“Touch” (iTunes) is the fifth song in my Atlas: Year Two series. It's also the first of five songs written for the Senses theme - a song for each of the five classical senses, in the order they develop inside the womb: Touch, Taste, Smell, Hearing and Sight. I spent a lot of time thinking through what “touch” sounds like, and what instruments most represent the sense of touch. My first thought: drums. No question. They are certainly the most visceral instrument I could think of, and require the most intense contact. But after thinking further, the piano might actually be most deeply related instrument to our sense of touch. You use all of your fingertips (one of the most touch receptive parts of our body) and at least one foot to play it. The piano has so many different mechanisms of contact: keys, hammers, pads, damper pedal, etc. A single key pressed, sends a domino effect through the piano to form a single strike of the piano strings, which are pulled to a tension that can exceed 40 tons. (crazy). And if built well, the piano was made to precisely account for every type of human touch we can throw at it. Even down to the aftertouch of pressing a key. I suppose if the Piano was a caress, the Drums would be a sturdy high-five. So I chose to use both.
I did a lot of research on the sense of touch before writing this song, and was so fascinated by what I learned. There seem to be endless possibilities of poetry in the sense of touch, so I had a tough time picking a path. One fact in particular stood out to me; Unlike any of the other 5 senses, you can't shut down your sense of touch. Hearing: you can cover your ears, sight: you can close your eyes, taste: you can choose to not eat something, smell: you can close your nose. But for the majority of people, touch is always on. It’s so on in fact, that we train our brains to filter out less important touch information because it’s so overwhelming (an example: if you’re sitting right now, you most likely aren’t thinking about how the chair feels underneath you, or if you’re standing, how the floor feels against your feet. You’ve learned to tune it out.) Also, Touch is considered to be the mother of all senses and is "extraordinarily important for development, both cognitive and a healthy body" (- David Linden) So as I was trying to figure out what this song should be about, those pieces of information kept ringing in my ears.
Inspired by those facts, I began to imagine what it might feel like to lose the sense of touch. As I wrote, I quickly realized that the metaphor of losing one’s sense of touch is a deeply dark experience, and this song got a little uncomfortably personal for me (which I’ll explain in greater detail below) - I decided that this song should reflect that and be a little uncomfortable too, both lyrically and musically. So I wrote the music as a broken lullaby of sorts.. The piano is sort of like a wobbly music box, the melody is kind of sweet at its core, but it’s also a little broken. I recorded everything as close and intimate as possible. You won’t hear any reverb or room atmosphere for the majority of the song. I wanted the production to feel vulnerable.
It’s easy to confuse the sense of touch with emotional “feelings,” which are two very different things (touch is information, and feelings are what are brains do with the information), but since touch is the most emotional of all of the fives senses, I decided to blend the two concepts together in the lyrics.
At first this song was going to be a work of fiction about a character losing his/her sense of touch. As I imagined what that must feel like, I realized I was actually writing an intensely personal song. I've gone through seasons of my life where I've felt like I was stuck in between joy and sorrow. A purgatory of sorts, where I wasn't present and enjoying the good in my life, but also not fully processing or feeling the bad either. Just numb. It's a terrible state to be in, because by eliminating pain, we eliminate the possibility of joy. Over the last couple years, I've fallen into that heart-space on and off. I don't like it. Honestly, I process it indirectly in all of my song writing to some extent, but it all pooled together in the lyrics of this song.
when will i feel this as vivid as it truly is
That opening lyric set the tone for the entire song, as it sums up what's wrong and what needs to be fixed. The question and the answer. I chose words throughout the song like "vivid," "volume", etc. The idea here is that since touch is the "mother of all senses" I wanted to tell this story using words that are related to senses outside of touch.
can we skip past near-death clichés where my heart restarts, as my life replays? all i want is to flip a switch before something breaks that cannot be fixed.
The "near-death cliché" lyric is fairly obvious as to what it means- I want to avoid having to nearly lose it all to have some great realization. I liked the idea that this song is open-hearted and a calling out for help, but it also accepts and acknowledges that things could be so much worse, if I let the glue dry. These lyrics also remind me not to be lazy in my efforts to fix the broken things in me... "all I want is to flip a switch," to me, that's almost like praying for lessons to not be learned, which is kind of unreasonable and lazy! Though it's what I want, these words remind me that healing is hard and necessary work.
rain or shine, i don’t feel a thing, just some information upon my skin. i miss the subtle aches when the weather changed, the barometric pressure we always blamed.
Because the weather is such a multi-sensory experience, I chose to use a lot of weather imagery in this song. You'll also notice a theme of machinery as well: Weather represents the experiences outside of our control, and Machinery represents our responses to it. I liked that idea. (Side note: the lyric about barometric pressure is actually an inside joke between my wife and I. Early on in our relationship she would get small headaches and would always say that they were from the barometric pressure. I always teased her and said I didn't believe her. Turns out she was totally right. Jokes on me.)
In the chorus, pain is a well-intentioned weatherman predicting God as best he can
In addition to weaving in those weather and machinery themes, this lyric acknowledges that the design of pain is an important warning system. I am not a fan of pain, but pain truly is one of the greatest gifts we were given, as it keeps us safe and alive. I'm a fan of that!
“the sirens sound, just before the walls come down”
A couple months ago, we began some home remodeling/construction, and right before it began, I had a few weeks of feeling pretty burned out and numb. So this lyric is a reference to that "siren" sounding right before the construction on our house began. More obviously, it's a reference to terrible weather, tornado sirens (especially here in Illinois!), etc. Side note: the violins play a siren-esque line several times throughout the song to reflect this lyric.
Speaking of violins, my amazingly talented pal, Joanna Hui recorded all of the violins you hear on this song. Similar to how we approached violins on "Daughter," I told her to just come on over to the studio and I'll just explain some vague ideas and press record and see what happens. She did such a lovely job and I feel like the strings on this song embody the struggle and beauty I wrote about in the lyrics.
So I recorded this song in my home studio during the remodeling/construction, which was happening right above me. Constant hammering, sawing, drilling, etc. After days of almost losing my marbles, I decided that I should just go with it, so the drums you hear in the big chorus towards the end of the song are layered with those construction noises. A dozen or so tracks of real demolition right above my studio: smashing, walls breaking, hammering, drilling, etc. All edited into kick drums and snare layers. I thought that was a fun way to capture the environment that this song was written in. It also felt fitting with the lyrics - a song about needing remodeling.
Though this is a sad, vulnerable and slightly uncomfortable song about feeling numb and without the sense of touch, it has a happy ending. The final lyric:
down my arms, a thousand satellites suddenly discover signs of life.
Those words are answered prayer. The character in this song began to feel again. Not too long ago, I began to feel again. This lyric means a lot to me because it is also a subtle reference to one of my favorite feelings in the universe: The shivers, the chills (or a more terrible word, goosebumps) - the feeling of experiencing something non-physical in a physical way. That's actually what got me hooked into writing songs. As a kid, I was so confused and fascinated that a song could move me and actually make my skin react. So I set out with that as my songwriting rule. With every song I write, I must experience the shivers/the chills at some point in the writing process. For over 15 years I've stuck to my guns on that rule. I have to deeply feel every song I write and this rule helps make certain that no unfelt song gets through the cracks! Even on a song about losing feeling and touch.
Much Love, Ryan
LYRICS
TOUCH
when will i feel this as vivid as it truly is, fall in love in a single touch, and fall apart when it hurts too much?
can we skip past near-death clichés where my heart restarts, as my life replays? all i want is to flip a switch before something breaks that cannot be fixed.
i know, i know- the sirens sound just before the walls come down. pain is a well-intentioned weatherman predicting God as best he can, but God i want to feel again.
rain or shine, i don’t feel a thing, just some information upon my skin. i miss the subtle aches when the weather changed, the barometric pressure we always blamed.
all i want is to flip a switch before something breaks that cannot be fixed.
invisible machinery, these moving parts inside of me well, they’ve been shutting down for quite some time, leaving only rust behind.
well i know, i know- the sirens sound just before the walls come down. pain is a well-intentioned weatherman predicting God as best he can, but God i want to feel again, oh God i want to feel again.
down my arms, a thousand satellites suddenly discover signs of life.
