Break Your Heart

If you keep up with this blog–and really, why wouldn’t you?–you know I committed to FAWM this year. (February Album Writing Month; 14 songs in 28 days.)

Seoul vocal booth

seoul_sarang_recording-small

On day 28 I realized that I had one more song to finish. (I did not realize it was a leap year, which would have given me an extra day.) The problem was that I was in Seoul, Korea, at a conference. I had tracks for a song, but no lyrics. So I sat down in one of the sessions and ignored the speaker the best I could while working on finishing words for the song. Then I found a quiet conference room at the end of a long hallway where I recorded the vocals in one take and uploaded the song to FAWM with 1% of my battery charge remaining. Welcome to the exciting, do or die life of songwriting.

This is part of my ongoing obsession with writing neo 80s songs. It is perhaps not my finest moment as a lyricist or mixer, but I like the basic idea enough that I may revisit it at some point.

Forever, for never? For pleasure, for pain?
For whom is the balance tipping, and which way?
If we knew then what we know now,
would we have both just walked away?

I never would have hurt you if we never let it start.
We were safe until we let it go that far.
Wounds that heal together or histories told in scars.
How can it be love if it doesn’t break your heart?

Soulmate or playmate or something in between?
Who knows who we will turn out to be?
Lover or mother or a little bit of both?
Until we jump in, full skin, we will never know.

Waiting for charity–Ubi caritas–
paralyzed between the science and the art.
If we wait on charity we’ll wait until death do us part. [We’re doomed from the start.]
How can it be love if it doesn’t break your heart?

N.b. You’ll notice a discrepancy between the lyrics above and the recorded vocal track. When I went to record the song I realized to my dismay that the verse wasn’t double couplets. I quickly cut and edited to make it fit.

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