Ethan Reed

Somewhere A Light Went Out For Somebody

I keep a journal. I look through it occasionally. One night I flipped through and found a few words I had written down on a Sunday – when, in just two days, I had seen three streetlights go out. There’s some magic there, and I have a feeling if I go too far into it I might ruin it (like you’d ruin a wish on your birthday), so… sorry. But that’s where the title of the piece came from. Prior to finding the title, however, I found a few sentences describing a strange feeling I’d had quite some time ago. They ended up inspiring this song, so I think it’d be nice to put them here. Yes. The exact words. From my journal.

Little things started to make my insides wrinkle and shimmer. I would feel misty at the sight of a kid eating ice-cream, an old man just sitting there. The surge of heat and tingle would always start at my heart and flood straight to the extremities, slamming into the backs of my eyes hard enough to make some liquid squirt out, fading and leaving nothing but a shine in my vision and damp eyelids.

With “Somewhere A Light Went Out For Somebody”, I made a second attempt — now with music as well as word — at describing a feeling I might never be able to define.

Lyrics

Somewhere A Light Went Out For Somebody — Ethan Reed

Through a squint darkly
The world is a bright place to see
Unexpectedly impossibly there’s a
Strange energy beneath my feet

Lift at my Grandfather’s wake
I’d never really seen death
Somehow his waves made me break
And I smiled at the beauty

And the heat blooms low it spills from the heart
My body’s cold but the flood’s so hot
It shimmers it wrinkles I tranquilize
‘Til it sets up and slams the backs of my eyes and
How hard it hits
My world is stone
This worlds my home, and it’s warm
And it’s warm

Silent in the bathroom
No one can hear me there
I know that’s how truth works
But I’m scared to let those strange hands near

Lift at the mouth of a face
Her marble lips dead
But just one look, that deadly grace
And I’m in love again

With something more
There’re streetlights going out and there’s no moon tonight
My eye in lightning rolls
I’ve always laughed the way I wept and there’s no wind tonight

But the heat blooms low it spills from the heart
My body’s cold but the flood’s so hot
It shimmers it wrinkles I tranquilize
‘Til it sets up and slams the backs of my eyes and
How hard it hits
My world is stone
This worlds my home, and it’s warm
And I’m warm
And I’m warm