Innocent Child

Journal notes on the song and its recording. (A bit of Andalucia).

I very much like how this song turned out, there were lots of pleasant surprises on the way. Had some great feedback from people who either quite like the tune and the chorus or how they like the lyrics, some said its good thoughtful stuff, or well-crafted or similar. Yay! Bring on the compliments! I’ll take that.

It started off with the chorus line which just landed one day, just blew in on the breeze.

So here’s that story.

I was, unusually for me, not in Dorset. I had travelled to meet an old friend who I hadn’t seen for years, in Cordoba, Spain. I wanted to see the Mezquita. I love Spain. I hitch hiked there and cycled across part of it one time as a young man. I remember being very touched by the beauty of the landscapes that we passed through, the ancient towns and cities, the noisy exuberant people we met and the warm Spring, Summer and Autumn.

This trip happened during Easter time, holy week. The locals were wrapping statues, ‘Pasos’, up in sheets and practising for a big parade around the streets to mark the end of lent, which would feature the penitents in their pointed hats, with marching bands in big processions. I liked witnessing the spectacle of the rehearsals. The statues, concealed in white sheets were being pulled about on flat heavy wagons by a group of men, volunteers I think who looked a bit uncertain of how to proceed.

It must have decided that it was alright to take the statues out as long as light didn’t touch them. (We saw a few hands poking out.)

So I am in Spain sitting on a bench by the Guadalquivir river in Cordoba and the weather is pleasantly warm for April, in the 20’s probably. I have been exploring, strolling about taking in the sights all day, it’s a beautiful city, with an ancient heart that stretches up from the remains of a roman bridge. There is a strong feeling of history all around.

 

I’m on a bench looking at the Mezquita, an enormous former Mosque, built in the days of the moorish empire, started by Abd Ar Rahman I, in 785ad. It was taken over after a long campaign by Ferdinand III in 1236 after a siege. I was told (don’t know if its true) that after taking the place over, they couldn’t bring themselves to demolish the building, it was a bit too magnificent. So they moved in and it became the local cathedral. This statement of Christian ownership was made more emphatic in the 16th Century when an ambitious bishop built a gigantic baroque cathedral right in the middle of the existing structure. Apart from modifying the minaret and placing bells on top of it, the rest of the building still sits there fairly well preserved. It is a survivor and spectacular.

If you ever go in, watch out for healing energy that springs up through the floor at you. The patron Saint of the city is Archangel Raphael, the healer. There are statues of him all over the place, people light candles and leave offerings to him.

So, I’m sitting on a bench looking at the Mezquita from across the river, it’s warm early evening, I’m thinking of my young son back in England, thinking about how he cries and gets emotional about things, but I’m so far away from him. I’d like to tell him how everything’s alright. Our communication is improvised, about tone of voice and facial expressions because he can’t speak the language yet, he just ‘feels’. I’m thinking about how I was a little squawker once upon a time, a few memories I can remember of that time are of telling people what I wanted but them not understanding. I was probably talking some made up language, first thoughts probably.

The chorus line just appeared as I was looking at the building. I hummed, droned it to myself. Thought that’s nice. I wasn’t in any sort of songwriting frame of mind, hadn’t even tried to write a song for years.

I wondered who’s song it was, it had a choir with it. Then as usual I forgot about it and walked back over the old bridge into the city thinking that I had probably picked it up on the radio or somewhere or other.

The line stayed, and it was still there when I got back to the hostal, so I wrote it down in the notebook, I didn’t have a guitar or anything to make any music so I didn’t know what the notes were and figured I would most probably forget the tune sooner or later anyway, or find out it was someone else’s.

A few months later when I was going over the holiday stuff and looking through the notes that I’d made there, I saw the lines and the tune came back again. So I started on a draft, had a twang on the guitar and got a verse and chorus together out of what I was feeling at the time.

As usual, a pretty simple familiar progression in G. I remember wanting it to be a ‘calm’ tune in the verses, like I’m telling a story because the innocent line was choral and must’ve been quite strong, because it survived several trips to the pub before I wrote it down. There were plenty of draft attempts; I really enjoyed coming back to this one until a song took shape and I felt happy enough with it.

Meeting up with an old friend while trying to pick up the pieces of a shattered period in your life is never easy either. Think I was trying to find some sort of fix looking back in time to work stuff out. I didn’t realise this at the time, I wouldn’t have admitted it either, because I was trying to believe I was ok and my problems were other people’s fault.

Cordoba was a place where the many religions that practised there would each have a take on crimes and punishments, innocence or guilt. Whether it was a time when praying to the slightly misaligned Mehrab, or in present day Spain where the current ‘winners’ display their treasures in the Mezquita; the endless paintings of martyred, haloed saints gloomily looking up at the sky. The bloodied figure on the cross, or the ascension. All looking up for judgement. The central miracle at the heart of the story holds up virginal innocence as evidence, almost Exhibit A in Christianity. Only God knows the innocence of the heart in Islam. 

I was thinking about judgement and guilt, trying to figure out right and wrong ways to deal with my situation at the time and deeper home-truths while writing the song. There are consequences to actions, even if the actions are conceived innocently. So what about mercy? Who does the forgiving? Began to realise forgiveness was a vital part in the process. But trying to forgive myself and forgive her, neither was an easy thing to do. Impatience with myself, anger with her, I had to get through it one way or another. I began to look into it, trying to find a perspective I just put myself in the position of being a baby again. Like my son was getting used to me trying to explain complex things to him in a way he could understand, you have to try simplify the message. Began wondering what a baby would make of the situation, probably understand much quicker, that if you weren’t happy you needed to do something about it. Probably get on with things quicker too.

Then I’m wondering at what point are we meant to learn all this stuff, it seems pretty central to our chances of survival; I must have missed those meetings. It didn’t seem that long ago I actually was a child. I was well into my forties, which is meant to be a grown up. When are we supposed to graduate? I have no idea. I’m asking the question then getting annoyed with myself for not bothering to think about things a bit more carefully?

Thinking down those lines I began to have less tolerance of my own ignorance. (Ignorant child didn’t really work, sounded a bit too harsh). Innocence, seemed like a defence of my ignorance. I had to learn or begin to learn to see my part in things rather than try to shift blame. The song is trying to examine the mindset of someone probably processing a similar situation, the words try to offer up then tear up the innocence defence, then partially reinstate it after learning forgiveness.

So I like the idea of it being a sombre tale, told slowly, as if you were reading a bedtime story. That slow pace made the words stand out. I tried to get them into the right shape as far as I could, and leave space for the melody to have it’s own pattern. I got really absorbed, hopefully succeeded in hiding the aspect of people believing they are right/innocent in plain sight when they probably aren’t.

It’s a neat trick to be blameless, it gets you off the hook, ‘I was only following orders’. ‘I had no knowledge of this’. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong’, is a statement with so many implications. Maybe it helps us begin to regain a semblance of our self by parking guilt or other negative thoughts for a while. We are always in the clear when we judge our own actions. As children we cry openly if we don’t get whatever it is that we want there and then. As adults we probably feel the same way when it goes pop like a balloon, maybe we rationalise a little bit more, though I would bet that somewhere inside we are still in that primal place just feeling the disappointment and not happy about it. Wanting to cry out.

It is not always easy to figure out what mess you are in, that ‘the balloon has popped’, and that the imperative is not to dwell there but to get yourself out of that place as best you can. You could be celebrating ‘freedom’, to go forward in a hopeful way. Being stuck isn’t a good place; I felt a lot of negativity and self-loathing when I realised that’s where I’d ended up. With hindsight things only seemed to have improved when I found a different perspective, and it took quite a while to get there.

People can lose faith and walk away from other people, that is the way things are and beyond persuasion there isn’t much you can do to stop them if that’s their decision. In my experience healing takes its own time. Ultimately the sooner you can get on with things the better, but that is easier said than done. Once you work it out it seems quite simple. Then you can see how much time was ‘wasted’ in getting there, until then its all sorts of lost.

Where there are differences of opinion and perspectives on right or wrong, fair or unfair, what is the truth? Getting into the dissection of right or wrong and looking for some truth is like dissecting an animal and after having understood how it works, expecting it to spring back to life when you reassemble it. Engines might work a bit like that, you cant bring failed relationships or previously living things back to life whatever hollywood says. Otherwise we would all be at it, we would never let anyone we love die.

Over time we get a different perspective. Honesty and innocence aren’t the same thing, yes you can tell someone your truth honestly, you could say ‘I love you’, and later say ‘I don’t love you anymore’, both statements are equally truthful. Depending on what and when you say things like that there are going to be some sort of consequences, depending on the way it’s received.

There’s a lot of seeking in the song. It’s a pretty fair reflection of what I was thinking at the time, it’s an attempt to wise up, an attempt to banish self-pity an attempt to heal and move forward.

I still like the tune, and the lyrics. I haven’t flung it away (yet) like others that I’ve written in earnest, then cringed when I’ve later understood what I was ‘really’ saying and had to listen to my former, stupider self. I’m happy to stand by this one for the time being. I am revealing quite a lot of inner machinations, I don’t mind being publicly imperfect, I’m neither proud or ashamed of it, it’s a personal tale of a search for some truth.

The players all did a great job. Ben did a beautiful acoustic chord pattern at Steve Jones’s studio one winter night. Lucy’s fiddle was also recorded by Steve, both of these were grafted together along with Matt’s cello part; recorded on his home system and all different elements were stuck together and sorted out by Tom Hughes. Dan’s slide complimented Chris and Ady’s measured backing, featuring lovely fretless bass from Chris. Charlotte’s singing was so great and intuitive it really brought the choruses and the bridge to life. I really enjoyed ‘breathing’ the words, singing as slow as I could over the lovely platform they created.

Glad I was sitting by the river in Cordoba’s beautiful spring sunshine, when that line landed from the sky.