Cathedrals

REMEMBER ME

IT IS FINISHED.

Anyway, it is on my end. Now it's up to all the random streaming services that Distrokid is putting me on.

My producer, who also happens to be my father and is probably reading this, after a few weeks of "We'll have to go see Dave" and that getting more and more complicated, finally just sat down at our keyboard downstairs and transposed it -3 half steps, then turned it on its organ mode. So we got the organ that we’d been waiting for since last month done. Then he added that to the mix, mastered it, and the work of half a year came to fruition. I have been working on this song since June 2022, and after setbacks, procrastinations (mostly mine), unprecedented discouragement, and summer camps, we have finally done it. I wrote in my journal one day, “I HATE RECORDING.” I hadn’t even recorded that day, but I knew it was going to have to be done. Singing words that could be better, having to listen for errors, finding many. You guys can't believe how glad I am to never have to touch that song again unless I want to.

I wrote Cathedrals in either late February or early March of 2022. I could find the exact date if I could only find my songwriting journal, but it has been MIA since summer. But I know it was after February 24th, 2022. That was my birthday. More significantly, that was the day that Russia invaded Ukraine. So as I await my birthday, I also await the first anniversary of something much bigger and more sorrowful than myself, even as pessimistic and unnecessarily sorrowful as I am. I wrote Cathedrals in a kind of hand-throwing-up motion, a “Guys!!! This is a TERRIBLE idea! Putin, I knew you were suspicious, but why the heck would you start a war??? Wars are horrible! You’ll be throwing all of your able bodied men into the mouth of a monster, and whether you win or not, thousands of people are going to DIE. So why in the world do you think this is a good idea?”

So when I finished the song a few days ago, the normal thing to do would be to publish it, right? Well, most professional artists don't do that, but usually beginners like me just publish it. That's what I did the first time. The second time, I waited a week or so to publish the song on my friend's birthday. This time, I will publish it on February 24th, 2023.

It's been interesting to hear my own song coming back to me in other people's works after I've written it. Take Easy by Jess Ray. That came out in the summer, after I'd written Cathedrals. It seems to be making the same point, just on a smaller scale, from one person to another. Then there's While My Guitar Gently Weeps by the Beatles. That is nothing new, it just came to me at a later date. The line "With all these mistakes we must surely be learning," struck me with its similarity to the first line of Cathedrals: "I can see now that we're still who we are, to think that I'd thought we'd come far."

At the end of Cathedrals, I added some background vocals that were not from the original lyrics. It says, "Remember, remember, remember me" a few times over. I took a walk around our lake a few days ago, and it hit me that in Ukraine, there were probably people starving, displaced, and dying at that very moment. I am an American, and I am a sheltered one at that. I am generally unaware of the hardships of people worldwide. Some of my biggest questions in life are about flowers. But I am also a Christian, and I also do know that there is ongoing conflict in Ukraine. So why don't I pray for them every day? Because I forget to.

As usual, forgetting is no good excuse. So I try to give myself something to make me remember. I hope that Cathedrals helps you to remember, too. Cathedrals is inseparable from the Russo-Ukrainian War at this point. It was written in the beginning, and the drums were done by someone in Ukraine. I hope that you won't listen to this song without thinking about Ukraine and praying for them.

Remember them.