A Song From Beyond
One day last year, at the very moment I awoke, I was the recipient of a gift. A song lyric dropped into my consciousness by who knows what mechanism. Was it a ghost? One of the nine Greek muses? Or did it come from someone else?
I captured it like an insect in amber before it went wispy on me. I have learned from sad experience, that when a gift such as this shows up, the words or melodies must be written down or recorded immediately or they will be lost as I move from fuzzy semi-consciousness to full wakefulness.
This had happened before, but as you might imagine, this time the line: “Hi, it’s your dad. I never died, I’m out here walkin’ ” really caught me up short. Arriving as it did some 15 years after my dad had died, I received it with respect, wrote it down, and then mulled it over.
It was late summer, the leaves outside my window already hinting at autumn. My dad had died on Halloween, the very day in that season when many cultures feel the veil between worlds is at its thinnest.
The next few lines appeared without effort, perhaps with Dad’s help:
Hi, it’s your dad, I never died
I’m out here walkin’.
These autumn leaves smell mighty sweet
Beneath my feet.”
That, “Hi, it’s your dad” sounded like a phone call. It seemed my dad wanted to talk to me, so the next verse came easily:
Wish you were here, I think it’s time
We did some talkin’
Just you and me with autumn leaves
Beneath our feet”
A few weeks later, I did some freewriting on this topic. If my dad had wanted to talk to me from wherever he’d gone, what would he want to talk to me about?
Knowing my dad, he'd feel the need to apologize for something. For not having been enough, or done enough, for not getting the dad thing quite right. I took some of what I’d written and worked on lyrics off-and-on for a few weeks, then set it aside for a while.
Deep into that fall, I attended a retreat in New Mexico. Also on the retreat were two women friends who had recently lost their fathers. The grief expressed around those losses fueled my desire to finish this song. While in New Mexico I found a chord progression on my cigar box guitar that seemed to fit. Over the next few days I built a melody on that chord progression.
My dad’s presence (in the song and in my mind) took on the character of a restless ghost, a sort of unsettled spirit searching for peace. I wanted to answer him, to absolve him, to provide him with the means to forgive himself. I found another chord progression in the same chord family and wrote a “B” part, from my point of view, to sing back to him.
I later brought this unfinished work to a songwriting class taught by songwriter Steve Dawson. It was in that class, called Finish Your Damn Song, that one of my classmates suggested an ending that was so spot-on it gave me a chill.
Through autumn leaves, me resting here
Beneath your feet.
The new ending was good, insofar as my dad changed his attitude, got the absolution that he needed, then moved on, but I found the transition he underwent too abrupt, and a bit facile. It seemed to me there should be some struggle.
At this point, I made a connection between this song I was working on and a Cat Stevens song I had loved as a kid, called “Father and Son”, which contained a dialogue between two generations. I came up with another chord progression, one with a little more tension, and started writing a “C” part for the segment that would present the struggle required for the resolution at the end to make more sense.
I’d made really good progress with the conversation segment at first, but then I stalled out, I couldn’t find the last few words for this back-and-forth.
Just a few weeks ago, I was at a retreat at the same lodge in New Mexico where I had been the year before, with some of the same people. This time two different people were working through the loss of their fathers. The two from the previous year were also part of the group.
I decided it was time to finish my damn song, so that I could play it for them at the end of our retreat. I asked my friend Terence Mickey if he’d sing the second part, the voice of the son, and lend me some guitar help, and Terence graciously agreed.
I tend to work primarily with pencil and paper when I’m writing songs, and not, perhaps enough, with a guitar in my lap instead. One solution that rarely occurs to me when I’m pushing a pencil around is to repeat words or phrases.
Just a few minutes into our first practice session, the missing words for the “C” part of the song revealed themselves, and sure enough, the solution was to repeat a phrase.
After just three or four practice sessions, on our last evening together, Terence and I sat in front of a dozen people and debuted the newly completed song, “I Never Died”, for our friends.
As the last chord faded away, we were met with complete silence for three or four seconds. It would have been tempting to wonder if they knew the song had ended, but I could feel in those seconds that the song had landed, really, truly landed, and that, hearing it for the first time, those gathered needed to sit for a moment to fully reckon with their emotions before they let loose with appreciative, enthusiastic applause.
I Never Died by David Sutton
[A Part–Father]
Hi, it’s your dad, I never died
I’m out here walkin’
These autumn leaves smell mighty sweet
Beneath my feet.
Wish you were here, I think it’s time
We did some talkin’
Just you and me, with autumn leaves
Beneath our feet.
Thought you should know how I believed
I’d stop you fallin’
But looking back
I see the ways I let you down.
Too little play and too much time
With work and worry
The dying know
The living have things turned around.
[B Part–Son]
Hello, Old Man
I see you’re still melancholy
Leave all you did
Or didn’t behind.
You blazed a good trail
With both your wisdom and folly
You’re never far
From my mind.
[C Part–Both]
Dad: How can I go?
Son: Leave what you didn’t do.
Dad: Too little time for play.
Son: You paved the way.
Dad: I let you fall.
Son: I got up stronger.
Dad: So much worrying
Son: Let it go now
Both: Let it go now
Son: Let it go!
Dad: Look at you now
Son: You did your part
Dad: Who would’ve known what a son could teach his dad.
[A Part–Dad]
It’s sweet to see you’ve grown into
A man worth knowin’
Heart open wide,
Feet on the ground, I feel complete
I’ve got to go, I need some rest
You go on walkin’
Through autumn leaves,
Me resting here beneath your feet.
©2023 David B. Sutton
*** Listen to the “Article Voiceover” at top to hear the finished song.
Lovely, David. Very moving.
That would be great.
O2R has been in the studio. New tunes coming out soon.
Would love to see you sometime soon. 🌷