THE SONG: I would say one of the central focuses of my personal and artistic life is my near obsession with how thoughts relate to feelings and feelings to thoughts. It's a chicken or the egg thing. Who's in charge? My heart? My head? Are they the same thing? Are they battling each other to control my poor helpless body... my actions...? Which do I trust? How I feel? Or what I think? What I think about how I feel? What I feel about how or what I think? what's the purpose of a thought? A feeling? what does it all mean!?!?! Which one is the Lord speaking to me through? Both? Neither? One or the other at different times? How do I delineate between what might be some subconscious junk that's leaking up through my conscious mind and what is just an on the surface logical thing in the moment? What about the genetic side of things? Do I think and feel the way I do because I'm "programmed" this way genetically? Or is that just passing the buck? A cop-out? What about people who deal with addiction? Depression? Anxiety etc. etc.?
We're all victims of ourselves in some way... how do we really know what's what? What's Why?! Who's who?! How?! Where?! Ahhhhhhhhh!
Is the answer to all these questions just a resounding YES?
Maybe!
Okay, calm down Watts. Do I enjoy all these mental and emotional gymnastics? Sometimes. Really, I just feel that it's important. Because how we feel and what we think drives our actions.... and our actions have great impact on ourselves and everyone else around us.... and then the culmination of all that... and all of us... THAT creates the world we live in... It's all so massively important to the well being of our souls. God help us all:)
If you don't deal with this conundrum I applaud you.... and I sometimes wanna be you:) Unless you're in denial, in which case, I hope you get help! I hope we all do!:)
Assessing all this and fighting my way through it is my personal-artistic "cross to bear" in a lot of ways.
This song is about all of this. It's about my realization that there's this Berlin Style Wall sometimes between my heart and my head... it's guarded by stoic officers with guns and there's barbed wire and maybe even a moat with alligators, piranha and bacterial yuckiness.
So, I've been really working to knock down this wall and let the east and the west form a treaty... can't we all get a long? C'mon brain, c'mon heart, ya'll live in the same building, let's figure it out together... respect each other... you're both so important! Don't you get it, you'd die without each other!
I joke, but it's only funny sometimes:) This song is serious business for Mr. Me... so I hope you connect to it in some way.
There was a lot of emotional turmoil in my life around this time and I remember writing and recording this at all in one night when I was REALLY feeling it all. I had that rare feeling of empathy for myself. Which is a weird and kind of beautiful thing.
I'd talk more about the process of writing it, but I really don't remember that as much as I do just the overall feeling surrounding it. That happens sometimes.. a lot of the time.
This song is dedicated to all you introverts out there, who get stuck in your head sometimes and forget to feel... or to respect your own feelings and forget to share who you really are with people you care about. This is for you... for us.
THE RECORDING: Maybe I'm exhausted from writing all that stuff above... but I can't seem to remember this recording that much either. I remember sitting at the drums playing. I remember putting up my old Remo Piccolo snare because I was feeling a little bit Stewart Copeland on this. The lyrics were crying out for an aggressive frustrated snappiness, so I went with it.
I do remember (because I can hear it) that I used my new vocal mic. It's by Sontronics and it's called the Helios. It's brighter and more present than my U47... it was up and plugged in, so I used it.
Based on my foggy recollection, this song was written and recorded from about 6pm to about 11pm and then it was done and mixed and it what you hear now. I didn't touch it afterwards... sometimes I feel like that's the most pure way to do things like this. Hopefully that's a good thing. Hopefully you connect to it.
THE VIDEO: There was a carnival near my house so I went down with my camera. I find these blow up air people things to be amazing... or maybe mesmerizing is the better word. When I set it to this song it just hit me. the painted on smile and bug eyes, the insanity of it, the wacked out tube-body, out of control and rhythmic, the light in the background that sometimes becomes a heart in it's body... the whole thing... as stupid as it sounds I connected to it once the music was under it. I had a good time chasing it around with my lens. Right now it's probably all deflated in a box somewhere.... still smiling.
:)
Adam's heart and Adam's head.