Some Bright Morning
will there really be a morning?
Some Bright Morning
Will there really be a morning
Will I ever see the light
Will there really be a morning
Will I ever get it right?
I’m gonna get it right
Some bright morning
Some bright morning
I’m gonna get it right
Some bright morning
Some bright morning
Love has never been so close
And yet so remote
A flower through the pocket
Of one dead soldier
What am I to do
But still another dark thought
Spend another bank note
And fill my tank up?
You stood there in the floodlight
As I said goodnight
Feeling like the end of times was with us
But I made it home past the monument of stone
Past the fields of farmers waiting
For one bright morning
Will there really be a morning
Will I ever see the light
Will there really be a morning
Will I ever get it right?
I’m gonna get it right
Some bright morning
Some bright morning
I’m gonna get it right
Some bright morning
Some bright morning
I failed to hear the promise
Of the Prince of Peace upon us
I’m a stranger in the office
Where the paint is peeling
But you said that you were with me
Through the shadow of the valley
On the capitol beltway
On this long dark journey
It’s everything and nothing
Like I thought my life now would be
Reflection in the rearview
With my makeup running
But I’m gonna get it right
Some bright morning
Some bright morning
I’m gonna get it right
Some bright morning
Some bright morning
∞
I’ve been driving around the capitol beltway a lot lately. This is the nightmare of a highway that encircles our nation’s capitol. The traffic is almost always slow going so I get a good look at the sinister figure of the obelisk and can reflect on what happens in that small, sacred circle of federal buildings.
Southbound towards home, free from the congestion of D.C. & northern Virginia, the roads narrow & empty. The farms and trailers and cows and horses and fences fly by. Signs to make America great banner the driveways. It seems peaceful. There is no sign of strife on the surface. So what’s eating at rural America? I wonder how the indignation & passion behind the hard, fast political lines came to be so sharp. Is it a reality people are responding to, or a manufactured threat of disaster written into the collective psyche by lines & pictures on page & screen?
Rural Virginia is where I’ve been living these days. On my family’s farm in a 12’x16’ one room shed with no kitchen or bathroom. My dad is a farmer, and as I watch him working, day in and day out, I realize being an artist is similar. Both are tending to work that is never done, in service of a broader life-long vision. There's always more to do, new approaches to take, and leaps to make in the midst of mundane everyday tasks. You have to be motivated by a belief in the small things you are doing each day without attachment to the results. There's a quiet satisfaction in the daily steps. The music video is an ode to farming and the sense that the work is never done.
Meanwhile, capitalism is capitalizing on this notion that one is never “done”. Regarding the song, Guy wrote this tidy description for the press release:
It’s poking fun at the "grass is always greener" mentality that results from the dominant gospel of salvation through consumerism, the marketplace of endless self-help products and techniques, a hamster wheel that's always pulling us out of the present moment.
I attended a songwriting retreat on Nantucket Island a few years ago. This biography of Frances Farmer was one of the few on the shelf in the living room. The title captivated me. I bicycled on the old empty road by grapes rotting on the vine with these words circling in my head. Long after I wrote “Some Bright Morning”, I learned that the title of the Frances Farmer biography came from an Emily Dickinson poem.
Will There Really Be a Morning?
Emily Dickinson
Will there really be a “Morning”?
Is there such a thing as “Day”?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?
Has it feet like Water lilies?
Has it feathers like a Bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?
Oh some Scholar! Oh some Sailor!
Oh some Wise Men from the skies!
Please to tell a little Pilgrim
Where the place called “Morning” lies!
∞
If I can reach the equanimity of mind to zoom out a bit, I can see that what most people are wishing for is their own idea of a brighter morning. The only problem is that the extremely varied definitions of “brighter” are wreaking havoc on the country and the world. But who am I to tell someone else what “brighter” is? And what morning are we longing for anyway? Morning is a fleeting elsewhere. There’s always tomorrow’s morning. Or worse, we are looking for a yesterday’s morning, with all its accompanying pains and problems forgotten in the glowing miasma of nostalgia.
Today’s morning is the one we have and it’s only as bright as the clear lens of our eyes allows.
∞∞∞
I’ll be passing through the beltway again in a few days to play some East coast shows:
Thursday, September 25 Wavelength at St Anne’sToronto, ON
Friday, September 26 POP MontrealMontreal, QC
Saturday, September 27AS 220Providence, RI
Sunday, September 28Nightclub 101New York City, NY
Followed in November by some shows on the West Coast:
Monday, November 3 Sunset TavernSeattle, WA
Tuesday, November 4 White EaglePortland, OR
Thursday, November 6 4 Star TheatreSan Francisco, CA
Friday, November 7 Crepe PlaceSanta Cruz, CA
Sunday, November 9 Lodge RoomLos Angeles, CA
& ending in Europe & the UK:
Tuesday, November 18 30 Formiche Rome, Italy
Wednesday, November 19 Arci Bellezza Milan, Italy
Thursday, November 20 Spazio 211 Turin, Italy
Sunday, November 23 Le Brise Glace Annecy, France
Tuesday, November 25 Sala Vol Barcelona, Spain
Wednesday, November 26 Sala Juglar Madrid, Spain
Saturday, November 29 ZDB Lisbon, Portugal
this is a beautiful song and I dig the sentiments, the video and all that you have made around it. it was sunny and frosty here in Ireland when I stuck it on this morning. I was travelling to and from somewhere and looking at the low fog over the fields giving way to traffic and the like in a more populated area. It has a kind of classic 'driving song vibe' and I love that about music hitting me in transition from one place to another..I felt a bit like I was a ghost in ghost car driving through everything and nobody could see me.thanks!
Bright afternoon here in London when this came in, and had just returned half numbfaced from the dentist, who says I need 650 quid's worth of treatment next week. Your new song, and the farm video, cheered me up massively, as they always do. It's very bubblegummy, I think, which I like. The beginning may be reminding me of Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes.
Better yet, another show in December, and I have my ticket already. I have lived here 59 years, and know Dulwich and Peckham, but have never been to Nunhead. I would love to buy a T-shirt from your merch table, if you had some, and some of them were large. X