New Life
© Williams 2009

I have no history
No story to tell you
No songs to play on piano
And I have no lines on my face
No fingerprints of childhood
No echoing late-night conversations

And I want you to tell me it’s all right
It’s all right

Sitting by the window
Sink is full of soap suds
Hearing the wind blowing

I have no history
No story to tell you
No songs to play on piano
I have no lines on my face
No grazes on my knees
And no first kisses
No conversations
No used tickets
No half-remembered destinations

It’s all right
It’s all right
It’s all right

Download or listen online: New Life (mp3)

Background

I’ve been thinking about what ‘going stealth’ means, about what safety means, about what ‘a new life’ means. The opening lyrics came to me as I was having a conversation with an acquaintance who didn’t know my history. I was wondering why so often it feels like I need to choose between smudging the truth and having a conversation about topic X, or disclosing and having to have a conversation about me being trans. And I wonder what people do who do go ‘deep stealth’, what it feels like to get rid of all that history. I have one acquaintance who threw away all her books, just in case her old name was inside the cover.

Just recently we bought a ukulele, and I’ve been learning to play it. It’s very different to guitar, and I really haven’t become accustomed to it yet. I realised today that I’m sort of making a point of not learning all the chords too quickly – I want to have the freedom to make my music writing go in different ways, rather than having my fingers move automatically from tonic to dominant, from relative minor to subdominant (although there is still a bit of this going on here, I guess). At any rate, the different order of notes within the chords leads me to try out different melodies.

I have also been thinking about lullabies, and how sad I found many of them as a child. I’ve been wanting to write one, and I think this comes close-ish. The nylon strings of the ukulele help with the tone, and remind me of Luka Bloom’s softer songs of a few years back. (Although I’m nowhere near as awesome, of course!)

Recording

This is another quick recording, done in one take, pretty much as soon as I’d written the song this afternoon. I recorded the ukulele and vocals on one track. It’s really simple, with just a little tweaking of the EQ and some reverb, because I love reverb!

I think, actually, it would sound good with some more instruments – woodwind or strings? Piano arpeggios running through? But I like the simplicity of this, and I wanted to upload it, so here it is.

Doing it again

Well, I’d practice more?! There are a few issues with the vocals (like the bit about “no lions on my face”!), but hey, they’re fresh which makes up for most of the imperfections, yes? I hope so! I’d also, as per so many other times, record the instrument/s and vocals separately, so I had more control with mixing.

Of course, I would be honoured if you’d like to share this song with people – please link them to this page rather than directly to the download. Thank you.