For years after graduation, around June or September I would have dreams of being back in school. (They came at other times too but those were the busy seasons.) Americans spend 12 to 14 years getting used to arranging our lives around a schedule and then suddenly one day everything changes. I didn't like school and couldn't wait to get out; but when it was gone a whole way of life ended, and there was something very haunting about that. I'm sure many people think about the way things could have been, or should have been; about what was better in those younger days vs. entering the workplace; about what was worse. A few months before recording this- when many of the lyrics for the album were being written (as poems)- I had another of these dreams. This was a strong one and I took the opportunity of getting it fixed to paper as quickly as I could after waking up.
As for the music, I wanted to create a quiet, haunting atmosphere like the one in the dream. It's a slow build, but hopefully you will find your patience is rewarded.
lyrics
I was back in school again
Getting ready to graduate
It wasn't my school
But if it was
I probably wouldn't go back
(It never is)
But very often if not always I feel I have returned home
To people I never knew who are my close friends
To girls who I really did use to know
Who didn't like me then
But want the chance to know me all over again
Friends and community
Always there in the back of my mind
And on waking I find
I am saddened that only in dreams
were these things truly real for me.
And every year around June
When it's time for some new class to graduate
I dream and I leave once again
Or I'm just back
Back with friends more real than those I left behind
Back in times more fun than the truth
What was the truth?
Moments out of time, we were as one
But imprisoned, unity was in cynicism
If the authorities didn't hound us,
we often hounded each other
It was no paradise
Even if I could go back, there's not much left behind
Just dreams of what we could have been
Had we not been so blind
I was back in school again
It was graduation day
Father was speaking on the phone, so many miles away
And as he spoke, a shower broke
and rain came pouring down
The room turned gray and the light grew dim
and my soul wore a frown
He spoke to me from the land of night,
where I was soon to go
To plunge full time into the night
to wrap my dreams in snow
He spoke of payments to be made,
appointments to be kept
Smalltimes coming down so hard,
was it he or I who slept?
I comforted him and said,
"Don't worry, for I will join you soon".
Hung up the phone and I walked to the edge
And I looked down through the gloom
There in summer rain so warm
my friends lay on the ground
Drunken by the party, real escape unfound
And the girl I had come so far to reclaim was gone
along with my chances
The day will turn sunny and warm,
a day of pompousness and circumstances
And an audience of previous generations
who wish to share their blight
Goodbyes will be said and the inmates released
To work out their lifetimes in night.
G.S., summer '86
credits
from Water From The Moon,
released April 13, 2014
G.S.: acoustic/electric/slide guitars, vocals. Lyrics written 6/24/86; music written early 1987. Recorded 3/4/87.
Throwing mathcore, emo, and ambient into the mix, Estonia's Kaschalot push progressive rock's multitasking approach to its limits. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 10, 2021
