Day 20: My Hidden Moon (with John Bunzli)

Lyrics:

Same old cup of coffee
At the creekside cafe
I like the way simple things
Make you smile
And how you laugh
At what I say
Sometimes it's a phone call
Something always takes you away

I wish we could go
Down by the water
Let the truth run through
I wish we could burn
As hot as the sun
But you'll always be
My hidden moon

I went to my old friend's wedding
To my surprise, I met you
The story's old, the feeling's new
You can't be borrowed and it makes me blue
Something ended what never had a chance
Now I don't know what to do

I wish we could go
Down by the water
Let the truth run through
I wish we could burn
As hot as the sun
But you'll always be
My hidden moon

Details: If there's one constant in John Bunzli's and my friendship, it's that we bicker like an old married couple. That dynamic carries over to songwriting. Maybe it's because we've known each other so long, but we freely argue over every aspect of a song we're writing. This is the third song we've written, and it seems like that's just how our collaborations are going to be. That may result in good songs (which I think has been the case so far), but this time it pushed us right up to our deadline, and we had to rush a few things.

John really wanted to write something around a river as a metaphor about two folks who were unable to explore their love for some reason. The river metaphor didn't speak to me at all, but I was gravitating towards a lunar eclipse metaphor. The chorus we came up with kind of split the difference. The verse progression had a cool groove that we both liked, but the melody we were laying over it was reminiscent of both a Neil Young and a Pink Floyd song. We never completely hammered out the final melody, so the recorded version you hear is me trying to avoid sounding like those other two songs. The chorus melody we pretty much agreed on, though.

We had considered writing a bridge or another verse, but we ran out of time. We figured a guitar solo would work in the meantime. This is definitely a song I want to revisit after January is over.

It took about 4 hours to write and 30 minutes to record.