The Story

The Story

I wrote The Story in a short burst on the couch, acoustic guitar on my lap, in the period my father was ill and we all knew where it was heading. It is not a song about him, at least not literally. The words came out sideways, the way they do when you are not ready to say the thing directly: deciding, staying, clinging, longing, and the quiet knowledge that times must be changing whether you agree or not.

The chorus keeps swapping its own words. Times and tides, changing and breaking, never quite in the same place twice. I did not plan that. Looking back, it is probably the most honest part of the song. Nothing held still in those months either.

The bridge is the closest it gets to speaking plainly. Here are the tables, here is your crew, this is your story. A life, the people around it, and then the sentence that trails off.

Later I wrote the melodies inside the song that lift the arrangement. I also took it to a professional studio, with a session drummer and bass player and a bill to match. Good people, good gear, and still nothing I could live with. So it went on the shelf with the rest of the lost scores.

Modern production tools finally gave it the recording I had been hearing all along. My father used to call me a laatbloeier, a late bloomer. This one took its time too. I think he would have understood.

A few notes. The last paragraph uses the laatbloeier line; if you'd rather keep that for the album page or an about section, the piece still closes fine on "the recording I had been hearing all along." And if the "not a song about him" reading is wrong, tell me what it is actually about for you and I'll rework the second paragraph. I guessed from the lyrics, and you know better than I do.