So What Makes a Canyon?
Since writing Found Me a Canyon a few months ago and performing it live in Edinburgh, I’ve been asked what the song means.
This is one of the few songs that came to me based on blurting out, during a nascent chorus, ‘I found me a valley then I found me a canyon”. I’ve no idea where it came from, so I researched it. My initial instincts were right. Canyons were once valleys but the force of water and the detritus that flows within torrents of water eroded the land over time. There’s more to it than that, which is why I thought of sharing a video I discovered today.
Poem: Ships
That key description gave me the impetus to continue to use it as an analogy for what I call ‘ships‘. I’ve explored this theme previously in a poem entitled SHIPS in which I see the former akin to RELATION-ships, FRIEND-ships. Both need fuel to exist: some kind of light or ember.
We’re finishing the song in the studio. It does include guitar but the use of felt piano and sparse, ethereal sounds help the listener to feel they’re, well, in a canyon.
Below is exclusive home footage when I was first creating one of the piano parts.
Please leave a comment, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Found Me a Canyon (extract)
Let it flow, let it be
Let your river run naturally
Push on through, pass them by
The rocks that way so heavily on your mind
You see I found me a valley and I found me a canyon
And I broke my bones and my heart just to find some
Way to climb out of waters deep that carried my love downstream
To wash away the light of you at the end of the day