Taking In Stars

This song is about letting go of what no longer serves. The images and story are autobiographical, taken from my high school days growing up in rural West Virginia. I was driving home from my girlfriend’s house late at night and totaled my car by hitting a deer. It was really traumatic, and caused me to rethink pretty much everything I was doing at that point in life, from my relationships, habits, and patterns of behavior that were keeping me from growing.

The ‘hungry ghost’ metaphor is less of the traditional Buddhist meaning or symbolism, and more about the specter of my lower self that I realized was holding me back.

I wrote this song after having a late night conversation with my son when he was having trouble falling asleep consistently as he was hitting his teenage years. The line “When I hear the smallest thing, and it snowballs into a scream” was pretty much verbatim how he described the issue to me. His particular experience was music playing repeatedly that he couldn’t stop.

It really resonated with me, as someone who has an active mind and sometimes obsessive tendency to overthink, especially when there are unresolved or uncertain things playing out in my current day-to-day reality.

This song felt like it was beamed down to me from the heavens. It sounds corny, but that’s why I think I was able to write the words “Can you hear the angel’s song?” and not feel self-conscious about it.

The lyrics are about holding on to hope for the future, which includes forgiving yourself while acknowledging the pain and suffering that we have caused, both as individuals and collectively. In continuing to push for a world that seems out of reach or impossible, somehow we find a light still on the horizon, guiding us into a better world that we all deserve.

I met my wife when we were both very young (she was 20, I was 21), and we’ve been together ever since. It’s been 25 years, which is wild to think about. When you’re that close to someone, it aches when they’re not around.

This song was written when she had been out of town on a weekend trip with friends, and was flying back to New Orleans. I was checking her flight status every few minutes in anticipation of her return. Thinking of what she could see out the airplane window got things rolling, and through those few hours, I realized the feeling was universal.