A fairly recent song–I wanted to write something uptempo, and this is what came out. I think it’s about garbled communications, but there’s a lot of stuff in there… The interesting thing to me is that I wrote the words to the chorus in a single flash of inspiration shortly after I decided I wanted to write songs. In fact, I think it’s on the first page of my first songwriting notebook. I always thought it was a good chorus, although I never really “worked” the song–until I wrote the verses many years later.

The electric guitar in this version of the song is my friend Dennis’ 1967 Rickenbacker–I remember playing it back when we were in high school and performing in rock ‘n roll bands. (I had a Gibson ES 335 at the time, which I later traded for my first acoustic guitar. Oooh, I wish I still had that guitar…).

A chance encounter–no big deal
No secret motives to conceal

No need to keep my guard up–I was cool
Now all I know’s I’m losing sleep
The cupboard’s bare and I can’t keep on paying both the piper and the fool

And the wind is blowing leaves outside my window
It snuck inside the house and slammed the door
You never see the wind but you can feel it

How come I never see you anymore?

Like a sidelong glance becomes a look
A single page becomes a book

And words get used like children’s fingerpaints
But while the perfume clings, the garbage reeks
and the smog of laughter hangs for  weeks like smoke ring haloes ’round the heads of saints

Still, the wind is blowing leaves outside my window
It snuck inside the house and slammed the door
You never see the wind, but you can feel it
How come I never see you anymore?

Poets paint their pictures and we nail them to the wall

Photographers play word games as they shudder in the hall
Drifting on emotions–every anchor has been lost
But I’ve got my eyes wide open and my toes and fingers crossed

These brief exchanges though oh so dear
Are but glancing blows–they’re insincere
And the little things will get you in the end

Like that feeling when you swing so high that you’re falling deep into the sky
You know it’s deeper than you’ll ever comprehend

And the wind is blowing leaves outside my window
It snuck inside the house and slammed the door
You never see the wind but you can feel it

How come I never see you anymore?