si dawson

When I was in my early teens, my mother 'encour­aged' me to do three things — take up an instru­ment (gui­tar), learn a lan­guage (French), & do gym­nas­tics. I pretty much sucked at all three of them.

I was talk­ing to a friend yes­ter­day about doing some chant­ing (in San­skrit) — the thought of which freaked me the hell out. Ok, so what the heck is up with that? Of course — this hits two of the three — lan­guages & music. Pretty obvi­ously this was teenage rebel­lion at "being forced" to do some­thing — I was thus insist­ing on being right, & on prov­ing Mum wrong.

In some kind of syn­chronic­ity, I've also had this song brought to my atten­tion — "Fall At Your Feet" — by Crowded House:

The lyrics of which are:

I'm really close tonight
And I feel like I'm mov­ing inside her
Lying in the dark
And I think that I'm begin­ning to know her
Let it go
I'll be there when you call

And when­ever I fall at your feet
You let your tears rain down on me
When­ever I touch your slow turn­ing pain

You're hid­ing from me now
There's some­thing in the way that youre talk­ing
Words don't sound right
But I hear them all mov­ing inside you, go
I'll be wait­ing when you call

Hey and when­ever I fall at your feet
Won't you let your tears rain down on me
When­ever I touch your slow turn­ing pain

The fin­ger of blame has turned upon itself
And I'm more than will­ing to offer myself
Do you want my pres­ence or need my help
Who knows where that might lead
I fall

When­ever I fall at your feet
Would you let your tears rain down on me
When­ever I fall, ever I fall

(cour­tesy of lyrics­f­reak)

I start lis­ten­ing to this song this morn­ing, and imme­di­ately felt stuff start to lift off me. Singing along with it only ampli­fied the effect. I ended up singing this for the best part of two hours, tears stream­ing down my face as long buried mem­o­ries sur­faced & layer after layer of rub­bish cleared away. As I sang or strug­gled with cer­tain phrases com­pletely dif­fer­ent things would lift off. I also instinc­tively began by singing in a much higher (ie, ado­les­cent) reg­is­ter — then, as the heal­ing pro­gressed, my voice dropped sig­nif­i­cantly. My vocal cords hurt — they'd never been used at that pitch before.

Here's what singing this song lifted off me:

• "Fin­ger of blame" — that it was time to accept learning
• "Let it go" — it was ok for Mum to be right
• I kept for­get­ting the lyric — which echoed French vocab — & was accom­pa­nised by a def­i­nite visual of my 13 year old school hall
• "Want my pres­ence of need my help" — obstinance
• "Some­thing in the way that you're talk­ing" — French vocab tests
• Any time I lost the tune — took me back to 14 year old music & not being able to remem­ber any gui­tar at all
• Some obvi­ous resid­ual breakup stuff
• I was con­tin­u­ally start­ing singing too early — much like busi­ness ven­tures I've started that have been a decade (or more) ahead of their time
• When singing in the higher reg­is­ter, I couldn't hold "I fall" for the entire length — real­is­ing that when I am now is where I am sup­posed to be
• I was much more com­fort­able in a higher reg­is­ter — the belief that things have to be com­fort­able, famil­iar, to be safe
• Still strug­gling to find the right notes — & the right place in my life
• The sub­tle words kept trip­ping me up — echo­ing accents/graves, etc in French
• The 2nd verse got rid of some resid­ual anger at hav­ing things hid­den from me (despite my fully knowing)
• "Let it go" — much trick­ier in the lower reg­is­ter — fear that it was harder to do things this way, easier/safer the old way
• Was still strug­gling to remem­ber the most basic words

At this point I started singing the song with­out lis­ten­ing to the music or read­ing the lyrics

• Still can't get it right — hit my resid­ual perfectionism
• At the higher reg­is­ter — I was war­bling a bit — not as good as I thought I might be
• Kept say­ing "you" instead of "her" — afraid to get close
• Kept screw­ing up verb tenses — just like French
• Kept say­ing "happy" instead of "will­ing" — I wasn't happy, & wasn't will­ing to be happy
• "when­ever I touch your slow turn­ing pain" — that I was addicted to other's pain
• Kept say­ing "mov­ing" not "turn­ing" — also addicted to help­ing them with their pain
• Kept say­ing "know" not "go" — knowl­edge being more impor­tant to me than action
• Kept say­ing "touch" not "fall at your feet" — that I'm des­per­ate for touch, hav­ing spent a long time with min­i­mal human closeness
• Still singing flat — just like music class when I was unable to tell notes apart
• Tim­ing was all screwed up — just like when I've been trading
• "When­ever I touch" — that my addic­tive per­son­al­ity — I can't get high with­out assis­tance (via food, chem­i­cals, whatever)
• I really strug­gled with "let it go". hehe.
• "I fall at your feet" — I kept war­bling "your" — because I had a prob­lem with what oth­ers have that I don't
• Got a com­plete men­tal block at "I'm more than will­ing", thought it was "more than ready" — realised I wasn't "more than ready" for anything

Need­less to say I drank a TON of water & went through a LOT of tis­sues through this process.

I've seen & used a lot of heal­ing tech­niques, but this absolutely blew me away in terms of how much it cleared. Amus­ingly, I'm sure this comes as no sur­prise to the musi­cians out there.

Ok, so now let's dis­sect the frog (ie, exam­ine in ridicu­lous detail an oth­er­wise beau­ti­ful thing).

Here's what I like, lyri­cally, about this track:

1. The sub­tle tense changes show­ing the emo­tional growth of the rela­tion­ship — first "I'll be there" when she calls, then "I'll be wait­ing" — you can feel him hang­ing on more as he gets more involved. In the cho­rus, first it's "You let your tears rain down on me", then "won't you.." — beg­ging, then finally resignedly plead­ing "would you.."
2. The growth of the rela­tion­ship: from early sex "Think I'm begin­ning to know her", the devel­op­ment of behav­iour pat­terns, sym­pa­thy from her as he falls at her feet; to her hid­ing some­thing, pulling away; then, finally, his des­per­a­tion and pain.
3. The sub­tlety of the final line — the impli­ca­tion of alone­ness — he falls, but there's no-one there to pick him up "when­ever I fall, ever I fall" — so he stays fallen forever.
4. The tie in — first he's mov­ing inside her, then, when she's pulling away, he can hear the (wrong sound­ing) words mov­ing inside her — as she's avoid­ing sub­jects, wheedling around the (obvi­ous) truth — since he's already picked up that there's some­thing in the way that she's talking.
5. The sub­tle tran­si­tion from — think­ing that he's know­ing her, but telling him­self to relax & just enjoy the moment "let it go" — to hear­ing that she's lying, "words all mov­ing inside you" & break­ing up with her — the imper­a­tive "go".
6. The tran­si­tion early on from singing about her, to singing to her.

Oh, & here's a ver­sion I just recorded of myself singing this. It was all done from mem­ory (no lyrics in front of me), and acapella (since I don't have any instru­ments here). For com­par­i­son, I esti­mated once that I've lis­tened to my all time favourite song, "One" by U2 prob­a­bly around 1500 times. Last time I checked, I still had no idea what the entire lyrics were. Oh, and this is both the first time I've sung in pub­lic, the first time I've recorded myself, and it was done in one take, with no edits. Fall At Your Feet