PEACE AND LOVE I try always to learn from painful experiences, and to forgive – both myself and others – and to move on, with an open heart and mind. At some point one realizes that anger is a real waste of energy, it’s draining and damaging, and one learns to deliberately let go of it, and the letting go brings a lightness, a new freedom and hopefulness that may unfortunately be hard to sustain at all times. Peace and love are ideals toward which we reach.

THE END OF THE WAR I love the 5/8 time signature. I love how it bounces and propels itself forward.

The “war” here could be seen as a metaphor for two people not getting along. When it’s over there is a quiet calm and it’s really sweet and nice but the sweetness is bitter because you’ve suffered a lot to get to the end of the fighting. But you fought fair and that feels good and your sanity and integrity are intact, and even strengthened.

WHY CAN’T WE LOVE EACH OTHER Pretty self-explanatory, this one. Trouble makes me wonder why it’s all so complicated when it seems that something as universal as love should be so simple.

BUTTERFLIES I had a dream that I was standing in a hilly field surrounded by dead butterflies. Butterflies represent…what? Souls? In this song I bring all the butterflies back to life.

WHAT IS WRONG I want to solve the unsolvable problems. I always think moodiness must be explained to be mastered. I sensed he wanted out but he never vocalized it or gave me any reasons and so in this song I try to figure it out myself. I ask him, I ask the universe, What is wrong? What is wrong with us and with everything but also what is wrong with me for getting myself into yet another complicated and unhappy situation?

UNSUNG I’ve always wanted to put an instrumental on an album but for some unknown reason never got around to it until now. I recorded the electric guitar direct into the 8-track machine, foregoing any amp, and the result was this dweeby guitar sound. I think it’s charmingly dweeby. I’m a dork, okay? and I’m not afraid to show it.

EVAN I recently got together with my old friend after we’d been estranged for a few years. Seeing him again made me realize that we will be bonded forever, through bad and good, no matter if we fight or never even talk to or see each other ever again.

It is a friendship that we have not exactly nurtured over the years but nevertheless we have a history and a connection that transcends time and distance and circumstance. At the roots Evan is still the same Evan I met when we were just kids first starting bands and I’m still the same girl who was drawn to him for all his darkness and light; for his remarkable, original mind and his talent and his humour and the way he liked to play with words and his utter lack of judgment of other people. Did I get all that in the song? I think you have to read between the lines for the details.

LET’S GO HOME This is a true story – I really was sad on the train; I really swept under the couch (in advance of his visit) and stocked the fridge with his favorite foods, etc. He thought I had a messy, dusty, unorganized home and I tried to make it warm and comfortable and sparkly for him so he would want to be there. But his distaste for my bohemia was just an excuse masking our larger problems, and I couldn’t solve them with the Windex and paper towels he bought me.

I PICKED YOU UP Two people who had kind of given up on other people find each other by accident.

FAITH IN OUR FRIENDS Friends are good to have when everything falls apart, or seems to. Your friends accept you as you are, with all your faults and weaknesses and pimples and bad habits and breakdowns. Friends are invaluable in times of crisis and grief. It’s a simple concept, but so true.

I’M DISAPPEARING This one is told from an anorexic’s point of view. I’ve suffered from this in the past and people would say things to me like “You’re shrinking” or “You look so small.” In this song I try to explain what it’s like to be that person – how it feels to be smaller than I should; smaller than I used to be, and how weird and scary and baffling and overwhelming and how literally Self-defeating it can be.

DEAR ANONYMOUS This could have been called “Sympathy For The Devil.” It’s addressed to a stalker, name unknown, written by the stalkee. This victim, who doesn’t consider herself a victim, contemplates why she is being harassed. She doesn’t know who the perpetrator is – he’s a stranger to her – but she knows not to take it personally; she realizes with an impressively level head that she is the random innocent target of her tormentor’s own pathology. Having sympathy for one’s antagonist initially requires a lot of forgiveness and generosity of heart and mind, but then it becomes sincere curiosity (Why are you like this? What made you this way?) and empathy (I’m screwed-up, too – we are more alike than you know.)

TO LINER NOTES BY JAMES PARKER

[photo:jonathan stark]