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Elegy (The Way It Has To End) (single​/​folk)

by Faith Michele Current

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about

“Elegy” is the first song I wrote after a very long hiatus from songwriting.

To say I was nervous about diving back in was an understatement, and so I reached for one of my two favorite writing prompts: “what are you afraid of?” (The other one, suggested by Jackson Browne, is “what do you want?”)

At the time, I was going through a pretty deep and dark existential crisis. I’d wake up in the early morning hours, before dawn, chilled and trembling, thinking about how there is nothing... nothing... that I can do to change that I’m going to die someday.

Fear of death is has been a Thing for me since I was a kid. Sometimes it simmers in the background, sometimes it coalesces into a demon that dwarfs all my attempts to find any peace with it.

“Elegy” is about one of those nights, about looking for solace, for a way out, for anything that will free me of the demon.

Musically, the track is inspired by Emmylou's "Michelangelo," which IMO is one of the most beautiful songs ever written. Obviously this doesn't come close, but I'd like to think it's at least an homage.

lyrics

It kills me that there’s gonna be a day someday
When my time is through
That I can’t negotiate the expiration date
For when my soul is due

I know I’m sliding closer to the precipice with every passing day
And I find no consolation in the promise of salvation
Show me proof and I’ll believe it
But in truth, I’d rather stay

God save me from my sins
And the way it has to end

I wake up cold and clammy, the sweat pouring off my body
And I lay there in the dark and try to pray
But I’d be lying if I didn’t say sometimes I hated God
For the losing game he’s forcing me to play

So I lift myself from tangled sheets and dreams and scream my rage
Up to a sky that doesn’t care about my sins
Like a bird against a broken glass my wings are bent and bleeding
Till there’s nothing between me and how it ends

The great deception we engage in doesn’t still the rage in me
Nothing lasts though we pretend it does
Cathedrals burn and mothers die, seasons turn and lovers cry
And everything that is becomes what was

God save me from my sins
And the way it has to end

We try and cheat forever with our children and our words
If the rhyme is good enough to catch the wind
But there’s no book that holds the answer, no song that has a rhyme
To save us from the way it has to end

And the coins that we will use to buy our way across the river
Are the only things we get to take along
And the right and wrong that we do in the world is what’s left over
When the angels come to carry us back home

God save us from our sins
And the way it has to end

Please, God, save us from our sins
And the way it has to end

credits

released March 20, 2021
Music & lyrics by Faith Michele Current

Lead vocal -- Faith Michele Current
Acoustic guitar, percussion, bass, mandolin -- Dusty Hughes
Pedal steel -- Bart Nissen
Co-produced by Dusty Hughes and Faith Michele Current
Mixed/mastered by Dusty Hughes

Cover art © 2017 Faith Michele Current

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Faith Michele Current Maine

Classic influences: Beatles/McCartney, Billy Joel, Stevie Nicks, Jessi Colter, John Denver, Emmylou Harris, Townes van Zandt. Autotune-free zone.

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