This is my entry for the “Talent is Timeless” monthly competition on “setting sail”. I’d have to say the idea of writing a song within a set time frame (a month) and a set albeit ‘open-ended’ topic isn’t something I would ordinarily consider myself capable of doing. The chords/music have been in my brain for months. As ever my challenge is always music in search of words, and the hope that something will come where the two feel as if they are inseparable when actually the are two separate people who come to an accommodation with each other.
The idea is a simple one – a storm is coming – you want to run away from it – by looking backwards (into the past?) or else you can move to the front of the boat (the bow or prow) and confront the on-coming storm – in a very King Lear or Odysseus kind of way. The hardest thing to do is confront fears, rather than run away from them….
Lyrics:
When the moon catches the light
Of the darkening sea
lightning illuminates clouds
That are flecked with grey
I could never bring myself
To stand at the prow
Is it always to the back of the boat
That I must go to now?
Because
Here comes the reckoning
Here comes the reckoning
Must I always look back
Like Eurydice?
This Pillar of salt
That loses her tears to the sea?
I’ll sail away never to return
I’ll not come the same way again
I turn away from the bough
There’s no coming back from this now
Because
Here comes the reckoning
Here comes the reckoning
I’ll set my course
I’ll strap myself to the head of prow
Into the eye of this coming storm…
There can be no turning back now
I tell myself I’m unafraid of it all
And I’ll not be tempted
by the false siren calls
For a good shantyman
Is worth four extra hands
on the rope
And
Here comes the reckoning
Here comes the reckoning