“This song is about skiing…”

Obviously it’s not about skiing. But to be fair.... (TO BE FAYAHH!)! There is something in the feeling of skiing that is THIS SONG.

BLUE SQ BLUE DIAMOND is old timey uncle jeffie, going all the way back to my LONELY ROBOTS days at Hampshire College. Lyrics were partially rewritten, the intro shortened and the instrumental bridge given a proper structure and arc for the ORCA AGE in 2015 or thereabouts. Captured for real, in 2022 and finished a year later at HONEYTONE. If you don’t know what any of that means, it doesn’t really matter… Just know that this song has crossed oceans of space and time to find you.

The song presents a tough exterior in the main riff but the words quickly reveal its tender heart. Throughout, there’s a self-admittedly aching hypocrisy in playing stalwart to a higher ideal while letting years of inaction go by. Your imagination runs wild and true, but what is your body telling you? How’s your credit score?

Or think of all the times, you may have finally become someone or something you've always wanted to be, or at least were planning to be - only to find it wasn’t quite you after all. Not enough anyway... despite the chosen narrative whatever blah blah blah. That's in here too.

Oh you think darkness is your ally… but you merely adopted the dark… I was BORN in it! MOLDED by it… no wait that’s BANE from TDKR… jk where were we? Ah…

There's this ever creeping weight of life’s confusion, right? But there’s also an aged and worn hopefulness at the core of it all. An unlikely yet inevitable pair. Is it enough to achieve transcendent cosmic love? I guess the point is no one knows… but we doubt it! And yet, year after year, we keep trying. Read it again!

The song/recording circles around this concept of existence within a continuum; an acknowledgment that each moment is built on what has come before and contributes to what comes after. From my personal standpoint as the original songwriter 20 years ago to the artist recording the song 20 years later… it’s in play within the overall cascading structure of the song, it’s directly referenced in the “every cell decaying they’re dying to tell you: I thought I could make it on my own” lyric (which was part of the 2015 rewrite), it’s even kind of in the harmonic structure of the main riff itself as well as the physical mechanics of how it’s played.

Even the stylistic choices of the production and arrangement of the recording are an acknowledgment of its own existence within a continuum, proudly and sincerely wearing its musical influences on its sleeve. They are numerous and the recording of this song is a love letter to them all.