The Nuance: Music

Swan Song

(The Nuance)

January 5, 2007

Jamison M. Pettyjohn

This is the first song I wrote. My friend Tim and I used to climb water towers and high rise building fire escapes because we couldn't think of anything more fun to do, especially where we were living at the time. That and the fact that our two person band was going NOOOOOOOwhere. Come to think of it, we'd illegally climbed up all kinds of buildings in multiple states so there might be more than boredom to blame for what can only be considered insane in retrospect. I'm afraid of heights too, how dumb is that? So when it came time to write a song I really couldn't think of anything that was quite like nearly getting blown off of a 50 story building in the middle of the night in what should probably remain anonymous downtowns somewhere in Northern America. We once climbed a water tower in the back yard of the police station and got stuck up there for a while when all these cop cars came back at the same time into the parking lot that just happened to be underneath the water tower we were hiding out on top of. While we were hanging out up there enjoying the view with these birds that seemed to be doing their damnedest to get the officers attention (cop birds?) we could hear them telling each other their cops stories from earlier that night: These masturbatory tales of breaking up keggers in the orange groves and arresting middle school kids toilet papering each others houses. Then we watched as they all got back into their cars at the same time, as if guided by some mystical unknown force that we could not understand, and drive a couple of blocks down to this doughnut shop that was just opening up for the morning. We climbed down as fast as we could and then went and had doughnuts with the cops. But I don't think they understood why we thought they were so funny. Seemed like good subject matter for a song at the time. "By definition, a swan song has become an idiom referring to a final theatrical or dramatic appearance, or any final work or accomplishment. In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Portia declaims "Let music sound while he doth make his choice;/Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,/Fading in music." We always ended up playing this song last in our set list from way back when, our "swan song" if you will, so it just made sense to name the song that and even more sense to put it at the end of the album.

"all of my days slip away from me and I can no longer see the wind through the evergreens as gravity waves a white seashore you deny ships along ocean floor again and I wish I knew but all I really know is that the sun will see only half of my life I think it's time to get away from here there you go, you're running after her ghost and you're not so alone but lonelier than you ever show and I wish that you knew where I'd fallen to but all you really know is that the sun will only see half of your life and I remember so many water towers to climb and so little time why do I always cheat the game of solitaire you're running in the red again it all seems so so unfair I wish that I knew what happened to you but all I really know is that the sun will see only half of our lives... ...so little time there's so little time"