ericprincessdraon

Tag: nature

  • Updates: Redwoods, Studio, Cornfield Blues

    It’s been a couple months since I’ve published any new entries on the site. I’ve got a few big entries in the works that I’ve yet to sit down and finish. For now, some updates from the last few months.

    Over the last months I’ve been spending a lot of time with family and dividing my weeks between my home on the Oregon coast and the new home of my dad and grandmother at the foot of the redwoods just outside of Crescent City, California. I was still a teenager the very first time I traveled up to see the redwoods. Walking in the redwoods and hiking coastal trails in Humboldt County deeply expanded my awareness of the diversity and vastness of nature and life on earth. Over the years I began to take regular trips up north and held a dream of living amongst the great coastal redwoods. My first realization of that dream was in my 20s when I settled on the Oregon coast, where I live just over an hour from the most northern coastal redwood growth outside of Brookings, Oregon. But now, in spending time with family, I also spend time in the redwoods two or three days a week on average – the dream of my late teenage years feels more real than ever before.

    It’s been about a year of taking regular trips to Crescent City, exploring the town and neighborhoods in a quest to find a suitable living situation for my family moving up from down south. But along with the time in the city, I’ve been exploring the beaches and trails along the coast, discovering nooks and trails through the redwoods along the Smith River. Throughout the fall, winter and spring I visited the Smith River countless times, and just last weekend, as we turned our cheek toward summer, I finally enjoyed back-to-back days of swimming the Smith.

    As I mentioned, my visits to Crescent City have been more about spending quality time with my family and exploring and discovering more of what the surroundings have to offer. I haven’t been so productive when it comes to my creative projects. I might do some editing or mixing, and I’ve been practicing and playing quite a bit down there, including on visits to the Smith, but overall I’ve been saving my music projects for home.

    At home, I’ve been working every day in my new home studio space. This has been a project in the works for nearly two years, since an existing structure on our property became unlivable due to serious storm damage. We spent close to a year just working on construction projects, and it would’ve been just over a year ago that the goal to dedicate space to recording first occurred to me. By the time the autumn rains began I had moved the majority of our equipment into the space, where there were still active projects of drywall, painting and attic/roof work to be done. I would spend several months shuffling gear around to accommodate projects, keeping a stripped-down recording space available throughout — the majority of all the demos I’ve recorded since fall 2025 were done in this space.

    Yet it wasn’t until about three months ago that I had finally removed all construction materials from the space entirely and had it set up for a live band rehearsal. Even then, it would still be a few weeks until the space was ready for live recording, as I was still putting up sound panels and generally unpacking and organizing gear throughout. There were so many tedious little projects along the way, and I’m still not on the other side of them. In the span of a week I must’ve spent over 20 hours organizing cables — wrapping them, adding velcro cable ties or twist ties, sorting them in piles and then crates, boxes and bags, and finding places for them. I still have a small box with miscellaneous cables that didn’t fall into simple categorization. With all that said, the space is now pretty well set up for recording and rehearsing, and we’ve got a few active projects happening within it. I will get to those across my next couple entries.

    My focus for a couple of weeks was a room where I’m setting up an analog work desk — a space for digitizing VHS tapes, playing, recording and reproducing cassette tapes and CDs, and playing back a variety of physical media. I’ve got a couple of boxes of home movies that I’ve been caring for for many years and only now have the space I could dedicate to setting up the equipment for digitizing them. That space is mostly together, but I’ve still got to figure out some solutions for shelving, storage and organization. What was previously a kitchen in this space is now the main working space, with a computer desk, studio monitors, access to our main recording console and so on. This space connects to the large area where we have a drum kit set up, guitar and bass amps, and a vocal booth in the corner of the room.

    Next door to the analog room is the space that is still the most in shambles, which I intend to use as a dedicated video space — shooting against a green screen or other backdrops.

    While I was still moving around and organizing boxes of records, cassettes and CDs — and trying to figure out some hi-fi humming issues in the setup, opening up a massive can of worms — I received a call from a local musician, Steve Montana. He was looking for some assistance in capturing a video performance of one of his original songs at the request of some documentary filmmakers. He specifically asked if I could do green screen, and I let him know he was in luck, as I’d been setting up a space for doing just that. Although the room was still being used as a transitory space for gear that needed to be sorted out, the one thing that was set up in the space was two walls covered in green fabric. I asked him to give me a week or so to tidy up, and when I did, he came over one afternoon to record Cornfield Blues.

    The song was written by him back in the 70s when he was a student at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa. It’s a humorous folk song that talks about the school, moving to Iowa, and — among other things — corn. From what I understand, it was an essentially forgotten part of his original catalogue until he was contacted recently by a documentary filmmaker who had just completed a film about the school.

    The documentary is called When Maharishi Came to Town and it covers the period in the 70s when Maharishi International University came to Fairfield, Iowa – including the time the Beach Boys came to record their M.I.U. Album at the school. The filmmaker, Dick DeAngelis, spent months trying to track down Steve before they connected and the filmmaker requested a video of Steve performing the song. That’s where I came in.

    In the aforementioned unfinished video room I set up lights, two cameras, two microphones, and one DI for the guitar. We probably spent close to an hour dialing in the lighting and camera placement and the audio, and then he did three takes. The last take was the one submitted to the filmmaker. For the green screen background, Steve requested a video of the Oregon coast if possible, and after looking at our options, we found a short video on Pexels that he was happy to use as a simple repeating loop. Within just a couple hours the video was ready, and that was that.

    This was a special event because it was the first project I worked on for somebody else in the new studio space. This is something I really want to do more of — making videos and recording for others, other friends and musicians in our coastal community.

    You can watch the full video, with the filmmaker describing the background for this song, and Steve’s performance at the end. Note: I tried everything to embed the video on the website but facebook is non cooperative. Link here: https://www.facebook.com/reel/856519317517536

  • 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

  • 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

  • Miles Away

    For several years I worked with the county providing audiovisual services – mainly during their routine business meetings. Commissioner meetings, workshops, budget committees. Any instance where the elected officials were set to discuss and vote on county business, I would be there making sure everything was captured on video and audio and streamed live to the public. There were periods where this was the most consistent money gig I had going.

    The commute was nearly 30 miles each way between Port Orford and Gold Beach – coastal highway the whole way, passing multiple state parks, untouched beaches, cliffs dropping straight into the Pacific. It should have been one of the more scenic commutes imaginable.

    I am a night owl and often struggled to balance weeks of late nights with a sudden 8 AM meeting with the commissioners. I would find myself sleep deprived on the way there and on the way home, not the best state to be working or traveling in. By the later part of my time with the county I was often running on autopilot – multitasking through the meetings themselves, working on music mixes or editing videos with the audio feed in one ear, sometimes taking long phone calls or leaving voice messages to friends while the meeting ran in the background. On tired drives home I might be in a total state of detachment, spaced out in far away sleepy thoughts. The drive would pass and I’d find myself home before I even knew it.

    There were days I felt I took that drive for granted entirely – all those breathtaking views of the wild Pacific just passing by unnoticed. Often enough I would pull over and take a moment to calibrate. Just feeling the breeze, looking out to the endless ocean, reminding myself – this is it. Sometimes I’d run out onto the beach or stand at the top of the cliffs above the crashing waves. Other times I’d stop at Sister’s Rock and walk out of sight of the highway and just sit and breathe.

    The song began on one of those drives home. I was coming around the south end of Humbug Mountain – winding roads where long straight stretches suddenly morph into tight turns, speed signs, roadside memorials reminding you to slow down and be careful. It was that passage that snapped me back one day. I had awakened in paradise. Coming around the last bend the ocean came back into view and the sky was brilliant. It became so clear in that moment that I’d been on autopilot – the whole drive up until that point had passed in a flash without me really noticing the sky or the sea. The song just started coming and I started singing – lately I’ve been losing my sense, I’m here sitting at the driver’s wheel but I’m miles miles away.

    The mortality thread in the song wasn’t entirely conscious at the time. All the roads with their twist and turns all leading to the same place. Here today we’re not here to stay. I’ll be there soon, I’ll be right back here on the one track. Looking back I think the connection was more subconscious – that great shock of presence, suddenly feeling so alive and aware, carries with it the recognition of how much time passes while you’re somewhere else. Going in and out of presence felt connected to going in and out of consciousness, in and out of life itself. To be drifted away in thought is still being alive, but in a sense it’s not really living.

    This song was something of a precursor to Body, written at least a couple of years before it. Both songs circle the same territory – the pattern of spending so much time outside of presence, outside of the body, occupied in thought and disconnected from the environment. Body was a more direct reckoning with that. Miles Away was where the realization first started to surface.

    The recording came during a day I spent experimenting with a compact setup for capturing video and audio while traveling – a kind of proof of concept for how I might document performances on the road. I stopped at a few locations, dealt with some overexposure issues and audio problems along the way. My last stop just before sunset was Sister’s Rock. I played through a few songs up on the cliffside as it got cold and the light faded, playing until almost dark. It was one of the last takes and the most usable. Sister’s Rock is one of my favorite stops along that drive – I’ll often go there at night with the dogs, especially on a stormy or moonlit night when I can hike out to the edge of the cliffs and down to the beaches without a flashlight. I’ve written and finished songs there more than once. It felt like the right place for this one.

    "Miles Away"

Lately I've been losing my sense
I'm here sitting at the driver's wheel
But I'm miles
Miles away

All the roads with their twist and turns
All leading to the same place

Back in the seat, looking all around me
I can't believe I'm almost halfway home
Ocean meets the sky
Great stars shine their light
My body is here in paradise
But I'm miles
Miles away
Miles away from here

We're here today we're not here to stay
And I just can't believe it
All the years all the folks
They're just passing by
I'll be there soon
I'll be right back here on the one track
I'll be there soon
I'll be right back here on the one track

Lately I've been losing my sense
I'm here strumming on this (pink) guitar
But I'm miles
Miles away from here

  • 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.