The song ‘Sky’ is written to the cummings words contained in his poem IMPRESSIONS I from the book of poems called ‘Tulips and Chimneys’. The poem is more commonly known as ‘The Sky a Silver’.
What I loved about this poem is the beauty of the words. I didn’t really analyse the poem itself, but again, just by reading the words, a song sung to me in my mind’s eye. As I mentioned, I was captivated by the imagery of a silver sky, jewels, a moth stumbling along trees and rivers. This imagery forms the basis of my music interpretation. The intro musical hook reflects the moth stumbling along and the sections melodically are shiny, light, bright with hopefully some beauty.
Cummings’ poem is very short, containing only forty two words in total over eleven brief lines, so the only real challenge was extending them into a three minute song framework. But I love the idea of as few words as possible in songs. It is common practice within songwriting to write a song and then edit out many of the words until you are left with the most meaningful choice lines. I feel this is what cummings has done here. I can imagine him writing many more words and taking his pencil and scribbling out the majority until only the most impactful words remained.
The process for getting to the song version you hear on ‘Sea’ was the same in all cases. A song was written and a demo recorded at my studio, full of guitars. The guitars I used would have been a Rickenbacker 330, Fender Telecaster ’52 re-issue, Martin D18 Dreadnought and a Rickenbacker 4003 bass guitar. However, my guitars again were replaced by James as he found another level for the song and added additional instrumentation. The final piano chords as the song closes were the brilliance of my good friend and musician Frank Kozlowski. Frank lives in France, but we have managed to collaborate over the internet on a few songs in the past.
As with all the four songs on ‘Sea’, I mixed them and James mastered them.