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7.04.2007 Far From Home Far From Home was written earlier this year, around April. Ken had written a series of chord progressions as an exercise in voice leading. We got together, ate some food and sat to write the melody for it. Some of it survived to the final version, but as usual the band tore it apart and reassembled it to be what we recorded.Live a life Chasing the wind Building castles that house A heartache Live or die It all feels the same In the end you will find All was in vain Truths and lies Speak to me What they find Teach a memory Of a life Far from home It never dies The need or the shame All these treasures you hold In dust they remain Truths and lies Speak to me What they find Teach a memory Of a life Far from home God and man are calling out to me Calling out to reach a part of me So in need of peace and love God and man are calling out to me Free But they tell me to be Be all I can be Make all that I can make Build all that I can build tall That God and man call to me As to reach, reach a part of me In need to see Truths and lies Teach a memory of life Far from home Truths and lies Teach a memory Of a life that's Far from home I wrote the lyrics soon after, after some heavy thinking I'd been working through. It was basically a meaning of life question, to which I found the bulk of my answers in the book of Ecclesiastes. This guy, Solomon, a king, decides to expend the resources he has toward this same question. After having entertained everything a man could possibly desire: - a harem, check. - built vineyards and castles, check. - wealthier than anyone in history, check. ..and came to this conclusion: it's all meaningless. And whatever you accomplish, gets erased and wasted and trumped eventually anyway. Which got me thinking. Are we here to accomplish anything? Does God need us to carry out his work? Who are we to say we offer our endeavors to God? So I came to my version of this conclusion, which is we're here to grow. Learn, become better people, through our successes and despite our failures. And in the end the purpose of this growth is to understand God better. We are not here living our lives for this life; it is for the next. That is the jist of the chorus ("Truth and Lies..") The bridge ("God and man...") along with the following verse ("Free..") is my criticism of the church today. Its emphasis on ministry (doing something for God) seems dangerously contorted without the right foundation. The message that we must accomplish for God seems to put right back on us a weight that was lifted by Christ. It's a root cause, I believe, of the lack of long-term success in the church today. ... The song was originally written in 6/8 time, and we tried many variations on the feel. A radiohead version, a rock ballad version, even a Tony Bennett version. The song at one point switched back and forth between 4/4 and 6/8 as it moved from verse to chorus and back. Eventually, we felt that once the song launches it shouldn't return (a formula used in many Jack songs) and settled on the recorded arrangement. This song sets me free. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed being a part of creating this song. |
