Episode 18 - Alabaster Heart

Hi friends,

Back to our regularly scheduled programming!

Alabaster Heart is a peculiarly titled song about what I guess could be described as a mid-life crisis — an urgent internal turmoil about the sense that life has become calcified and cold — and a tension between holding to one’s commitments and seeking fresh adventure.

Luckily, I am not suffering from a mid-life crisis! But it was fun to overlay some of my current life’s events onto the lyrics of this song. A pregnant wife. Doubts about the future (thanks COVID!). Dreams delayed.

When we started writing Alabaster Heart in 2015 (demo included below — listen to those harmonies!), I didn’t know where the phrase came from. Only after it popped into my head did I look into what alabaster really was. It’s a form of gypsum used in the creation of statues and memorials. 

That felt like a stroke of luck. I love the metaphor of an inert material used to emulate life replacing one’s true heart beat and causing a reckoning. I enjoyed carrying that theme through the verses and bridge.

Hope you all enjoy and are doing well. 

Here’s Alabaster Heart. 

Love,

Ian

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DOWNLOAD ALABASTER HEART: MP3

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Alabaster Heart
— First Edition Handwritten Lyrics —
for sale now in the Secret Store