This new song makes eleven in as many months, after a ten year gap of no songwriting at all. I wrote it on the 11th August after two weeks of trying to track down someone close who went awol and also going through the anniversary of something else a little sad.

I wonder what they conjure up for you, these images. I prefer it resonates with your own private stories (which is what songwriting should be able to do) but I know it can be fascinating to know why and how an artist writes a particular story, perhaps then it will touch an even deeper nerve. I will share a little with you.

Yes, it is about death, loss, grief…a ghost is speaking from the other side…but death can be the loss of a friendship or a viewpoint or a lifestyle. It can also be the birth of a new – not necessarily welcome – perspective on a journey with someone you thought was going one way, when it takes a sharp turn or you reach a new understanding about your own or someone else’s limitations.

The child in this song is a victim of war. My mother lived during the bombings of Berlin. Both my parents lost their Dads in the war, in the same year, on different sides of the battle. I still feel the tremors of that within my family all these years later, for the damage which was done within both my Dad’s and my Mutti’s hearts was profound. WWII lives on believe me. All the refugees from our current days crises in the world will bear scarred children too.

The bombing of Dresden too has always haunted me, ever since reading Kurt Vonnegut. That is where ‘and so it goes’ comes from. I look forward to recording this one. It came to me very quickly. It started with a classical Bach-like Fugue and transformed into a living organism for me. Within about two hours it was fait de complit.

Death’s Anniversaries:
1
And so it goes, another year
It doesn’t matter any more
It doesn’t show, it wasn’t here
It wasn’t here at all
2
And so it goes, another child
Beneath a circus carousel
She barely heard the sound
Before she hit the ground
And all the horses fell