In The Dark

(two electric guitars play a riff in harmony, distinctly separate and not totally in agreement on the key center, but certainly on the vibe)

Here we are in the dark, dark woods This song is drawn from the playwright Sarah Ruhl. In her essay “Speech acts and the imagination” she observes that for all the set design that goes into staged theater, children often don’t need any of it to stage their own compelling performances. They can transport themselves and those attentive to them. As she quotes her own child: “Let’s go to the evil tower. Here we are at the evil tower. Here we are at the palace. Here we are in the dark dark woods. By speaking it, we make it so.” In the context of the album’s themes, these speech acts hold a similar form to a dream, or nightmare. By speaking it, by thinking it, we make it our reality, at least for a little while.
Look around and feel underfoot
Labyrinth of birch, emerald curtain The “emerald curtain” is a moniker for the Redwood trees in northern California. After spending a few days admiring the scenery, we talked to some other travelers and learned that Humboldt county has a spooky history of missing persons possibly linked to the drug trades that happen under cover of, you guessed it, those giant trees. Blocking out sun, cell service, and sight-lines. Kind of an ominous layer on top of a beautiful sight.
Party on the search When I first wrote this line, we were watching the show Search Party. The lyric stuck. , a feeling uncertain
Now we are in the dark, dark woods In this first verse, my aim was to try and wrap the stanza up like a spell. If you could just create that sensory world with your imagination, now you are there!

Congregants behold each other For many years, I played music in the church. So many of my performing hours were spent singing to congregants. Here I am attempting to once again call out to them and instead of performing a hymn, I am asking them to make an observation.
Distant ships bailing the water I wish I could recall where I heard this. Credit is due to someone. I had heard that someone say that parenting a newborn and having friends also with a newborn feels like this: you’re in a ship that’s flooding water, and you look across the bay and see another ship bailing water too. You are in the same situation, but you are both so encumbered by the problem that you’re unable to materially assist one another. This really stuck with me (as we did, once, have a newborn baby that felt like water quickly flooding our boat). But it also felt an apt metaphor for so much of the trouble with connecting to someone else’s pain. You cannot ignore the problems of your own life, and really you cannot exit your boat and step into theirs (not always, though sometimes you can, and that is a gift). It is a profound thing to send that support across the invisible wires between boats and have it be felt as sincerely as it was sent. In any case, thank you to the ghost in my past who gifted me this metaphor.
Even face to face we’re back to back
Can’t feel the pain you say you have Another key inspiration for this song and theme of the album. By way of author/youtuber John Green, he talks about struggling with physical illness and cites the book The Body In Pain when he says that we are limited to the language of metaphor when talking about our physical pain (“my eyes are burning”, “it’s like needles in my feet”, etc). This is because we cannot actually share the sensory pain that someone else feels like we can hear, taste, smell, or see an object in the room with us. This fact can be crushing and this song explores a fatalistic perspective here, but it does make successful attempts to empathize in spite of the fact of separation all the more heroic.
I and Thou This refers to a philosophy of relationships called “I-Thou” and “I-It” that my dear friend Alex told me about. The I-Thou relationship is where the participants hold each other with mutual reverence, connection, and both are seen in their fullness of being. An I-It relationship on the other hand is a more 2-dimensional “objectified” relationship. or lamb and slaughter?
Trust me if you can, my brother

Here we are in the growing fog
In the air is a melancholy
Disposition I’ve never seen before
Did I forget or just ignore? The sort of self-doubt about your own curiosity that can really crush you. The times I’ve missed important details have sometimes created a gulf in my perception of a relationship. I think the way through this trap is plain genuine curiosity, though that requires a lightness that this song is not really permitting.
Now we are in the growing fog

Here we are on the ocean black We arrive on the ocean black to bear witness to the “distant ships” moment from the chorus.
Ground askew watch your stepping fro’ and back
On the horizon line a fellow ship captain
A rich dense life. I wonder what’s happening. This is attempting to invert the lovely idea of “sonder” which I’m still not sure is a real word or not. Nevertheless, in the 2000s-era internet there was an image of a cityscape with the word “sonder” defined as the feeling of awe at realizing every person you see on a crowded street has just a deep and unique inner life as you do. This song is attempting to use that awe-inspiring notion as a tool to further cement a much more pessimistic and futile view of the world.
Now we are on the ocean black One last note on Sarah Ruhl’s fantastic essay. These speech acts also reminded me of the magic of live music. A voice and acoustic guitar can be transformative without any stage design. A good song can transport the listener (or many listeners) along with the singer. It really feels to me like a good song is like a spell. I originally had this final verse that went in this direction that I cut in favor of leaning more towards the themes of the chorus:

Here we are in a moment now
See the mind can transport you
Anywhere you are, emotional attunement
Body like a car, sensory amusement
Now we are in a moment now

Congregants behold each other
Distant ships bailing the water
Even face to face we’re back to back
Can’t feel the pain you say you have
I and Thou or lamb and slaughter?
Trust me if you can, my brother When I would play early drafts of this song for friends, more than one told me they expected me to rhyme “slaughter” with “daughter” so I explored that using the “lamb and slaughter” line as a jumping off point. I tried putting together a bridge where Abraham (from the Bible), after offering his son up to the Lord for sacrifice, now has some trust issues with his daughter. It gives the song a bridge (harmonically, that is. verse 3 is functionally a bridge, I think). It was scrapped to focus on the core of the song (and, as Lauren put it, “brother” is a perfectly acceptable slant rhyme in the world of folk music):

…
I and Thou or lamb and slaughter?
Abraham defends his daughter

But if the Lord calls again
Will ye answer him?
Is it any different
Than a dear old friend?

Here we are on the ocean black
…