Episode 2 - Wandering Child
Hi everyone.
Welcome back! The second song I’ll be debuting Behind the Door is called Wandering Child.
Wandering Child is a song I started writing for The Light, when we realized we would need a totally new track for the album following some unexpected developments from leaving the label. Ultimately, we chose Back to the Garden for that spot (which I LOVE and think was the right choice!) but there was something about this song that really spoke to me as I banged away at an old guitar in Brittany’s sitting room, caterwauling every experimental lyric with Atay as a patient audience in the other room.
The lyrics of Wandering Child are about nurturing the part of you that remains curious and innocent your whole life. For me, it’s a song inviting my deepest fears about unrealized potential, choosing the wrong path, wasting time, and being outside my comfort zone into the room and soothing them. It’s about searching a beautiful world and the unlimited and unexpected adventures that might arise. In some ways, it’s a coming of age story — feeling like you don’t belong, leaving home but feeling the call of something familiar, and ultimately having to cull all the messages you get from the world and your own intuition into finding meaning and living the best life you can.
As always, it’s peppered with old testament imagery (damn you, Sunday school and gospel music!), the idea of trials and challenges being central to growing, but, as I truly believe, the outcome is hopeful and calls us to serve the world with a sense of duty to our fellow humans.
Both stylistically and in terms of theme, the song has a lot in common with Still Waters so these two represent a pretty good idea of where my head has been in recent years. Hope you all enjoy and that the song might be of some service to you all too.
Love,
Ian
DOWNLOAD WANDERING CHILD: MP3
Wandering Child
— First Edition Handwritten Lyrics —
for sale now in the Secret Store
