Alpha Cat

“Opposition is actually the natural prerequisite for union. As a result of opposition, a need to bridge it arises.”  ~ Confucious (The I Ching or Book of Changes: Richard Wilhelm translation)
“What is it you want to do with your one wild and precious life?” ~ Mary Oliver
Aren’t the events happening around us simply metaphors for what is going on inside us? And are we not now a global community connected by technology? I believe that all of this separation can be seen as but an illusion, meant to be dispelled and healed. 
I wrote the first part this song at the end of a long, isolated winter, the year after my father died of early Alzheimers. I hadn’t written in a while, and I just woke up one day and wrote the first two verses, chorus, and the beat.
When I first heard Brett Thorngren’s mix of Orbit, it hit me hard. Of course it was about a romantic interest from whom I had been separated! 
So after a year or more of the pandemic, vaxxed and ready to tackle my bucket list: one of the most important: to go to Pearl Harbor, from which I had written a song, and an album, and had always wanted to see, but didn’t feel was possible. I made it happen. But after that, which can best be described as a “pilgrimage,” another level of meaning to this song hit me. Because I realized that this song was recorded at a time when I was literally in the middle of a breakdown, that when I was finishing writing and recording it, I was actually separating from - myself. What followed that time was a long period of extreme depression and inactivity. But I did reconnect, finally, in 2019, and began putting out music again. And I still have no memory of writing the rest of the song, and certainly not of recording it…
Yet one more trip / quest: to Key West, most importantly, to the Ernest Hemingway house, (his writing being possibly one of the most significant influence on my own; the ruthless editing, a reduction of the narrative to its most salient points) I understood the song on yet another, and I believe the most important level, that it was ultimately a song about healing the separation on this planet. And though I am the guinea pig - the model for this narrative, make no mistake, as I had realized long ago, the more personal the piece, the more universal it becomes.