“…Today I dreamed
Of friends I had before
And I wonder why
The ones who care don’t call anymore
My feelings hurt
But you know I overcome the pain
And I’m stronger now
There can’t be a fire unless there’s a flame…”

© Seal, 1994 from the album “Seal”

Third new song uploaded for the day on a cold, foggy Warwickshire night, from the forthcoming album Time Demands. As per the previous posts, this one is lyrics only and first draft at the moment. No music exists yet.

I have to admit, I have no musical preconceptions for this particular track, at the moment, I have absolutely no idea what direction it is going to take me in. Ahem, pardon me. What direction it is going to go in, dragging me after it, more accurately.

Its is like a lot of the other songs, based on a collection of lines, observations and thoughts that have been percolating for the last decade and have a broad number of different sources where I first heard them and thought “I’m keeping that, that’ll come in useful…” It is definitely autobiographical, about childhood, fleeting observations and nuggets of wisdom found amongst the fools gold of life (bloody hell thats good, I’m not giving that one away, LOLZ). In some cases I’ve had these lines for a long long time and not had the opportunity to use them and some of them have snuck their way in here and finally found their place.

It also cements the lesson that life has taught me that life isn’t something that just happens to you, you make a number of choices that then open up a number of forks in the road of life in front of you which then give you more choices and each one of those leads off in different directions… well, thats my philosophy anyway.

Just for the shits and giggles… where did the title come from? Actually, it came from a podcast where I saw it was going to be an article of discussion that night. I’m not avoiding a copyright sniff on where the title came from, but thats where it first struck me. Also, I can absolutely confirm that its got absolutely nothing to do with either Taiwanese or Chinese or Japanese flags or political parties, or necessarily the phenomenon of the northern latitudes where the sun always remains low in the sky for a whole day and doesnt really rise or set… The relevance of it is more the latter, where the light is always low and maybe blinding you to what may be right in front of you. It is a line from a notepad and its one that I liked and it for the moment at least, it fits. Like other works in the catalogue, it may change, but when I was looking for titles for these songs, this was the one that seems to fit and for now at least, it will stay.

The lines themselves; very much about where I grew up in Coventry and about the people whose company I found myself in during my late teens and early 20’s. Im particularly happy with the last verse, particularly the references to factories, football grounds, paper planes and toys and unemployed boys; Coventry was quite grim in the late 1970s and early 1980s as it was changing from being an industrial post-war town trying to rebuild itself after the war and the political changes from the late 1960s through to the 1980s put a very different slant on that; I was born less than a mile from Coventry City Football Club’s old Highfield Road stadium and that was a big part of my childhood; so were a lot of the factories that family members and friends families were dependent on for their livelihoods at the time, all pretty much now gone as the city changed and evolved. Unemployed boys, well, there was certainly tens of thousands of them around at the time, all looking for something, maybe something that some of them never found, or if they did find it, they didnt find it in Coventry….

As it says, you connect with what works for you. What is meant for you will not pass you by. But by the same token, its a cautionary tale if you keep swimming after something that you figure you have to chase, even if it may not really be what you want any more… after all, no one wants to be in deep water on their own thinking what the hell do I do now….?

I’m very happy with its current form and I’m very much looking forward to where it may take me during its gestation period.

The Land Of The Low White Sun

This is the path you had put yourself on
Its a little late in the day to ask yourself: Was it wrong?
Back then everyone told you; it’ll probably be OK.
Then they went ahead and did the opposite thing anyway…

Other people have already decided who I am
Reputations change pretty fast these days
Nobody gives a damn
So here I am sitting here all tangled up in my words
Shards from a shattered looking glass
looking like feathers from scattered birds

We all looked towards those we thought were the wise ones
And from the company we kept; the answers there came none
And in the time it took to sleep
In the land of the low white sun
We look back to the way it never was
And we weave our ideas into the fabrics of our times…

It all gets lost, so deep amongst all the noise
A childhood full of games, paper planes and toys
Of factories and football grounds
And unemployed boys
You connect with what works for you
I guess its easy to say

Theres no point swimming after a ship that has left you behind
Deep out int he water drowning on your own
While the old men keep on dreaming their dreams
And trying to find their way home…

© Lyrics by Steve McCarthy-Hunt 2025