Varuna: King Tide

Varuna

I want you to know

From the upside/inside

Hard for you I know

You are drawn by a king tide

From where the black flowers grow

To the light in your eyes

Good night

Goodbye

From your farthest mind

Comes the great forbidden tide

Where orange blossoms smile

And liquid crystals glide

Arcing upwards to the sky

The boundless oceans say goodbye

Goodbye

Another legacy from the Imperius Rex catalogue, Varuna was another song far too good to be overlooked! Trip hop vibes with almost prog metal guitar layering, there exists soooo much depth and sonic information in this recording! “That’s how you round out an EP!” Cam said with satisfaction.  I’d workshopped the lyrics and vocal melodies with Evelyn during the song’s creation. We worked well together at times with the writing and lyrical processes. The Hindu God of the oceans, Varuna – to my agnostic sensibilities – is used here to represent the exchange of energies between suiters, and the transference of crystals, tides and oceans from one entity to another and back again.  This imagery I took from a similar poem I’d penned in 2002 when living in a musical house in the mystical Melbourne mountains! Again keeping records and copies of ALL ideas, new and old, proved both useful and beneficial.  Keep everything – every voice memo, scrawling, text to self, work in progress demo – everything.  They WILL be useful again one day! And by the time that happens, you’ll have greater skills (and in this case collaborators on hand) to employ those embryonic noodlings in a context even more advanced than what you could have hoped for at the time their inception!

The notion of “the forbidden” for me has meant so often in my life – falling for those already accounted for.  I fall for personalities and the Prestigious.  And oddly, I am more relaxed, uninhibited, playful and engaging with people who I know are off-limits!  It’s because they are off-limits that enables that!  “Nothing will ever happen.  This will only ever be platonic.  There will never be frisson, intent or advances. It will therefore be uncomplicated, honest interaction.”  And knowing THAT frees the soul, or my soul, to be unabated, totally natural and my freest form of self.  And perhaps not so strangely at times, being my open self HAS actually appealed to someone attached, someone accounted for – someone off-limits.  And that’s where the trouble starts….

I listened to a great deal of music while growing up – as so many of us do.  I’d find in listening at times, particular phrases, melodies or changes (within everything from concertos to mathcore blast beats) would jump out at my ear! A song I liked and would listen to on repeat for hours/days, might contain a turn around phrase, bridge/coda, vocal melody or solo section or cadenza, which was even higher in its musical expression and beauty than all other sections of that piece.  It might be a four second guitar lead, a combination of chords and vocal melody within a pop song’s bridge section, a synth riff, the melodic variation in the third and seventh lines of a folk song in a strophic form – anything! Any section which achieves, to my ear, the highest level of vibration and musical expression.

These sections, throughout my life, I would listen to over and over again.  To enjoy and revel in the sublime sensation those intervals and timbres would evoke in me over and over again.  And one day I thought, “Why not make these segments of euphoria the entire song? Not just an eight second phrase of enlightenment within a four minute pop song; make the WHOLE SONG vibrate on that level! Make every section of your songs the bits you want to hear over and over again!  At least that’s been the aim.  And Varuna for me is a manifestation of sustained but subtly changing sonic pleasure.  Oh the internal workings of a musician’s ear and receptive agencies!

Inner Game again enjoyed moderate rotation on Brisbane Community Radio – another triumph! And it was, once again, an INCREDIBLE GRATIFICATION to have my – our – songs recorded and captured professionally by my talented friends and colleagues.  In the subsequent months, I would listen to these songs myself on high rotation.  We had created those sustained moments of sonic ecstasy (to my ears at least), and I was (and am) proud, thankful and ecstatic to have completed another installation into the Soul Wide Open songbook!