of acceptance of the invevitability of it, and the beautiful poignancy of our mortality. Who knows if I got close to that, but I'll agree it's a bit to bite off.

Musically, it was hard too. I liked the bobbing in water feeling of the drum loop. And I really wanted a choir, but a choir that sounded like regular folks spontaneously singing rather than a scripted sort of thing. It may be a song I revisit at a later time, I hear that it didn't quite get to where I wanted it. I do love the ambulance-sounding guitar line Gretchen came up with.