It began as something half-dreamed. Melodies often visit when I'm in a hypnagogic state ("White Flag" started that way, for example). Sometimes I have a moment of being conscious enough to register that I'm hearing a song that I need to write down. Sometimes it takes a while to figure out that the song doesn't already exist in the world—and these doubts can persist for a long while. Sometimes, I assume, I just fall asleep, and the song vanishes into whatever world of ghosts almost-songs inhabit.
Anyway, this is a song specifically about the dissolution of borders between sleeping and waking, unknowing and knowing, and that...really seems to have made it harder to write.
I made it extra complicated for myself by attempting to work on this in Taos, having left the first sleepy notes in Chicago. So this is an excavation of what might or might not be a memory.
I'd like to think I can finish this one. I still like the original idea (the lines beginning "when the barriers evaporate"), and it fits thematically with a lot of the other pieces for Posthistoric/Backroads. But I think I'm going to have to start over on a fresh piece of paper.