While recording the song that would originally become my first EP, there was a song I wrote called “The Tree”. It’s a simple conversation between a human and a tree. “You sit around waiting for something that you already have” said the tree.
I liked the song but in the end I wasn’t my happy with the recording and it felt a bit contrived so I put the song on ice for a while and tried to write another song from scratch from the same concept.
I took many walks up the mountain behind our village in Xiamen to try and listen to what the trees had to say, and what kind of song they would have me write.
I don’t remember the moment the lyrics came but I remember coming back home and picking up the guitar.
Where “The Tree” was very literally a back and forth conversation, the lyrics of “Speaking Leaves” were more abstract. As they came, they felt much more as if the consciousness of a human and tree merged together. There is no need for it to make logical sense, nature speaks through and intuitive language of patterns, a language I’m still learning.
The first iteration of the song was a gentle acoustic version. This version is far from dead, you will hear it again, but after picking up an electric guitar for the first time and wanting to test the limits of my older songs, I ended up making a full on prog rock version of the song for a live show which would eventually become the live album “Resonance Experiments 1-2”.
Later, Kuma-chan would start trying to sing on all my songs and I tried some gentler electronic versions of the song.
Because this album centers around 4 stories and each story is a world in itself, the version of it that appears on the album is meant as a landmark, a path between the world of thought and the world of emotion.
Once you find that secret doorway, a landmark can help you find it again.
I’ve always loved the idea of a song having multiple versions. I never look at a song as being complete, more like a prolific artist, it can have its different eras, which can be revisited or experimented with.
I was hesitant to release it as the first single because it doesn’t embody the widest scope of what the album sounds like, but as the glue that holds it together or as the signpost that leads you where you are going, it made a lot of sense.
That and I felt it represented what I think of I+everything 3.0, a version of our work which is much more flexible and adaptable, and one that finally feels like what I’ve always wanted it to feel like.
Hope you like it!
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