Unlike the other songs on my new record, "February Here" was written about 6 years ago, while in college. It is not a product of my living in New York, but has such a common theme as the rest of the music: hope, tinged with disappointment or longing.
The way the song actually was written comes from my time as an R.A. at SUNY Fredonia. I was working in an all-freshman male dorm called Chautauqua Hall ("Sha-TAH-Kwah"), on the third floor. Part of your duties of being an R.A. involves being "on duty" for a particular weekend, sitting at the front desk and signing in resident's guests for the night. It has considerable downtime, and that is where I honed my skills at table tennis and pool. It is where I got very good at playing video games, and where I would practice guitar.
It was February then, 2004, and I was sitting desk on a Friday night. My friend Ian, who was once a resident of mine, was away in Philadelphia seeing his girlfriend, and he allowed me to borrow his beautiful Martin acoustic guitar for the weekend. It was the nicest guitar I've ever held up to then.
So there I was, in the office, with my customary notebook, and I started to scribble out words, first just a stream of consciousness.
"Deja vu and all those catchy phrases that make the word so clear" - I had just learned in Social Psychology how cliches and axioms are human constructs designed to minimize anxiety and simplify situations. By creating a simple explanation for something otherwise complex, (i.e. a chain is only as strong as its weakest link), it becomes easier to decipher what is happening in the complex arena that is human interactions.
I then started thinking of how Valentine's Day was approaching rapidly; how this Valentine's Day would be the same as the other 18 Valentine's Days before it (1 was when I was dating someone, and I was 20 at the time). I was alone, very lonely, and the person I wanted to be with happened to be dating a friend of mine. The last time I was enjoying a Valentine's Day, I was in love, and it was high school. Since then, it has been a sad and sorry few years for me in my love life, and I was still in many ways suffering from the burns of that last real relationship ending. I found that I actually liked the way listening to very sad music made me feel; how I was not really cheered up, but rather, I had company down in the depths. To this day, there is something satisfactory about listening to what I normally refer to as "sad bastard music" and feeling sorry about myself - I can't explain it.
It's also amazing how new people, when you start to get to know them, and begin a journey in love or friendship, take you on a completely unique path. It's amazing how falling for someone versus another feels different in your life, and you can never truly capture the way it felt the first time. The person I wanted, I did not love...yet. But I wanted to know what loving her would feel like.
And so that whole feeling from that February, it seemed to be on repeat; it was always February here, in my cold, disconnect world. I was always feeling this loneliness, this longing, this sense of needing someone else to be whole again. And I was literally looking for it everywhere.
I see now, and have grown to appreciate, that I must be content in who I am (but that's for another song to discuss on this album).
I recorded the song in my dormroom, and added a myriad of guitar parts, and they all seemed to work together beautifully. It is, by far, my favorite musical composition of mine, and even seemed to impress Caleb when we were working on pre-production. It will be acoustic-based with some electronic elements, similar to what my friends Nathan and Becky did on their Barnaby Bright CD, "Wake the Hero." It's Imogen Heap without the auto-tune, if that makes sense.
Here are the lyrics to "February Here:"
Deja vu and all those catchy phrases
That make the world so clear
I wrote them down, I wrote the times and places
I think that I've been here before
Before you came I saw the world in seasons
Like winter, fall, and spring
So when it snows it's always summer somewhere else
And it's February here
It's February here
It bubbles up from deep inside of me
And the trouble is just getting you to see
That I want
To know what
It feels like
To love you.
I want
To see what
It looks like
Above you.
Falling back into this empty bedroom
I draw the shades down tight
I'm feeling cramped, I think I need more headroom
I'll take a walk outside
There's something about watching the snowflakes dancing
And floating in the wind
It helps a lonely man forget he's part of
Another February here
It's always February here
There's so much of me I know I could let go
Pretty soon the only question that I'll know
Is I want
To know what
It feels like
To love you
I want
To see what
It looks like
Above you
Thank you for reading. Please visit www.johnschmittalbum.com should you be interested in donating to help make the album possible! Over $3,000 has been raised, and there's a long way to go to make it really happen!
Best,
John
www.myspace.com/johnschmitt
Still love this song.
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