BROKEN BONES

BROKEN BONES came out of the same bedroom, in a stretch that was quieter and more inward than usual. I'd been looking backward a lot — at how much of being young I spent held in place, and at all the wandering and trying-things I wish I'd done while I had the chance. The song is what came out of sitting with that.

I'll keep most of what it's really about to myself. The honest core is simple: I grew up held close — by the people who were meant to loosen their grip — and never got to go looking for the world the way I wanted to. A lot of those early years are hard for me to reach now. BROKEN BONES is me wishing I had more of them, both to remember and to have actually lived.

The solo is the heart of it, even though it's almost nothing — a few simple notes. What carries it is the tone: two guitars stacked together, one pitched up with a whammy until it sounds almost like a child's voice, the other left sober and grown — the same melody at two ages of the same person. The little choir under it is everyone else who lived some version of this and ends up singing it back. Rina's cover, the skeleton and the bleeding hourglass, is just time doing what time does.

It was so long ago, so long for me to recall.