Song #9 - Let Down
This song might just be for my own catharsis, but if you’re looking for a moment of reflection and release, here’s your soundtrack.
I love songwriting because it gets feelings out of me. Like a wild animal running around inside the house, I get to open the back door. It also sometimes feels like the only thing I have any control over.
We live in a completely different world from a few short years ago. I was painfully reminded of that this week. So much has changed. And I suspect none of us have fully been able to process the change, or the loss. Elections, pandemics, and a million other challenges have pushed us along in their currents. We’ve washed ashore somewhere else. Dreams we had, the way things were or seemed to be, they’re gone now. It was out of our control as so much always is.
Let Down is about the slow sad release of hope we feel before finally accepting and surrendering to what is now true. It’s painful and disorienting to allow a narrative we believed in deeply to change, but I know it is also a very natural part of life. I recently listened to the brilliant mathematician, Edward Frankel, speak about fear of death and how the death of his father made him see love for the first time in the most pure naked way, and changed his approach to life. “It makes me feel different about all sorts of difficulties that arise. It’s kind of like… I want to enjoy it. Because that’s what being human is. It’s being terrified. It’s being frustrated. It’s being self-loathing sometimes. It’s not knowing, but also being joyful. Let’s just enjoy it. All of it. That’s what you came here fore in some sense. It’s like not trying to run away from things. But kind of trying to live through them and just appreciate.”
I often feel that my songs are like gemstones — all different colors and shapes made up of distilled and ardent emotions. They aren’t so much about me as they are about the feeling I’m trying to express. And once they’re written I get to hold that feeling in my hand and see the beauty in it, and then, if I choose to, let it go.
Love,
Eric
LET DOWN
Let down
I feel let down
When I should be letting go
Sign spun
With no lights on
Looking through the glass alone
I see our dreams as it was back then
The rugs we threw on cold cement
We filled the spaces we were in with love
Let down
I feel let down
When I should be letting go
Present
I feel present
Because peace is nowhere else
Abandoned
Future’s random
And the past has changed as well
In some small way we’re all innocent
Try to behave but we forget
That what we say means less than what we meant
Present
I feel present
Because peace is nowhere else
There’s life and death in every day
We’re born again each time we wake
But no one knows what dies each time we rest
Let down
I feel let down
When I should be letting go
I should be letting go
