the matthew show revisited: week nineteen
I am a fan of songwriters who inhabit a character, creating a song that speaks from that person's perspective rather than their own. However, I have had very little luck writing that sort of song. The vast majority of my music catalog is autobiographical, for better or worse.
This one is an exception. I was reading a lot of World War I poets and stories of people struggling to fit their interior lives within the constraints of the culture around them, when a character took shape in my brain. Before I could think about it too much, I wrote these lyrics down. It's short and simple, but holds a gravity that intrigues me, and hopefully you as well.