Fingers In The Trees – Song and a Chat

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Episode #106: Fingers In The Trees (Song starts at 5:52 & 26:00)

Autumn is a great time of year. It’s a season which really resonates with me for some reason.

I was camping in Bright, Victoria recently, camping by a stream (which you’ll get to listen to in this episode). The trees were all losing their leaves, the birds singing.

The bare fingered trees are the image I had in mind when I wrote the song ‘Fingers In The Trees’. The sort of fingers that reach out against the twilight sky, the sunset. It’s quite an evocative image.

Who’s fingers are they? Who am I thinking of? Friends who are perhaps in another country, friends and family who perhaps may no longer be with me.

Incidentally, the night I recorded this episode was exactly 24 years after I composed the song. I just noticed that as I read the lyrics and analysed the meaning of some of the lines.

I love that about the creative realm, It constantly speaks to us, surprises is & plays with us – if we are open to tuning in.

And that’s exactly what you do as a songwriter. You open yourself up to another realm. It’s within us all, like a muscle, which gets stronger the more you use it.

To have a song like this one in the song books, it sort of makes all those years of work,all the ups and downs so worth it. Well, they were worth it anyway…but now and then it seems you catch a special fish.

I’m reminded of another memory as I wrote. My very young daughter caught the tiniest, most delicate, beautiful golden fish when we were fishing together off a pier, a long time ago.

I can see that fish, see the expression of wonder on her face (mine too, I sure). I remember the weather, the temperature, the season. It was Autumn.

The thing about a song like ‘Fingers’, it brings back so many memories when I sing it. The hope is that listeners will have their own memories reawakened when they (you) listen to it.

As a songwriter, you create a touchstone of sorts, I guess. It’s a great feeling.

Words and music are such a potent force, a powerful combination.

So is the spoken word, especially when you speak from the heart, when your in the moment, just allowing want ever thoughts come to mind.

That’s what I do each week here. Then all the images and ideas seem come together and theme emerges for each episode.

I hope you enjoy this week’s episode. There are two versions of the song this week. A piano/local version and a band version too.

Blog www.petepascoe.wordpress.com. The Hazy Line – Tales Of A Pianoman is a memoirs ‘work in progress’ sort of blog.

The Roughest Cut by Pete Pascoe and The Patient Hum has Fingers In The Trees on it. Streaming now.

Correction: The Untrodden Track is the name of the upcoming album by Paul Dredge and myself (not the Roughest Track, which I mistakenly called it in this episode).