Laying on the Ground

http://joshuafinsel.bandcamp.com/track...




One evening back in Eugene Oregon my daughter was playing in the garden as the sun was setting on a clear dry summer evening. I was strumming an E chord and watching her play from the back porch. I was strumming the chord alternating between a low E and a low F# as the low note in the chord. It was kind of hypnotic. I don't know how long I was strumming it, maybe 5 minutes, but I started having memories of my childhood playing in my yard on Springhill Road in White Haven PA. I remembered laying on the ground and watching the clouds and swaying tree tops and feeling very grounded and happy. I remembered a sensation of almost melting into the ground, a oneness with the crust of the earth and golden grasses that surrounded me.

I wrote the first two verses and it got dark, so I put down what I was doing and got my daughter off to bed. Our housemate Merilyn Mason was watching OPB, Oregon Public Broadcast, and there was a memorial story about some of the soldiers that had just died in the Iraq war. I was captured by the story of an 18 year old young man whose father was a decorated general in Africa where he was from. I don't remember the country now, but the reason I was crushed by his story was because this boy wanted to grow up to be like his dad. He joined the military and died in his first week of service. I hated that war and still think W fabricated the reason to get the US involved in it.

I pictured this kid bleeding out on the ground there in disbelief. His future as he saw it, gone. A war created by a crazy liar sitting somewhere in the Washington DC.

In a daze, I walked to the back porch and wrote the bridge and final verse to Laying On The Ground.