Look At That Grin

Here is one of those songs that comes out of the blue as a lovely little gift one day. Like a cat leaving you a dead bird on your door-mat. This one however came to me in a dream and when I awoke I went straight to the piano and hashed out some kind of progression. 

The dream told me the story and conjured the atmosphere or sense of place where the narrator and characters play out their story. Sort of an odd love story. 

The dream came to me in 1998 and on the heels of one of the worst emotional episodes I'd had with Paul. His brain injury had happened in 1995 and while he was reliant on me in some ways, for instance in remembering the story of what had happened to him during his recovery, or reading maps (for some reason the injury affected his ability to read them), by 98' he was beginning to feel frustrated with his reliance on others, notably me. So right up above my Wurlitzer piano was a small nick in the wall where he'd thrown the salad spinner the night before. Fortunately not at me.

I had just been reading Merle Haggard's autobiography and their was a quote he had under his photo/smiling face which said "Look at that grin, I think I'm losing but I'm pretending to win"....so I took that quote and played it out with the rest of the story. But this is no Merle Haggard type story...it's sci-fi aspect is probably more in line with Philip K Dick... if he'd been a songwriter

(photo by Kim Fox)