I am pleased to finally release my new song Edgar. It has been percolating for several years. It started out life as something I once said to a friend. “I feel I never grieved for my grandfather, I was too busy.” This turned into the line “we never cried for Edgar.” It also represented the feeling that my family never collectively moved on from the passing of my grandad. I even wrote a whole novel about it, a story for another day, but the song never got finished and I put it aside.
I then came up with a character/extended metaphor called Hollow Face, he was a character that was sometimes me, at the times in my life when I felt I needed to wear a mask, when I needed to be a different person depending on the situation, it was a state that made me unhappy. Hollow Face also symbolised grief. The face we put on things, but inside we feel so hollow. Pleased with myself I tried to add this to my Edgar idea, I had a tune and now I had several fragments of words. However I still couldn’t quite land the verse and the chorus had started to feel bombastic, so I put the song back in the drawer.
My grandmother recently passed away and in processing my grief, the song came back to me along with several lines about my grandfather’s life with my gran. I suddenly had the missing link, it was a song about grief, about identity, about ageing, but it was also a song of faith, of celebration, a celebration of their love for each other and for their lives well lived. The song suddenly had a soul and life of its own and the final image of my grandparents dancing into the great beyond, finally and unshakably together again, has brought me great comfort. I hope you enjoy listening and may it bring comfort to anyone struggling right now, or to anyone on their own grief journey.
The World Outside the Window 