These recordings are recorded in my own home and mixed by a friend, or come to you straight from a phone mic. They are not intended to be considered on par with commercially released mood music, but are presented as songwriter demos of thought provoking folk songs.
On or about 1993 or 1994, I was on a freight train which took me from Nebraska to Montana. The train stopped in the Badlands of South Dakota. And shut its engine down. And I listened to a level of silence this Eastern boy had never experienced. As I gazed at those barren hills I heard Bob Dylan’s voice in my head sing: “Temples of Time.”
I thought about what that might mean for a while, and the train picked back up. When we got to Northern Wyoming the train stopped again, in view of the Bighorn Mountains. Which are an extension of the Rockies. Dark grey crags at the time half covered with snow. And what the phrase ‘Temples of Time” might mean occurred to me.
Later, I looked up what Bob Dylan might have meant by it. And I couldn’t find any song of his that used the phrase. So I decided to write my own.
Lyrics
In faded buildings I’ll find relief, With dry old dirt around my feet.
It’s serenity there I’ll go to seek, On what once were busy streets.
That were sometime in the past let go, For maybe where the trains would come.
It’s history now and even then, And will keep me feeling young.
Out beneath brown, water scraped hills,
I find myself needing to go, When I’m low on my lonely thrills.
But to those mountain temples of time, Is where my soul wants to wander
They were crafted once by God, For some long forgotten honor.
In faded buildings I’ve found relief, With dry old dirt around my feet.
It’s serenity here I’ve come to seek, On what once were busy streets.
That were sometime in the past let go, For maybe where the trains would come.
It’s history now and even then, And its kept me feeling young.
When the vicious beauty of those Big Horns
Pulls me to a truth I can trust
I come to think the temples I see,
Were built by God for us!
And it’s on grey granite I will remain, The wind within my ears
These archaic canyons stay the same, Strong through all the years.
I lose all my memory, Time out far from anyone.
It’s history now and even then, And its kept me feeling young.