Lotus
This song is about how difficult it can be to find happiness in a world with so much injustice. It's basically a mantra to myself, to stay focused on what I know to be beautiful and true. It contains one of my favourite quotes from Keats about beauty and truth, I thought I came up with the quote during a long session of thinking about meaning but as Keats lived a few hundred years before me I have to accept he thought of it first : )
The title is from a couple of buddhist concepts. Samsara is the opposite of Nirvana, the world we inhabit with all it's difficulties. The symbol of the lotus flower rising pristine from muddy grounds is an allegory for ourselves in the midsts of samsara.
I have been playing around with the guitar for this for a long time, just walks down from C to A minor. I can't play the guitar and sing it at the same time, so I'd never heard it before I recorded it. Before it had lyrics it was called Poppy's Song, and was in honour of our lovely cat Poppy.
It is my first real recording attempt so bear with me. Two guitar tracks, one just the lead bits in between the singing, the other doing everything else, plus two voice tracks, one main and one backup. Cheapo microphone running through my on board soundcard, had to try and sing really loud which doesn't come naturally to me, even then it is fairly quiet so you might need to turn it up to hear it. First experiment with using Audacity, just used it to record basically for this track.
MP3 4.3Mb
Ogg Vorbis 3.8Mb