The reason why this song isn't titled is because at some point I thought of the perfect title for it and then forgot what it was. In self-protest, I refused to settle on some other title. Either I remembered that perfect title, or it would remain untitled. Guess what came to pass.
(Actually, there is a precedent for this. On the first collection of songs I recorded, there were two songs that were unrelated and lacking titles. Then I came up with a good title for one and realized it could be applied to the other and so I gave them both the same title, part one and part two. Then I forgot the title and refused to try to come up with alternate titles, but that time I eventually did remember the title I wanted).
It's also the song I like least among this collection. I don't know what I was doing with it or where I was going with it. The music started with the uninspired opening rhythm guitar part, upon which I formed the bass line, which I do like, and then the keyboard melody, which I don't. It's kinda sterile and contrived. The drums, I think, are OK except for the break which sounds awkward and is only there because I couldn't figure out how to get back to the main riff musically. Lame.
The song ostensibly is about memory and its reliability, but is a patchwork of sources and not very successful. A part of the concept was sourced in a coffee table book I had of black and white photos shot by Ansel Adams of the Manzanar Japanese American concentration camp during World War II.
And I'm pretty sure that part of the inspiration was my friend's song about the Japanese American experience in the early 20th century that I posted earlier. I wasn't trying to add anything, but his song was so good and I had these ideas from the Ansel Adams book, that it seemed OK to borrow his basic idea as a starting point.
In his song, the protagonist ends up stuck, unable to leave, perhaps metaphorically, in the desert heat of the concentration camp after being betrayed by his adopted country, after betraying himself and his original country. In my song, the idea is of a former Japanese American concentration camp prisoner decades later looking at pictures of the camps and thinking, "that's not what it was like".
Another source was a pile of 8mm home movies from my childhood that I had no idea existed and found by accident in my brother's room. And curiously, I have absolutely no recollection of when it was that I found them. With incidents such as this, I can usually place somewhere in the timeline of my life, but not this one. Selective memory clearly engaged.
Also curiously, I have no idea where those 8mm reels are now. I'm even doubting their existence or whether my finding them ever really happened, because not only was there the film, but also . . . it wasn't a projector, but a machine that I watched them on where you set up the reels and spooled the film through a mechanism that lit the film onto a screen. Yea, sounds suspicious to me, too.
This is weird because the more I describe it, the more I'm doubting this ever happened. A machine like that just doesn't go missing. The film is real, actually. I do remember my father did have a projector, and when he got back a reel of film from being developed, the family would get together and watch it.
What I remember about finding and watching the film, whether that happened or not, is seeing my parents in a light that I never knew. They were acting as parents. There was footage of my oldest brother's kindergarten graduation. Seeing my parents acting like parents was very conflicting for me, and it was hard for me to reconcile that it happened like that. I think I even actually felt guilty for a while about hating them.
The film is fact, the pictures don't lie, but if our subjective memory and reality are in conflict with them, then what's the truth? Here was physical evidence of my parents acting like parents, but in my memory and reality, my parents were merely a bank. They provided funds, but were uninvolved and emotionally unavailable.
So what I was trying to get at was, whether it's historical or personal, does the documentary evidence contain actual truth. No, it contains a record, but the truth is subjective.
I used to be a pyromaniac when I was a kid and used to light fires in a small set of woods near my elementary school. Nothing major, but at one point the fire department was called. And shit, it seems harmless in retrospect and I never thought anything of it, but that's clear evidence that I was already one fucked up, sociopath of a kid. Or I was trying to get attention. But you have to get caught to get attention. I was 8 or 9 years old.
And then the lyrics get further muddy because I start reflecting on my relationship with Amina and start ranting on about her. Real mature. So many things to dislike about this song. And at 5 minutes long, it was a failure at the short and concise concept (most of the songs from my first collection were ridiculously long, most over 5 minutes).
Force a pause
Pass under lighted tracks of memories hung up in galleries
Desert sand still seems to fall from my hands
Black and white photographs, but it never looked like that
Lost in my thoughts
Lots to be guilty of when history haunts me in home movies
The pictures lie, they can't testify to facts
Childhood reality check, it didn't happen quite like that
Thirty years between being the same age
Through my eyes not much has changed
From the forest fire and the match I found
On the cold barren ground
To decide from a yes to a no
Have to stay, no way that I'm gonna go
Under desert rocks froze in snow
My confession, little forgiveness for the un- or underblessed
Trapped in the mess of burned barracks, government shacks
I recall a last night on the phone
Triggered something from a long time ago
Losing you was really no loss at all
It seemed so much better than it actually was
From a point of view it was nothing new
It should have come as no surprise
And as it goes around, it still comes around
I could have read between the lines
You, your glazed ceramic smile
Made of mud and blazed in fire so cold
The wrong shade of red lipstick
Little too brown, too bright
In the sun it made you look too white-eyed
Burned to brown like a native skin, tattooed Indian
Give me control over what I know
I only doubt what I found when I find none of it sound
I have no memory and no feelings and I'm free to leave
