Alone

Song story & origins

Introduction

Alone appears on A. Dream (2018). It’s more of a meditation than a conventional verse–chorus song: a few spare phrases sung, layered, and repeated until the idea reveals itself. I wrote the music first—piano—and then let the lyric surface from the feel of that mournful tone, a bit like the method David Byrne has described: sing sounds and fragments over a finished track until the right words arrive. What emerged was a simple, aching truth about loneliness—ours as individuals, and the kind that runs through our culture right now. I’m deeply grateful for long love (married 33+ years), daughters, parents living in town, and good friends near and far; and still, I see the ache in people around me—young folks hoping for a lasting partner, others walking through breakups, separations, divorce—and I recognize the quieter truth that even in rich connection there’s a part of each of us that remains alone inside our own skin. That’s the ground this piece stands on.

Where the lyric came from

Because the piece is built from mantras, each phrase holds a lot of weight:

“He was alone / She was alone.” I set these as antiphonal lines, spread left and right in the stereo field so they answer one another. In the years since writing, I’ve also become more explicit about non-binary language; the point isn’t gendered at all—the point is the human ache to be seen and connected, whoever we are.

“And we’re born… and we don’t know nothin’.” We come in with some nature, yes, but so much of life is a long apprenticeship in who am I, especially in relation to others and to the world.

“Gotta find a face / place / heart / hand.” These four became the song’s spine:

a face—a particular person, an identity we recognize and love;

a place—rootedness (something many of us moderns ignore at our peril);

a heart—deep emotional commitment and empathy;

a hand—touch, the physical bond we actually need. Even place has a kind of touch to it; there’s something real (and research-backed) in simply putting bare feet on the ground where we live.

Music and arrangement

The track begins with piano and a small string arrangement. As the textures grow, a banjo slips in for color, and then an electric-guitar lead carries a more intense instrumental passage that “says” what the words can’t: part hopeful soar, part frustration and anger at all that isolates us. After that crest, the arrangement returns to quiet—back to the piano, and to the opening mantras (he was alone / she was alone). You might think the lyric’s ending implies the story ends in aloneness—but the strings swell, and then a wooden flute enters. That flute is the turn.

I mixed the “he/she” lines in a stereo spread (different sides of the headphones) so the voices feel like a room of call-and-response, not a single narrator.

Why the flute closes the song (Lakota story)

The flute at the end is a deliberate symbol of hope. I’m fortunate to know Joseph Marshall III (Sičháŋǧu Lakota, Rosebud), an elder and author I’ve interviewed at length. In his book The Lakota Way (and in an audio telling), he shares “The Flute Maker”—the story of a young man named Cloud, heartsick over losing Dawn Woman. In the woods he hears a mournful sound: wind blowing through hollow cedar. He fashions a flute, names it hokagapi (“to make a voice” in Lakota), and in time the mournful voice becomes a joyful one. I won’t spoil the whole story, but that arc—sorrow voiced into hope—is exactly why the song ends with wooden flute: breath into wood, grief given voice, loneliness turning toward connection.

What the song is saying

The piece doesn’t offer tidy answers. It names the ache, insists on the four quests (face, place, heart, hand), honors the complexity of being an individual even inside love, and then aims its last sound at hope. If you only catch one thing, let it be this: loneliness is real—and so is the possibility of belonging.

Why it stays with me

Because it keeps me attentive to the people for whom “alone” is the daily weather, and it reminds me to practice connection—to look for a face, root in a place, keep a heart open, and offer a hand. On hard days I let the piano carry me to the place where the flute can still answer.

Source: New Music Memoir (1).docx