I’m trying to get back to songwriting. This was in response to a challenge on writing a song involving listening to the wind. I started playing around with the theme of “winds of change” and how everything is always changing. So often we don’t hear the first whispers and, when we do, we try to fight it instead of accepting it and going with the flow. The changes can be physical (I can’t stop getting older), they can be cultural, they can be economic or environment or scientific or lots of other things.

Someone once said “Things were simpler when we were younger” and the response was “No, we were simpler”. We can’t go back to the naïveté of our younger days, but we can reset how we engage with life, the universe and others.

For those of you who care, this was actually written in an open D minor tuning.

Trigger warning: Song about domestic violence.

This originally started out as a song about recovering from the end of a marriage involving domestic violence. Then after watching some relationships close to me, it took a twist at the end and got more complicated, with a flavor of co-dependency so the ending is sadder and more wistful than the original practically dancing on the grave.

Early early draft. Sometimes you drop nuance and need to be heavy handed. This song is a bit unusual in that it starts with an accidental.

My only obviously autobiographical song. Families pay a price for the
games that politicians play that those politicians never pay.

The poem “Flanders Fields” was written by a Canadian doctor during
WWI. It is patriotic and, unfortunately, glories in the continuation
of conflict. Must so many people insist on having an enemy to unite
and fight against?

For my daughter when she was in junior high school. If you insisted on
a rule and justified it because the authority figure said so, you
guaranteed a fight. If you gave reasonable reasons for the rule, there
wouldn’t be any problem. I’ve seen reports that up to 30% of any human
population consists of authoritarians. Those in power want mindless
obedience. Even those not in positions of power want to be
thoughtlessly led and will insist on mindless obedience to authority
and punishment otherwise.

Growing up from the parent’s point of view.

Friends thinking back to our childhood dreams and where we ended up instead.

Remember christmas cards and sitting down at the kitchen table,
sending out those once a year notes to friends and relatives. Facebook
is not quite the same.

Written for my daughter when she was young and believed that animals
were nicer than people. Sometimes I even think she was right.

After the relationship is over and the fights have ceased.

Memorial to a minor league baseball fan.

I wrote this on a paper placemat in a restaurant in Melbourne,
Australia after doing a tour of the Great Ocean Road and hearing a bit
of its history. Nearby diners were either amused or confused as the
waitress kept trying to put the food on the placemat and I kept pushing
it away because I didn’t want to lose the melody and my train of thought.