Gafoo’s Blog

Mirrors.mp3

Out on the edge
Living in time
Don’t take that ledge
It won’t happen again

Take my advice and go around one more time.

Inside a life
Living a dream
Peace comes from strife
It won’t happen again

Take my advice and go around one more time.

Falling once again
I’m failing once again
I’m calling once again
I’m turning around again
I’m flying once again
I’m floating once again
I’m burning my friend
I’m dead again.

This recording has got to be the best quality anything I have ever done. I actually had a few people who I gave cd’s to tell me that it was in regular rotation on their playlists. I like listening to it as well. Sometimes artists don’t like listening to their own songs cause they have heard them too many times. They will probably hear the song 50 times in the process of recording it. This song didn’t get tired for me so I think it’s pretty darn good.

Anyway, this song was written during what I like to refer to as my experimental Radiohead-esqe phase. This is actually the most tame of the experimental style songs. I have a bunch that are just drum loops and melodies that go nowhere. This one actually has variety to it. I used the wierdest guitar patches I could find for the song so there is one that sounds just like a machine and so much delay it will make you head spin. The point of it all was atmoshpere. So many songs are just, for lack of a better term, noise for the sake of being noise. It’s just there to point you in the direction of the vocals. Well, this one was aimed at giving the music a better represenation. It’s suppose give the impression of outer space. I don’t know if everyone got that but it’s vital to the epic story of the lyrics…

These lyrics are actually the tale of a man who had himself put into stasis and blasted off into space. Pretty ambitious I know but read on and it will all make sense. Anyway, it was an experiment to find life on another planet. He put himself to sleep and went off to discover new worlds, leaving behind his family and friends. The experiment fails however, as the man is awaken from statis many years later. He is now (effectively) in the future. He has aged and is near death and what’s worst, he hasn’t found any new civilization. He is doomed to sit in his rocket and await his death alone. The reason the song is called mirrors is because all the lyircs and story has a mirror image to my own life and the benefit of looking at it in hindsight. In my early teens, I was suicidal. I hated living at home, I hated my friends, I hated where my life had taken me and I hated the way I felt all the time. I wanted to be alone by killing myself. This song is about me, with the benefit of knowing who I am now, telling myself not to kill myself back then. If you look at the perspective of the story, the scientist is telling people back home how lonely he is. If you look at real life, I am telling myself that I know how I felt back then but it will get better. “Take my advice and go around one more time” is quite simply me telling myself to hang in there or the scientist to look at his research and determine that the experiment will fail. When people asked me what the song was about, I told them the story to save the hassle of explain my life to people. Much easier to tell a story than to tell people it’s about stopping yourself from commiting suicide. It’s heavy but it’s me…