Way Down (draft 1)

"According to a new poll by the Pew Research Center, when reached for comment on this week, 93 percent of Americans responded “Okay, enough’s enough here, you have seriously got to be kidding me with this week,” with 84 percent saying “Is it Sunday yet? What? How in the hell are we only at Thursday? What the hell is going on?” - The Onion

Yeah, pretty much that.

I put this riff together on my first day of Christmas vacation back in December. I've been toying with it, flipping it around, trying to fit a song together around it ever since. So what's it about? If I could tell you that, then I'd have it finished by now.

It is uncharacteristically cheerful given the day on which it was born was, in addition to my first day of vacation, also the day of the Sandy Hook massacre. "Massacre" ... it occurs to me today, at the end of a week where we have been knee deep in death and misery and helpless anger, that maybe these times we're livin' in aren't really so unusual. I mean ... this crap has happened often enough for us to have a word for it ... in like every. single. language. Nonetheless ... we survive. On the whole, we somehow win more often than we lose, and collectively we carry on.

So ... I don't know ... this peaceful, cheery tune grew out of my subconscious in the midst of nonstop coverage of the most heartbreaking carnage imaginable, like a vine growing out of a garden of ashes.

I don't know what it means yet ... or maybe ever. But if I ever get a grip on some good lyrics for it, it's gonna be tiziiiiiiight.