ericprincessdragon

Author: ericprincessdragon

  • My Opinions

    My Opinions began with lyrics written around February 2022. I don’t remember a specific incident that inspired them – the inspiration just seemed to be all around me. The earliest recording was an acapella voice memo I made while driving in the rain, awkwardly hunting for a melody with the lyrics in my mind. By mid-March the melodies were mostly worked out but I’d only written about half the song. It wasn’t until late 2023 during a song-a-week challenge that I finally finished it.

    Revisiting it now while writing this entry I went back and listened to those early demos. The earliest full version had this bouncy, upbeat fingerpicking feel – faster, more driving, more attitude. At some point I settled into something more laid-back and lost that edge. Listening back I think I prefer the earlier version. I might go back to it.

    This is a satirical song. The narrator is someone whose personal identity is so intertwined with their opinions that they can’t separate the two – and yet they have no real awareness of where those opinions came from in the first place.

    I used to think I was writing songs like this to point a finger at what I saw wrong in the world around me. But I think it’s more honest to say that these songs are cautionary notes to myself. I’ll take on a character, point outward, but really I’m processing something I recognize in myself. A frustration, a dissatisfaction, a tendency I want to keep in check.

    In this case I am writing about somebody whose opinions have gotten away from them – yet I am beaming with opinions about having opinions while I do it.

    An opinion isn’t a preference and it isn’t a fact. It’s a subjective hypothesis about a matter, based on the best information I have – with ignorance, limitations and blind spots built in. We are limited creatures. Limited by our senses, by the information available to us, by our ability to understand that information, by time and space. There is only so much you can learn in one lifetime. I believe there is vastly more that we will never know than anything we could possibly learn.

    How could I possibly take my opinions so seriously? What troubles me isn’t that we have opinions. It’s when the opinions become our identities. When disagreeing with someone’s view feels like an attack on who they are. At that point the opinion can no longer be examined – it has to be defended.

    My opinion is not my identity. I don’t put much stock in the idea of a fixed personal identity in the first place – but that’s a whole other opinion to dissect.

    I believe that many of our strongly held opinions weren’t arrived at through any deep process of critical thought. They were inherited, learned, absorbed. We heard something, it fit with what we already believed, we adopted it, forgot we adopted it, and now it’s ours. People will fight over a difference in opinion. They will hurt people. They will hurt themselves. People have killed over a different opinion. And a lot of those opinions, if you trace them back far enough, came from somewhere they can’t even identify.

    I’m not exempt. My opinions are suspect too – all of them, including everything I just said.

    My Opinions

    Where do we go when we die
    And more importantly
    When we die
    Where do our opinions go
    I hope that they live on and on
    In the hearts of those whom we had the chance
    To get up on our soapbox
    And mouth off to

    Please tell me
    Tell me that it’s okay
    To stay here holding on to
    These words in mind for all time
    I call my opinions

    In my home the news plays day and night
    And it shows me just exactly what the world is like
    The newsmen speak so plain and truthfully
    So you know it don’t surprise me
    That when they talk they always seem to speak
    My opinions
    My opinions

    Where oh where do we come from
    And more importantly
    Where do these opinions that I call my own come from
    I don’t know I may never know
    But what I do know Is that I seem to think much better than
    A lot of other people

    Please don’t tell me
    You’ve got it figured out
    When words fall out your mouth
    Are silly words
    That differ from my own
    My opinions
    My opinions

  • World Is Abstruse

    This song began with one image in the summer of 2021. I was driving past a local liquor store and I saw a woman getting out of her car. Across her car door was a very large sticker – almost as wide as the door itself – that said “TRUMP WON” I only saw her for a moment but I got an immediate sense of this person: confident, proud, unbothered. Everywhere she goes she is presenting that opinion to the world. I can’t think of a single opinion I hold that I would feel compelled to place across a vehicle for all to see at all times. That takes a certain kind of confidence. The first lines came to me in that moment.

    Parked at the liquor store
    Propoganda on her door
    Proud to be salty and free
    She’s not alone
    Just one of many many
    Living in a twisted fantasy
    We can call it a lie but she’s living in a separate reality

    From that image the song became an exploration of something I was seeing everywhere – people living in what felt like genuinely separate realities, unable to agree on even the most basic shared facts.

    It got me thinking about perception itself. Take something as simple as color. Two people can point at the same object and both call it red. But is what I see when I look at red actually the same experience you have? What if the color you experience as red looks the way green looks to me, but we’ve both learned to call our experience by the same word? We’d have no way of knowing.

    People aren’t simply lying. They aren’t simply deceived. On some level they are genuinely inhabiting a different reality. “We can call it a lie but she’s living in a separate reality.” If we can’t agree that red is red and blue is blue, how are we meant to find common ground?

    Parked in the arm chair
    Screaming into the chamber
    Silently yet violently so
    He’s not alone
    Just one of many many
    Acting out a twisted fantasy

    The character in the second verse was written as the counterpart to the lady at the liquor store. Where she is out in the world, moving confidently with her ideology on display, he is stationary, screaming silently into an echo chamber. I was thinking about local Facebook groups, the constant infighting, people repeating the same talking points as everyone else on their team with complete confidence – like parrots. They don’t seem to be arriving at these positions through any independent process. They’re finding the newest opinion and repeating it loudly and proudly. “You can watch the monkey do, you can do just as they do.”

    Underneath all of this is something I think about as the world of man versus the world as it is. Picture a flower on the side of the road. It wasn’t planted, it wasn’t watered, it doesn’t belong to anyone. It’s just a flower existing as it does for its lifetime – whether or not we describe it, name it, argue about it. That’s the world as it is. The world of man is the layer on top – the words, the symbols, the ideologies, the parties and clans. That layer only exists within human consciousness. It has no physical or material reality of its own. And yet people are dying and killing in the name of it. Seeking answers from the universe, asking the great unanswerable questions – that I can understand. But outsourcing understanding of reality to a pundit, an influencer, a politician is just dumb.

    Speaking of dumb, I first titled this song “The World Is Obtuse.” I thought obtuse meant difficult to understand. It must have been almost a week of working on the song before I finally looked up the word and realized the word I was reaching for was abstruse. I was embarrassed. I realized – not only is the world abstruse, difficult to comprehend, but the word itself is difficult to understand. I was being obtuse.

    The world is abstruse and humans are obtuse.

    This song and My Opinions came from a similar place and around the same time. Songs written out of fatigue, frustration, disappointment, worry – from watching people I knew personally, friends and family, fighting online over talking points and ideological battles that seemed so removed from actual life.

    Meanwhile, I was living alone with my dogs in the forest on the rural Oregon coast. Without need for any of that conflict in my day-to-day life. I was simply looking after myself, the dogs, the house and spending most my time in nature. It wasn’t until I opened Facebook or took a drive into town that any of that nonsense entered my world.

    The World Is Abstruse

    Parked at the liquor store
    Propaganda on her door
    Proud to be salty and free
    She is not alone
    Just one of many many
    Living in a twisted fantasy

    We can call it a lie but
    She’s living in a separate reality
    We can call it a lie but
    She’s living in a separate reality

    We have to imagine
    As she’s cruising down the street
    The grass may be blue while the sky is green
    There’s no way to know it
    It’s only a sight for her eyes
    For her it may be red
    For you it may be blue
    Red lies blue lies it’s purple in disguise
    For you it may be red For her it may be blue
    What is the truth
    The world is abstruse
    How could it be so plain to see
    Yet it’s lost on the majority
    The world of men tells of parties and clans
    But to me it’s all make believe
    Look around
    Life is here now

    Parked in the arm chair
    Screaming into the chamber
    Silently yet violently so
    He’s not alone
    Just one of many many
    Acting out a twisted fantasy

    We can call it a lie but
    He’s living in a separate reality
    We can call it a lie but
    He’s living in a separate reality

    What is the truth
    The world is abstruse
    Seeking answers from the news
    Yeah that’ll tie your noose
    You can watch the monkey do
    You can do just as they do
    Cause it’s a man’s world
    And we’re living in a zoo

    Seeking answers from above
    That I can understand
    Seek the answer from a man
    You’re being a dumbass
    Seeking answers from above
    That I can understand
    Seek the answer from a man
    And you’re being a dumbass

  • Werns

    Werns

    I wrote the first verse of this song in January 2024. Just as the song suggests, I was chilling at the beach watching my dogs dig. I can picture it vividly – sitting on Battle Rock Beach on a beautiful January afternoon, the dogs were digging and just making me laugh. I was filled with joy as I am in the simple moments with them. I think I wrote down the first few lines just as they are, and within a few days I started singing and playing this funky guitar melody to those words. The original demo was me just working out the melody with no more than four lines. Originally I had an extended melody for the intro and ended up keeping a compressed version of it for the demo I recorded. From there I didn’t develop the idea at all until January 2026, despite the song making it to several lists of “need to finish” song ideas and several rounds of song-a-week groups.

    This was a classic example of an idea that began without a premise – just a moment in time. As simple as the moment was and as simply as I wrote it down, I didn’t have a vision for the song beyond just describing that experience. I’ve lived half of my legal adult life with my dogs. They are such a major part of my life, as close to me as any human. Returning to develop this idea, I decided to dig into one of the most astonishing facts about the relationship between humans and canines: the sheer timescale.

    Far from Chihuahuas, we relied on them for protection and warmth, for aid in hunting and tracking, for safety. I believe there is something quintessentially human about this relationship – our ancestors chose each other and evolved together. Dogs have been on every continent, they’ve been in space, they’ve been present in every civilization. And now here we are. We call them man’s best friend, our closest and longest standing evolved companions. I feel this when I’m with my dogs. I feel it when I’m not thinking about it, and when I do think about it sometimes I feel a rush of love and honor. I feel so human and so connected to our history, our ancestors. I cherish my dogs. We carry them to the day they pass and carry them with us until our time comes. As we wander the beaches and forests of Oregon, and beyond – they live the majority of their days in the wild and spend little time behind fences, collar and leash. Often on our excursions we don’t see another human. Like our ancestors wandering together side by side.

    This song became a tribute not just to my dogs who I adore, but a statement on the humility I feel in their presence – acknowledging our ancient past together.

    P.S. The title is just one of dozens of silly names I’ve arrived at to call my dogs.

    “Werns”
    Chilling at the beach
    Watching my dogs digging
    A face shaped hole then they dive right in
    They got me laughing

    They give me a goofy sandy look
    Their tails wag in the breeze
    The bond we share is an ancient one
    We’ve been together so long

    Before we named our Gods
    We had dogs
    Before we wrote, before we spoke
    Any language known today

    They kept us safe out on the hunt
    They kept us warm in the cave
    We shared our food and buried their dead
    They’ve been family for so long

    Before we planted seeds
    Before we built cities
    From the cave to outer space
    We’ve come a long way together

    Chilling at the beach
    Watching my dogs digging
    The bond we share is an ancient one
    Tens of thousands of years long

  • Fallen Giant

    Fallen Giant

    This song has a long history. The first demos date back to 2017. At this point I cannot remember what I was initially writing about, but the essence of the original demo remains somewhat in Fallen Giant – particularly in the instrumental section before the second verse and the outro.

    For years the song sat unfinished. It made it onto several lists of ideas to return to and through several rounds of song-a-week groups without ever getting developed. I never cared enough for it to record a full demo. Then in the spring of 2025 I was traveling the US with my dogs and at the end of a long journey we spent the last few days slowly making our way up the California coast, taking quality time amongst the redwoods of Humboldt and Del Norte counties. It was on a hike through the redwoods that we came across the fallen giant that inspired this final iteration of the song. I wrote some of my thoughts down at the time:

    I was hiking through the California coastal redwoods and came upon a fallen giant. The root system alone was massive – way bigger than me. I marveled at it at first, then walked around the side to see the actual tree, which must have fallen many years ago as its topside was completely covered with ferns, trees, clovers, moss. This tree must have lived at least a thousand years and now in death so much life springs forth – a whole new world growing off its back, with many plants and probably insects and other animals living their lives on and around the corpse of this giant.

    All the nutrients it had acquired in its very long life are released into the ecosystem to feed this new life. It’s beautiful. When we pass we may not be hundreds of feet tall and thousands of years old but the same fate awaits us.

    The bodies we inhabit, the seat of our ego and consciousness, will cease to exist in the static form we know and this transfer of energy and life will begin. The materials that make us up will be broken down and offered up to the environment. And that forward motion of life continues. I believe this is what reincarnation truly is. Compared to a lot of the myths that we’ve known in human history maybe it seems a little anticlimactic or dissatisfying. But it is true. If we decide that all we are is what is being projected from our brains then I don’t think there is anything for us after death. But if we are to identify ourselves with and recognize that we are not separate – that there is no us without our environment – then we can understand that the matter that makes us up is eternal. We will lose our sense of consciousness as we’ve known it, the human ego, memories, all of it will be gone. But what we are on the deepest physical level will remain in some form for longer than the redwood stood. Don’t be confused – just because the brain will cease to exist doesn’t mean it’s all for nothing. Because it’s happening just this once, here and now, it means so much more. We exist.

    Later, during the song-a-week group in the fall of 2025, I started to revisit the tune – which I had previously called Heaven Is Wasted – and was reminded of this new perspective and lesson from the redwood tree on the physical reincarnation of the body. I never really liked the overall lyrics and perspective in the previous version and felt this was something much more interesting and worth exploring. I took my writings from the spring and adapted them to make up the first verses.

    During this time I was visiting Crescent City weekly and taking regular trips to the redwoods around Highway 199 and a couple of trips up the Chetco River to the redwood groves in Oregon. I was searching for other fallen redwoods to sit with and contemplate and write on. I found that I wasn’t writing a lot during those visits – instead I was just reveling in their presence. I didn’t feel too inspired to write anymore on the subject at that point, and although I managed to write the middle section in that time, I didn’t know where the song would go. I sat and wrote the last verse amongst the redwoods in early February 2026 and everything was fleshed out and finalized during the final recording session.

    These days I’ve been splitting my time between Del Norte and Curry Counties, spending time with the redwoods as often as possible.

    In the redwood forest
    I find a fallen giant
    Whose roots tower over me
    Once touched the sky
    Now resting at my feet

    I walk around to take a look
    At the body of an ancient being
    A whole new world grows on it’s back
    And I’m humbled

    It must have lived a thousand years or more
    And now in death it bursts with
    Moss and ferns
    Slugs, birds, berries and clovers
    Salamanders, witches butter
    So much life and so much color

    I won’t live a thousand years
    I won’t grow 400 feet
    I don’t know when I’ll fall
    But when I do, I know what awaits me

    Like the fallen giant
    I will rest where I once stood
    All the little bits that made me up
    Will break down, go back to the earth
    And carry on
    Forever and ever
    Carry on
    Forever and ever

  • Maytag Land

    The song was mostly composed, arranged, and recorded within my van amidst travels down to Los Angeles in February 2026.

    The song began from a Reddit prompt: “Write a song about the happy land where socks are escaping to. But try to write it in a minor key, and add some twist.”

    It’s rare that I write from a prompt but I always appreciate prompt writing for pushing me to write something that otherwise most likely never would have been considered. It provides a kind of safe distance from what I’m writing – I don’t have to feel too attached. It’s a pure creative exercise with just enough structure to give me a direction and enough flexibility to be creative within it.

    I found this particular prompt interesting and a bit curious. I struggled at first to find an approach that made sense to me. I started writing about the many socks without pairs I’ve got in a drawer and a few other things that felt too concrete. Eventually I removed myself from the story and focused instead on it being a sort of recruitment song – from the socks to the listener. As I wrote those lines I started to view them as refugees, escaping a harsh reality to a place outside of time where they will not be used and abused, ripped up, chewed up and thrown away. For the darker twist, I wrote that there’s only one way in and no way out.

    As a jumping off point I started from visualizing the laundry room at my house, which was once the studio, but now the cat room with, like the song says, litter boxes and a catio door.

    This is an example of a song where I essentially wrote most of it away from the instrument. I started with the lyrics and then began to hear them set to a melody. The majority of the melodies were composed without even touching a guitar – I sang them into a voice note while driving. It was my second night on the road, waiting out a storm near Bakersfield, where I was set up in the van working out the melodies and harmonizing them on guitar.

    I had no concrete idea for a musical arrangement at that point. I kind of imagined it being arranged for piano, or sort of toy piano – almost like a song that would be in a children’s show. But ultimately the song took on a more straightforward guitar and vocal arrangement. The melody was set before I even touched the guitar though. There are several different movements in the song and everything was driven by this changing melody.

    Here’s the response I got from the Redditor who gave me the prompt:

    “This is GREAT! Cool 70s-like sound, carefree and well-done lyrics! ‘Join us in the dryer and shut the door behind you’ 😅 And the dryer sound in the end. A fantastic choice. Thank you for making my prompt into something so nice! 😊”

    I gave them a counter prompt in return: Write a song that tells a story in reverse chronological order – starting with the end, then the middle, ending with the beginning.

    I’d like to do something with that eventually. But for now, here’s Maytag Land.

    There’s a place
    Down the hall way
    Past the litter box and catio door

    A magic space
    There’s only one way
    In and no way out

    Where all is warm
    And all is fluff
    Theres treasure there
    And softness in the air

    Everyone’s an individual
    Not a single pair
    And you can join us there

    In Maytag land
    Come join our clan
    We’ll throw a sock party for you
    Be one of us
    We are not lost
    We have each other

    Just get into the dryer
    And shut the door behind you
    Those socks, you thought were lost?
    We’ll reunite you
    The bills and coins that disappeared are waiting for you
    Your guitar pick?
    We got that too
    You can play a little doodle loo

    In Maytag land
    Come join our band
    We’ll play a sock party with you
    Be one of us
    Join our chorus
    We’ll sing together

    La la la

    In maytag land
    Time sits still
    We don’t grow old
    And don’t grow holes
    Never stepped on never trashed
    Never ripped up by the cats
    We’ve left the cold hard world behind
    And we can’t go back

    Come join us in the dryer
    And shut the door behind you

  • Only The Lucky Grow Old

    Only The Lucky Grow Old

    This song was written during the first week of the fall 2025 songwriting group. I was already making progress on another song when this one came to me very quickly one night. I remember having a long day and getting very sick from some sort of caffeinated beverage in the evening. I was running sound at our local venue and sitting at the bar after the show when I had a conversation with an older man – he was at least twice my age. He said jokingly at some point, “I hope I stay young forever.”

    In that moment I felt three things at once: the awareness of my own youth sitting there next to him – I was just 33 years old. Then the awareness of friends who didn’t live much longer than I have, or barely made it past 33. Then the awareness that he was once my age and lived many more years that for me are probable at best, not guaranteed. I felt almost envious in that moment, realizing that I may have the gift of youth in his eyes, but he had the gift of time – time that some friends did not have, and I may not have. With all of this in mind, I replied, “Only the lucky grow old.” As soon as the phrase came to my mind and I spoke those words, I had this feeling: “That’s a good line!”

    After we wrapped up that conversation, I made my way home and the closer I got to the house, the more the caffeine-induced headache intensified. During that short drive, the melody and lines just started coming to me one after the other, and I sang them into my phone as I climbed up the hill. As soon as I got into the house and fed the dogs and cats, I retreated to my room where I shut the door and shut off all the lights. With this headache pounding, I sat down and worked out the entire song in the dark, line by line, working towards the line that inspired the whole thing.

    I was writing about all the things that were weighing heavy on my mind at that time: struggling financially, in serious debt, drowning under the weight of many responsibilities, while also looking at losing essential benefits, and all the while reflecting on the young friends who have lost everything and my own feelings of guilt and regret. The song ended up taking an ironic position – we are the lucky ones who are still here, still breathing, still going, growing older – yet we’re here spending our precious luck stressing about survival.

    After finishing the last lines, I laid down and slept for 10 hours.


    One more letter
    Written halfway
    Crumbled up
    Thrown away
    Just a taste to tease the heart ache

    If there’s a cure
    I ain’t gonna find it
    I never called back
    My therapist
    When they canceled twice
    I tossed their card away

    Come new years I won’t be insured
    Word came down from the billionaires
    They won’t keep floating a broke down bum like me
    When I shoulda been working I was on the road
    I came home when I had nowhere else to go
    I’ve gone broke again seeing how far I could bend

    That little squiggle scratched on the line
    On paper with the land and the man
    My name is not my name but if I don’t pay
    They could take it all away
    Take it all away

    I miss the simple days
    I miss sleeping on the side of the road
    I miss having no home no car no guitars no phone

    If I could go back
    I’d gather up the letters I tossed
    Package them and send em to the friends I’ve lost
    I had one chance and I’ve never been bold
    Only the lucky grow old

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    One last thing I would like to share about this song is a recording from my good friend Liam Warden, who sent me a piano and vocal rendition just days after I first recorded it and sent it to him. I prefer his version to my own, and it made me appreciate the song so much more.

  • Sweetheart

    Sweetheart

    Sweetheart began its life as a jumbled mess of riffs, melodies and nonsensical phrases stitched together with musical scotch tape. There were four or five sections to this piece but little intention behind the original lyrics. It didn’t go anywhere. Originally recorded in December 2024, it was almost a year later when I salvaged one guitar riff and a melody which became the jumping off point for Sweetheart.

    I went to a screening of Hayao Miyazaki’s film Howl’s Moving Castle in theaters in fall 2025. I had seen it a couple times before, but this time I was particularly captivated and the impact of the time travel elements and relationship between Howl and Sophie hit me stronger than ever before. I felt inspired to write a song about their relationship, and began writing from the perspective of Howl, beginning with the first words that Howl spoke to Sophie in the movie:

    “There you are, sweetheart. Sorry I’m late. I was looking everywhere for you”

    Directly after leaving the theater I began writing lines inspired directly from the dialogue and events of the movie. Somehow the demo I mentioned above came to my mind and I found that some of the lines seemed to land perfectly in time with the riff and fit one of the melodies of the demo – “way back in the past when I was just a boy I heard a voice that called my name.”

    From there I began working out the song at home, writing about the movie in a fun and interesting process, quite different from any other song I’ve written. I was pulling up lots of quotes and watching scenes of the movie along the way, and I even watched the movie again at home about a week after seeing it in the theater. This time I wrote down any quotes that felt significant and any notes on the events, dialogue, themes and characters in the film.

    I had so much to pull from, and I spent a couple weeks writing, and editing and writing and editing some more. Initially I wrote more exposition into the song, including more elements from the story, even referencing other characters. But in the end I wound up cutting much of what I had written, instead choosing to focus on what I felt was the most compelling part of the story – the relationship between Sophie and Howl, and the presence of magic, danger, time travel and so on in their connection. The lyrics guided the musical development and arrangement of the piece, taking a short riff and melodic motif and stretching them in many directions, bringing about whole new sections and themes that were not in the original demo. I’d say 80% or more from that original demo was scrapped or shelved, and the song turned into a much more intricate and interesting piece of music than where it began. I intend to re-record this song in a live band arrangement within the next couple months, stay tuned.

    I’m quite happy with how the song turned out. It’s a tribute to a beautiful piece of art from one of my favorite creators and film studios. All thanks and credit goes to Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli.

    “Sweetheart”


    There you are
    Sweetheart
    I’ve been
    Looking for you
    Everywhere
    Since you called
    To me
    Way back in the

    Past when I was just a boy
    I heard a voice that called my name
    You told me then
    To look for you
    I’m sorry that I took so long
    To find you
    My Sweetheart

    Too long I’ve lived heartless
    I fought and turned monstrous
    So scared I can’t stand it
    Hiding behind this magic

    I was searching for so long
    And now you’re here and you’re involved
    There is danger we’ve been cursed and you have seen me at my worst
    But you don’t flinch and you don’t scare
    I’m filled with courage when you’re there beside me
    My sweetheart

    Sweetheart
    Love of my life
    Sweetheart
    Love of my life

    I’m done running away
    I will come home to stay
    At last I’ve found someone
    Who I want to keep safe
    My sweetheart
    Love of my life

    You take my heart and feel its warmth
    You feel it flutter like a bird
    You break the spell and lift the curse
    And we are free to be together
    Sweetheart
    Love of my life
    Sweetheart
    Love of my life
    Sweetheart
    Love of my life

  • Sweet Sleep

    This piece originated in the winter of 2023. I got into writing a series of instrumental pieces based around horn parts – the collection of songs that I file under the name Dokie Okie. Eventually, I’d like to produce the songs properly with a full band and live horn arrangements, but for now they all exist as MIDI demos.

    I brought this one together and included it on the March collection after shooting video on an elusive snow day at my home in Port Orford. The snowfall only lasted about 20 minutes, but being a desert child, it was magical nonetheless. As soon as the snow started falling, the house started buzzing – in fact, I believe it was my brother’s first time seeing snowfall. I grabbed my camera as quickly as I could and ran around shooting from every room and window around the house. Once the fall stopped, I got a few more shots outside.

    I wanted to cut the video to some music and felt this track fit, so I did a little bit of arranging, condensed the track, and put it together in the month of March.

    We’re not quite out of summer at the time of writing this, but I look forward to the change of seasons and the next elusive snow day.

  • Perfect Time

    I arrived in Hobart in perfect time on March 20th. I was picked up at the airport by my new friend Dave, the kiwi I had met on Oahu. He took me to his home in Geilston Bay, the address of which is on my Tasmanian ID (valid till 2029). I arrived in the late evening so he got me set up in the guest space and showed me out to a space in the backyard where he kept his music gear. There he left me with the invite to play his drums, basses and acoustic guitar.

    I grabbed the guitar and the very first thing I started playing was this song. Perfect Time started with the intro – the melody and words came all at once:

    You can’t miss when you don’t aim
    Sit still and take it all in

    Guts tame our wounded hearts
    Press our heads to the grumbles

    Just like that I was off with the chord change, and the song dropping into the main section. The lines continued to come to me:

    There’s a song in the distance
    I can’t call the tune
    But I’ll sing what I hear and you can harmonize

    And it continued:

    We may never catch up to the tune
    We may be gone too soon
    But we care not for the future
    Here in perfect time

    All of this came all at once as soon as I touched the guitar. This would become the theme for my arrival on the island in the days to come.

    Around that time, I had been considering that acceptance is essential if I ever wish to be in accordance with reality. Anything and everything that occurs in our universe, for better and for worse, is “meant to be.” All the triumph and tragedy that brings about hope and joy, suffering and despair, is the only law and order in an otherwise chaotic existence.

    I spend plenty of time thinking about the past. Sometimes I’ll allow my mind to trail off to thoughts of what could’ve been – what I could’ve said, what I could’ve done differently, if I’d just kept walking down that road or turned my back on something before it was too late. These thoughts are not helpful, generally speaking. But I was coming back to this idea that I must accept that everything happens in perfect time. Although I could imagine things that could’ve been done to change the course of reality, the fact that something occurred simply means that was the only way it could’ve been. To deny that, to fight it, to try and think my way out of it or around it, would be to break from reality.

    It’s easy to say in moments of hope and optimism that everything happens in perfect time. It’s harder to say when tragedy strikes, when a dear friend is lost too soon, in moments where it sinks in that every living thing must die, recognizing that someday I will have to say farewell to all things.

    I spend so much time trying to make sense of the past, anticipating and predicting the future, yet the only thing that really matters, the only thing that exists, is right now. Right now is not a problem to be solved, only an experience to be had. In the clearest moments, we can settle into that presence, and all fear and anxiety and worry and dread will wash away.

    I had the first chunk of the song for some time, and I played around with it throughout the time I spent on my first trip to Tasmania. But I didn’t end up finishing the song until later in the year when I was back home during one of the song-a-week challenges.

    One cliché says it all: life is full of surprises.
    Don’t know how much time we got
    How many sunrises
    We may never see another moon
    We may be gone too soon
    But we care not for the future
    Here in perfect time

    The song is really quite simple in its scope. My mind goes off into mortality. There’s a layer of melancholy and melancholic contemplation lining the core of my being, rarely without presence in my thoughts. But this song is meant to be a declaration of acceptance – acceptance of our own mortality, an acceptance and letting go of all worry for a future that is not guaranteed, that does not exist, and on some fundamental level, a future that does not concern us.

    I have seen people express this idea that 1,000 years may pass, 10,000 or 100,000 years may pass, eventually everyone we knew, everything we knew, every trace and memory of us may be gone – and therefore, what is the point? But the events of this universe 100,000 years from now are even more meaningless than we could ever be, because we exist. We are here now, and in that, life has great meaning.

    The future is not guaranteed. We understand that the universe will go on, but the future for us, for humanity, for our ancestors, is not guaranteed. What is guaranteed is this present moment, so long as we are here. We exist, and here we shall remain – in perfect time.

  • Oahu Noodles

    “Oahu Noodles” is a track made up of couple of improvisations I recorded on the porch of Backpackers Vacation Inn & Hostel on the north side of Oahu, Hawaii. The first week of March 2024, I was making my way to Australia for the first time and saw flights that transferred at Honolulu airport, so I decided to book a 4 night layover, rent a car and explore Oahu for a few days.

    Through couchsurfing I had lined up a sweet spot to stay on a small boat during my visit, but the day before I arrived the stay fell through. In between a bus trip across Oregon and a couple flights over I was frantically trying to find another couchsurfing situation, researching places I might be able to sleep safely in the rental car (which is illegal and highly discouraged on Oahu!), I was able to stay for the night of my arrival with some coast guard dudes but finally ended up booking a hostel on the north side for the rest of my stay. I was bummed at first but it ended up being a great landing and shaped the trajectory of my entire trip.

    One of my roommates at the hostel was a folk musician who, nearly 50 years earlier, had nearly slid to his death while hiking a nearby trail. He told me that besides two major heart attacks he had later in life, that fall was the closest he had come to death. He told me that he slid and slid and slid until he came to the edge of a ridge with a perilous drop below. He was able to walk along the ridge, which formed a nice natural trail. Eventually, he found his way back to civilization, but that spot stuck with him.

    Now here he was in his early 70s, retired from his trade, returning for the second year to stay for a month and try to find the site of his near-death experience. Each day he would go off to hike and search for this elusive ridge. He was nearing the end of his trip and told me that if he didn’t find it this time, he’d be coming back the next year to continue his search. While he was out searching for a needle in a haystack, I was trying to get lost – driving around, meeting many dead-end roads, gates, fences, trespassing signs and so on. In hindsight, I should’ve tagged along with him, but I was content wandering around the island, swimming, eating and playing guitar in the sun, and on a rainy day – shooting video as I made my way around the island. I later cut the video to the “noodles”:

    One evening we threw together an impromptu open mic out on the porch. We started with only a cheap hostel guitar, which I drove across the island to buy strings for, cleaned up, strung up and tuned up. Eventually, with some imagination, I managed to set up an electric guitar, vocal and little synthesizer amplified with my laptop and a Bluetooth speaker. Hostel folks came by the porch to hang out, listen, sing, and jam.

    One of the musicians who came by was a fella named Dave Lee, a New Zealand-born musician who had been living in Tasmania for almost a decade. He came out to Hawaii for a surfing trip and joined us on the porch where we jammed, swapped tunes and riffs, and had an all-around good time. Dave plays bass in a Tassie band called Lennon Wells. Our meeting inadvertently directed my trip, as just a week later I would find myself in South Australia, looking for leads and opportunities to get involved with events across Australia when I saw that Lennon Wells was playing a small festival in Tasmania called Echo Fest. I reached out to the festival and offered my help, they invited me along straight away. From one island to the next, Oahu to Tasmania.

    The noodles of “Oahu Noodles” were recorded on the porch, the morning of my last day on the island. I took my little guitar/synth rig and ran it into a handheld recorder, along with my phone feeding basic drum tracks. I played through headphones until the recorder batteries died. I would be flying out to Sydney that afternoon, so this was my last chance to capture something from the island. I offered to give another roommate a ride to the airport before my flight, and we spent the afternoon driving across the island with just enough time for a waterfall hike, pictured above and below.