organizing an accident is a weekly newsletter where I leak home demos of unreleased songs, first draft lyrics, thoughts on the creative process, & dispatches from music life in Paris.
Listen to “A Little Time” (demo):
This song was written on July 28, 2021
This is demo leak #89
It has been one year since I wrote a new song.
Not that I couldn’t have, but that I chose not to. That might not be apparent coming from someone who sends you music every week, but it’s the truth. As I tell people over small talk at the bar, I’m working on something else at the moment or I teach music all week or I make songs for the baby sometimes—but I know it isn’t the same.
My relationship to music was forged through writing. Through experimentation, camaraderie. It’s the chase that hooked me. I never truly lost myself in singing other people’s songs or practicing scales. And so, by temporarily putting the pen aside, I cut the one rope firmly connecting me to the craft, and it’s left me feeling like no more than a hobbyist.
From the day the music stopped, an immense weight of anxiety left me. It was evident in every aspect of my life—I felt lighter, more at ease—but why should I be this much happier simply by not making music? Through the days, weeks, and months of my fast, I listened to my body. I took the cue. I quieted the inevitable identity crisis that followed and prioritized other interests, not to mention my newborn child. I read a lot, exercised hard, smoked more cigarettes. With time, music reclaimed its sacred station in my life. It came untangled from the misplaced ambitions of a younger man, wrestled free from my once-wounded ego. Music returned to serving higher purposes, namely by bringing joy into my world. Today, I play from time to time, if only for the thrill of it. I’ve grown rusty, but I’m even enjoying that part. There is a hesitation now, a fragility about my voice that makes me nervous when I sing. Like in the beginning.
One year ago today, I stood up from my piano where I’d spent the morning recording songs for a new album. My phone was ringing. It was my brother. We lost our mom that day, and I have not written a song since.
What I lost that day were the first great loves of my life. One unwillingly, and the other as a kind of sacrificial offering, like burning a tribute for the dead. What I have gained since is hard to reconcile, hard to express. In their absence, I have learned to feel them more deeply. Within the scope of my longing, they have become sanctified. Today, riven by their absence, I see how my every thought, hope, and gesture has been—and will forever be—shaped by their ghosts.
From Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson:
To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing—the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one’s hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again.
With love,
Ryan
“A Little Time” lyrics
So we go on living it
Took all my discipline
It isn’t quite the world
I pictured as a kid
Until I’m born again
By hands of holy men
I’ll pass through life
Just like a baby shivering
Some people find it hard
To show just who they are
So many lie committing crimes
Against the heart
All dressed up for the show
They can’t seem to let it go
No making plans to pay
The ransom of the soul
When I’m looking back seeing ghosts
Oh I can’t bear the sight of it no more
When I’m looking back…
We just need to buy
A little time
Creepin’ towards the night
We let it die
Reach over the line
And say goodbye
We just need to buy
A little time
So while we scale the wall
They keep us down by law
The fearless mind can’t see
The wire or the bars
This long and painful road
It spirals like vertigo
We see our lives flash by
In fire down below
And change is imminent
But space is limited
So we’ll come early
With our tickets in our hands
Now all the days we’ve waited here
Look all the same to us
We just need to buy
A little time
Creepin’ towards the night
We let it die
Reach over the line
And say goodbye
We just need to buy
A little time
These lyrics were written in July 2021.
From the vault
What I’m listening to this week
What I’ve been reading
Jennifer Egan - A Visit from the Goon Squad
Edith Hamilton - Mythology
Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.
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