the brief

the 'grandfather song', on love, (grand)parenting and the sweep of the human family across the generations

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I came across Jesse Cook's To Your Shore a few months before the "pick any song and it will channel" experience that initiated the fourth phase in early November 2022.

I really liked the feeling of the song and the instrumentation, but I was as taken by the track's official video. It was a pandemic lockdown video, so each of the band members was playing on his own at his own residence but they'd connected via the internet to record the song and music video at the same time. It always struck me watching the video just how happy the band members were they could play 'together' in that time of social isolation.

While I could sense a karosong with Jesse's track, I had no sense of what it might be — but somehow still had the sense to include the track when I created the now-channeling playlist for the 4.1 set.

Makes no sense, right?

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Still, putting a song on that playlist means nothing until the song decides to move forward. It took more than a month of sub-vocal channeling to get any hint of what the song would be about. And that was just a few opening lyrics.

say did i ever tell you about the time...
no, i guess not, you're just new here
aren't you there Junior Junior ...
tell you what, i'll just call you je-junior

It was the 53rd karosong to start channeling, the 14th asynchronous collaboration with Jesse Cook and, it turned out, the third karosong to have credits at the end rather than the start of the song.

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I knew from just that bit of lyric that this would be a "you" monologue with the narrator talking to a family member, maybe an older grandchild. But there was no sense of a scene where the song took place. A hospital? Nursing home? The family living room?

By the end of that January, I'd begun to get the 'gist' of the song, the storyline if you like. I realized the narrator was talking to an infant grandson in a crib, a "Jr Jr". And I had a growing sense that the grandmother had died, leaving grandfather on his own, a situation he accepted but struggled with. This new grandchild, his first, had given him a reason to live.

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i want to tell you about
the time i first met your grandmother joan
it was at some party i was just looking around

when i saw her over by the door
i knew right then and right there
that i would love her forever-more but

all i could do was pray she'd notice me
then i looked up and there she was and
she introduced herself said she was pleased to meet me
but i all i could do was stammer

yeah that's how i met your grandma
the woman i swore to
who taught me so much about life, love,
myself

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I still wasn't sure where the song was going, and it only progressed in glimpses, bits of backstory. By mid February I knew a key line from the chorus would be "and I will love her forever-more" (leading the song to finally name itself a week later). By early March, I had a strong sense of the narrator waiting to die and reunite with grandmother. But in the meantime grandfather was happy getting to know his first grandchild.

So I had the gist of the song before I returned to my home studio in early April. But few lyrics. Just part of the first verse and a sense of where the two choruses would appear in To Your Shore.

What I did not have yet was the song's emotional lockin.

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and i want to tell you about your gran
when your daddy was first born

and this woman i thought i knew so well
after all these years
suddenly started changing
but then i saw that i was changing too

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I could feel, even predict what that emotional lockin would be, that the song would find its impetus and power in the deep well of sadness I have around my two daughters and two granddaughters. They live overseas from me so I seldom see them. I'd often thought a song was likely to come from that sadness. (I even had a 'stub' song about it called "Children children" from the period between the first and second phases.)

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I was right. The lockin started on March 21, more then five months after I'd heard the async track and sensed a song in it. I say 'started' because I experienced multiple powerful lockins with this song over the next several months (they were longer-lasting and even more intense than I experienced with As darkness falls back in the 3.2 set).

These lockins are always emotionally overwhelming, ephemeral and difficult to describe verbally, especially as they accumulate and become a cascade of insights. With each lockin I got more of the song's gist, more clarity on its structure, more bits of lyrics. "I'm so happy to make your acquaintance". A possible subtitle. Motivation, grandfather wants to experience his grandchild on grandmother's behalf, to bank his memories for when finally sees her.

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By early May I could sense the missing verses, that the second verse would be about the birth of the infant's father and how parenthood had affected the couple. And the third would be about grandma not getting the chance to be a grandparent, so grandfather would spend time with his infant grandchild on her behalf, for the day he would finally 'see grandmother again'.

I 'knew' all that and knew about half the chorus:

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but then she was gone
just one of those things you have to endure
and i will endure because
i swore to love her forever-more yes i will

and i so look forward to being back with her
until then, i'm glad you're here
it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance

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But I still only had the first verse and where the choruses would start. The verses remained lyrically blank.

Frustratingly, even maddenly, blank.

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(Yeah yeah, we know. Everyone knows by now. Karosongs take their sweet time coming and 'he's' just the channel. Just a lowly employee of the Universal Broadcasting Service. No control, all that stuff. This guy relieves himself of more responsibility than a cannibal farting at a posh dinner.)

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Be that as it may, not much changed in this song over the summer months while gordon completed the sale of his waterfront property and started his rootless fall and winter. Just a new bit of lyric here, aother sense of the gist there. But the core of each missing verse remained elusive. (A number of the other incomplete 4.1 songs were similarly stalled in this period.)

But even small changes and additions add up eventually. The third verse lyrics were near complete by mid December, when gordon had arrived in Vancouver and started the Vancouver sessions. (But their delivery did not finalize until late March, after I had returned from visiting my younger daughter in Australia.)

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i so wish your nan was here to see you
hug you, smell that little present
you just left your parents

but she can't be so i'm here for her
i'll tell you all about her everything i can
so one day when you grow up and see her picture
you'll get a warm feeling inside

as for me, i'll stuff myself so full of your memories
to share with her that i can barely waddle

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But the heart of the second verse — the heart of the song itself — would not gel. I sensed it was about the growth and joy that comes from parenting, and something beyond that too, something about how our humanity comes from growing up in families. It wasn't clear but seemed summed up by a phrase I was getting repeatedly — "the gift of the generations."

But the intended meaning of that phrase seemed to stay just outside comprehension so it couldn't condense into actual lyrics. It was so close but would not finalize.

That went on well into February, when the missing lyrics finally started coming into focus, but the actual lyrics only came near the end of March when I was finishing up the Vancouver sessions and preparing to return to Ontario.

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that this was gift of the generations
not just the growth of the child from the parents
but the growth of the parents from the child
as they embark on the rites and passages of the human family

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And with those lyrics, I finally understood what the song was about — call it the sweep of the human family across the years and generations — and I was stunned. A song I'd first thought was about my own pain became a celebration of the human family in all its joy, grief and growth.

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singing

Forever-more was the most personal, most emotional song to channel since As darkness falls in the 3.2 set. Like that earlier song, this one literally dragged itself into existence by latching onto and riding my emotions. Like Mau'dib on a sand worm.

Of course I didn't know that was going to happen when the song first started, when I got the preamble that establishes the song's scene, a granddad talking to his newborn grandchild. And I didn't really know it would happen until the emotional lockins started towards the end of March, almost five months after the song began active channeling.

Then I knew it. In spades. This song's lockins were intense each time and went on far longer than usual — session after session, week after week, month after month, while the key lyrics that would define the song remained elusive. It reminded me of earlier days, in the first and second phases, when a channeling session was an exhausting roller coaster of cascading emotions.

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Consequently, much of the song's overall flow and delivery remained uncertain until well into February when the last lyrics began to finalize. But it was not until the end of the Vancouver sessions that I actually began to get what I call the sense of the song, the flow that I latch onto to carry me through its delivery.

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because i will love her forever
forever-more
and i so look forward to being back with her

until then, i'm glad you're here
it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance

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Post-script

I knew from the first lyrics that this song would not have opening credits and assumed there would be closing credits. At the end. Per usual. But I had no sense of what they'd be because I had so few lyrics past the first verse.

In early June, I finally 'got' that the credits section would start much earlier than usual, just after Jesse and the band had tailed down then come back up for a reprise near the end. I liked that the credits included my thanks to all the band members, and even happier the band continued playing past my "over to you" and completed the reprise as an instrumental only.

It's a beautiful song played sweetly by a band that so clearly enjoys playing together. I was glad it got the spotlight on its own.

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Two women from my life are referenced in this song. I gave the song's dead grandmother the same first name as my second mother-in-law. Joan was a warm, kind and friendly woman, mother and grandmother. It felt right to use her name for the song's grandmother.

The other reference comes when granddad refers to grandmother as "nan". That's the honorific my grandaughters use for their maternal grandmother, my first wife Leanne.