in the blink of an eye

overcome by sadness
i sat on the pale green couch in our living room
and these words came out

"you’re gone now, you're gone
you’re gone in the blink of an eye"

Ryann told us Carter had made a pact with her
that if something ever happened to one of them
they would leave feathers as a sign
to show that they were still out there
...somewhere...

my son happily played in the living room
while this song about my dead friend came to me
then he said "daada, what is this?"
and pulled a long white feather out of the vase
on the coffee table in front of me



it's hard for me to say too much more about this song
here instead is an excerpt that refers to its recording with Billy Harvey:

sunday april 13, 2008

"let's do, blink of an eye" billy said
"ok...why not?" i thought
billy told me to play it for him
right there on the couch in the living room
after i rang the last chord he mentioned some things about the structure
so we worked on that a bit
then i went into the vocal room
and started playing it live
he got a click track going for me
which made me laugh
i said he didn't have to do that
he said he wanted to
i gotta admit
it felt good having back my "brassiere"
we spent about an hour working on getting the right tempo
and fiddling with the song structure
once we had a good take
we started overdubbing
it was off to the races
everything we did worked instantly
and it felt kinda like we'd been making music together for much longer
than 1 and a half days
billy came up with another super cool
piano part
really evocative and haunting
i picked up the foot long casio sk-1 and the first sound i chose
was perfect for this little part i was thinking about
it was just one of those days
everything we did was easy
and toward the end something happened to me
that has never happened in all my years of making music
billy was playing his hofner electric guitar
and then i closed my eyes
and it sounded exactly like carter
although billy had never met him or seen him play before
what he was playing sounded identical to carter's very
distinctive way of bending notes
and then i was overtaken
i couldn't help it
tears welled up and there i was
sitting behind billy
crying like a baby
it felt like carter was right there with us
i will never forget that moment

it has already made all of this more worthwhile
than i could have ever imagined