I have one of my daughters, Eleanor, to thank for this song. I had been playing the guitar riff for a while and we were sitting in the kitchen one day. There was a door that was rarely used in the kitchen. It looked out onto a wall and a house and the light would sometimes shine though its paneled windows.
Eleanor looked at the window and shouted “Dust!”. I don’t think she had been reading Philip Pullman. But the sun was streaming though and dust particles were floating in the air. It was quite beautiful. I think I wrote this in about 2010, but I might be out by a year or two. It could have been earlier.
It got me thinking about if you couldn’t get outside into the sunshine and I started imagining what it might be like to be in prison, missing the person you loved.
Now, this is a long song. It last for just over seven minutes, so you need some stamina to listen to it. It is mainly acoustic guitar, with bass and drums and vocals as well as some synthesizer. I ad-lib’d a ‘solo’ guitar line over the riff, which mostly works okay. It’s also the first time I used autotune, which I think adds something to the vocal. I think you need to like guitars to like this song.
The drums were deliberately kept quite dry (the sounds) to help create the atmosphere. It’s quite a desolate song, but when I am in the right mood, I really like it. Somewhere there is a live version from when I performed it on local radio. If I can find that, I’ll add it.
The riff is pretty straightforward and the ‘chorus’ also is not the most complex. I like the atmosphere I have created and I actually quite like the lyrics too. It makes a change from the traditional love pop songs that I seem to have written!
Here are the words:
Prison
The bars cast a shadow as the light filters in
Dust particles floating so free… so free
The silence, the silence at night
As I lay on my bunk
The silence oppresses me
The silence oppresses me
It pushes me under
It pushes me under
Oh, the particles of dust, floating free, floating free unlike me
Why did I end up here?
It wasn’t my fault
I was just following the rules
It wasn’t my fault
It wasn’t my fault
Two hours, two hours of freedom
Locked in a courtyard
Wandering, wondering, wandering, wondering
In the sun
The same sun that shines on you
The same sun that beats down you
In your freedom
I wonder what you’re doing
I wonder what you’re doing
What are you thinking?
And where are you sleeping alone?
So alone
I see you there in my mind’s eye
Beautiful, so beautiful
And so far away . . .
The silence oppresses me
The silence crushes me
Yeah it crushes me
Why am I here alone?
What did I do to wind up here without you?
Yeah, what was my crime?
I just followed the rules
What was my crime?
I just followed the rules, yeah
Well what was my crime ?
I followed the rules
Let me out!
Let me out!
Let me out!
I see the dust
I see the light
I see the sun, the moon the stars the clouds
All floating, shimmering free
I have four walls,
One window
One window
No opportunity
No opportunity
No opportunity for me
I’m so alone
And thinking
And thinking
And thinking
© Phil Hunt 2010