Kiss The Sun

There is a Mexican restaurant in Dallas, Tex Mex of course, and it is, to my mind, as far up on the totem pole of Mexican food as one can get. It's called Tupinamba, and it's a 250 seat place where all spicing is still done by family members. They're generally thought to have introduced the Nacho and the Sour Cream Enchilada to the North Texas area, and they've been around for well over half a century. It is one of the main places I like to eat when in Dallas, but on Fridays and Saturdays in the evening especially it can get very crowded and a wait is very common. (They also have a Sunday Brunch to die for)
So, one Friday back in 1994 I was there with the (then) spouse, my lead singer, and some friends. We'd just finished working on a tune that our then Guitarist wrote, called Dancing on the Rings of Saturn. It was a very New Age (the philosophy, not the musical style) song, with pseudo-folk elements and lyrics that sounded like they came off a 5th Dimension album in 1969. So, since I had a little time to kill and my day planner with lots of spare blank paper in it, I decided I had a bit of time to write some lyrics.
The line came to me, "Why do we have wings if we will not fly?" Of course, this is not really grounded in reality, but it was an interesting approach to a logical conundrum -- throw logic out the window completely. So I continued, "Why do we have ands if we can't touch the sky?" And I was off. The chours came quickly, but then the first and second verses came out, with the first two lines of the third, and our table was ready. So, then I started trying to finish it but the inspiration wasn't there.

So Kiss the Sun sat for some time, . Last year I got a friend to help me transcribe it into the computer, (A task not for the faint of heart, my handwriting is terrible) and I managed to finish the lyrics, and it went on the list for sequencing.

Kiss the sun has a strange form. The verse is the same as the first half of the chours, doubled. There's a break in it before the choruses, though, which is something of a B section. So the form is AA1AABAA1AAbAA1AAbAA1. Instrumentation is piano, Viola, strings, vocal, bass, and drums, with guiro and claves for extra percussion.
We're getting down to the end of the songs here. I have to finish The Ballad of Jason and Martine, then sequence all of Religious Rights. Obligations also needs some attention, but since that album isn't slated for this year, it might be able to wait, though I'd prefer not to if I can help it.

Religious Rights

I got this idea. The term "Religious Right" seemed rather oxymoronic to me, as it seemed that many of the very right wing fundamentalist crowd were not really advocates for religious rights except for their right to worship as they please and to shove their faith down everyone else's throat. This idea intrigued me in playing with the dual meaning of right in a political sense and right in a sense of something someone is entitled to.
I have a seriously hard time with fundamentalism of any stripe. To state categorically that something is a fundamental truth, to me, indicates that the person has decided that all of the evidence to something is in, nothing else can be learned about it, and that is the end to all statements on the topic. It's a rather closed viewpoint to me, and also foreign to my mind. And before anyone gets their tail in a knot about this, I believe this falls on all sides of the fense. I've known many Vegan Fundamentalists, Pagan fundamentalists, and fundamentalists of may belief systems other than just the standard ones people think of when the term comes up. I also believe there is a strong fundamentalist undercurrent to the Athiest movement -- you can't prove a negative, and to categorically state that something dosn't exist is problematic. I was married to an Athiest for seven and a half years, and that was one area we simply didn't discuss because of the argument it would create. Also, most of the Athiests I've met, (but not all) actually disbelieve in the god of the Abrahamic faits, and that is what gets them to state that no god exists. That's like saying that since there is no such thing as Garlic Rosemary ice cream that no such thing as ice cream exists.
Religious Rights plays with this problem of people forcing their path on everyone else. The song is in AABABABAB form in A minor. (been writing a lot in that lately) The song came about in about three and a half hours, though I had a kernel of an idea in place before.

This finishes the Gypsy Heir tunes. I have one more to finish and another one to do from Evidence, but it looks like things are going to be done pretty quickly from here, and the process of polish and recording will start fairly soon now.