For those of you who don’t know, “Through the Arch” is the opening track for my second solo album, equilibrium. I composed this tune just after the completion of the green (my first solo album) sessions. I used my 1998 Warwick Thumb Bolt-on six string direct into my laptop. Chris Moore mixed it later at East Hall Studios in Fayetteville, Arkansas. There are no effects or looping. It’s just me and my bass. However, this is the first tune I recorded in A=432 tuning. 

I must first confess to stealing this title from a painting. I’m unsure of the artist’s name, but the work seemed to be executed in an impressionistic style very similar to Monet’s work late in his life. I’m pretty certain though that this painting isn’t a Monet.  Anyway, my song, “Through the Arch”, isn’t as much about this painting as it is the situation and what I felt when I saw this painting.

Cindy (my wife) and I were in a hospital lounge waiting for news about our friend who was a few doors down undergoing an operation. These rooms almost always make me antsy. The walls seem to seep nervous energy left over from the thousands of people that had previously occupied the room. All of these people had the same agonizing duty as us -- waiting for news about a loved one. I think it’s because of this deposited nervous energy that hospital waiting rooms are adorned with as much neutral coloring as possible. Certainly the decorators of these places don’t want to add to the tension in the room.

This waiting room was no different. Wall to wall was a barrage of creams, mauves and burnt umbers. Perhaps that is why this painting was in this room. The dominant color scheme looks just like this room’s. The foreground is a tangle of a garden past its prime. Flowers dangle closed and brown. Dried leaves litter the sun baked path. The path leads to a wall ravaged with leafless vines the color of bleached bone. The path continues, however, to an arch in the wall, and through it one can catch the tiniest glimpse of a lush garden. The colors of this new garden are so vivid that it makes the foreground which covers over  seventy-five percent of the canvas seem insignificant. The path bends into this garden and disappears from the viewer. I looked at the painting’s title. It was of course “Through the Arch”.

I was confused as to why someone would hang a painting about death in a hospital waiting room. That almost seems cruel. Looking at it gave me what I can only describe as a sick feeling. Later that evening we were told our friend had passed.

Like most people, I am no stranger to loss. I’ve endured it a few times before, but this was the first time Cindy and I had faced loss as a couple. It’s a totally different animal. When you are alone, grief fades relatively quickly. It burns off. As a couple, the grief rekindles every time you see the pain in your partner’s face. It bounces back and forth between each of you, it gains momentum and it stays dangerous.