The title of the song, “The Lost Life”, has a double meaning for me. It obviously refers to living a life under (or off of) the radar, but it also references a personal loss that I’d experienced around that time. I needed to get away from everything that was familiar. I felt as though I needed to start all over again.

I think everyone experiences the feeling of just wanting to disappear into the shadows at some point in their life. We all get there. At the time I wrote this song I never wanted to be found again. I was thinking…”get across the ocean and never come back”. Sometimes it doesn’t matter where you go. I ended up in western Europe. It felt nice being out of touch…living outside the perimeter. Breaking the paper bag was freedom and I smiled myself to sleep every night.

I learned a great deal during my 6 years abroad, but I guess the most important thing that I learned was there was no geographical cure for me. I found myself inside that paper bag again. My world grew smaller and more confined…and worse I was still missing whatever I was looking for. For me, there was nothing past the wide horizon but more of the same. I’d written most of the lyrics two or three years before I ever considered recording the song . It never felt complete until after I added the words that reflected this learning about the wide horizon. These days it feels pretty complete…as do I.

Incidentally, there a “sister” version of this song with completely different lyrics. Maybe I’ll post it someday.

The Lost Life

I’ve gone too far, I’m out of touch
And now I live my life in a paper bag
But when I tear my way out of here
I’m gonna make my way across the ocean
And no one will find me again

‘Cause I’ll be living a lost life
I’ll be living a lost life

I’m sure to send you cryptic messages
As I resurface from time to time
A few lines on the back of a photograph of me
In an undisclosed location with a local unknown
And then I will fade back into the shadow

‘Cause I’ll be living a lost life
I’ll be living a lost life

‘Cause the world is only so giving…
And child, you’re on your own

Searching from face to face with blind emotion
Choking of the fear that’s still keeping me here
And although I know I’m no exception
I’ve tried to shake this emptiness
Where ever I go I can never escape without…

Without living a lost life
Without living a lost life

There’s no reason to stay here
When I don’t know what I what
And I don’t care if I find my way back
But given time I’m sure I’m bound to find
There is nothing past the wide horizon
But a world that’s only so giving
And child, you’re on your own

Child you’re on your own…
Child you’re on your own…
Child you’re on your own…

Check out “The Lost Life” on my Sellaband profile. Just select the song and click play.

The band wasn’t the reason I was there in that studio.  Playing in a band was never my focus, but it did give me the opportunity to write and record my songs on a larger scale than I could have afforded to do on my own.  My focus was crafting ideas and melodies into strange cocktails of rhythm and reason.  I was there to realize the ideas that had only lived in my head up until that point.  In the studio, I could do that.  I could create something from nothing.  Something that other people could take into their minds and make their own…free to interpret any way they chose.  For me, this is true beauty of music and songwriting.

Everyone I know can think of a song that takes them back to a special time in their life.  A well written song is a multi-faceted communicated human expression that can become a part of the listener forever.  In this way, I believe songwriting and recording stand out from other forms of art.  There are obviously emotional elements to all art forms, but music has the ability to shift the listener through time.  For example, when I hear Out Spaced by the Super Furry Animals, I’m immediately transported to the winter of 1999 in the Oude Haven, Rotterdam NL.  I spent a great deal of time listening to that record in Locus Publicus and Cambrinus under Piet Bloom’s yellow cubes drinking the best Trappist Ales I’ve ever put to my lips.  I guess that recording made an indelible impression on my mind.  I can still feel the warmth of the fireplace at Locus Publicus when I hear “Pam V” on that recording.  Music shifts me in ways that other art forms have never been able to do.