Story Behind The Song

The title track (although I didn't know it would be when I started) was the first music composition I began putting together. It actually sat for quite awhile in semi-finished form as I worked out a lot of the other tracks. The difficulty lay in the transitions between the very different segments, which I've since found is a common problem with my compositions. The various pieces were all there, but smoothly moving from one to the next was a time-consuming challenge, to say the least. The lyrics began with the chorus which came from several phrases I had jotted down at various times. Once I had that I knew the song's theme was some type of encapsulation of the whole "Great American Experiment" with a democratic republic. This hardly seemed like a subject that could be adequately addressed in a few verses unless I took quite the birds-eye view of the American experience. Since I would need about three verses I began considering what platitudes we had that came in threes and Thomas Jefferson's statement of the inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence was the easy winner. It was a fellow musician who recognized that the other songs for the album seemed to revolve around the question posed in the chorus: "...(are) we living out these self-evident truths?" While I had not begun the project intentionally attempting to tie all of the tracks together it did appear that they did each describe some feature of our daily struggles to define ourselves on a personal and cultural level. Thus the album got its name.

Song Description

Does the way we live our modern lives square with Jefferson's "self-evident truths" of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

Lyrics

Never take it lightly
For there's only one
You choose how to spend it
Until its course is run
But time will hold you captive
Don't reach the end and find
What you have is nothing
Compared to what you leave behind

Living as you'd like to
Speaking without fear
Voting your own conscience
Hail the blogosphere
Like the adolescent
Insisting they know best
Never heed the warnings
And you'll own the mess

Agnostic and prophets
The honest and frauds
Citizen soldier
Built this house of cards
Workers and players
The rich and the poor
Toil and struggle
All vying for more
Colors and sizes
Language and race
Totally different
Yet similar face
Free from oppression
But do we have proof
That we're living out
These self-evident truths

Chasing every rainbow
Seeking pots o' gold
Position, wielding power
Winning love untold
The kid buying some candy
Eats all that they take
But too much of the sweet stuff
Leaves a stomach ache



CHORUS

INSTRUMENTAL BREAK

Good deeds have a bad side
Compassion can become a scandal
Hard hearts grasp for their gold
Hoarding all that they handle

Reaching out to the world
Makes us more self-aware
Unless we tend to our home
We'll have nothing noble to share

CHORUS