hello friends (and enemies),

Here’s the second song in this project. It’s called Come Back.

(thank you to Rebekah, Erin, and Fred, who listened to early arrangements!)

I wrote a lot of songs after starting a regular gig at a catholic church. All the archaic language that we sang in mass every week was knocking around in my head and all the fundamentalist theology was making my gut hurt. And so: a song from the perspective of the voice in my head that said Wouldn’t it just be easier to try and make it work? Wouldn’t it be easier? Don’t you want someone to just tell you who you should be and how you should live?

(As it happens, I don’t, thank you!)

This song is also very dear to me for a separate reason: My friend Jim Horbett recorded a video of it with me. Jim died of cancer in the summer of 2019, about a year and a half after we made this. He was a gifted, brilliant writer, one of the best guitarists I have ever met, and I was lucky to know him.

Song lyrics below. If you like this song/newsletter/whatever we have going on here, please share with any like-minded friends!

xoxoxoxo, Lauren

—

Did you lose the thrill of the hunt?
Or the joy of the run?
Did you have it all once?
Did you give it all up?
For the privilege of choice,
For a thing you called self,
For the comfort of touch,
Touching somebody else.

Come back to us.

Did you think something drastic would change
For a minute aflame?
Did you think you’d escape?
That you’d win in the race?
Get the girl that you love,
Get the choices you made,
And then bundle them up,
Let us burn them away

Come back to us and be safe.

After all, what is freedom, what’s life,
But a good sacrifice?
The altar’s stacked high,
It is meet, it is right.

Come back to us, be safe, be light.