best of 2024 • Nap Eyes • Passageway

I had the last verse of this song written for a long time, along with a bunch of earlier verses that I didn’t like as much that I eventually discarded. One quiet day when I was not doing too much of anything, I started to come up with the lyrics of the earlier verses — just in my head without an instrument or speaking them out loud, which is unusual for me. So the song was generated by this out-of-the-ordinary writing method, but I think this resulted in a song that is pretty different from anything else I’ve written to date. 

https://www.napeyes.com/

These songs are poetic, and not just because the words are poems. Their poetry lies in the music itself: Chapman’s reserved but powerful delivery, their lulling, hypnotic repetitions, the avian chorus of squawking guitars and chirping synths. This marriage of words and music captures something ineffable that lies between thought and expression (to borrow a phrase from Lou Reed), and with it, Nap Eyes have produced a beautiful, literary, aspirational, and inspiring work. post-trash

On the parade ground across the great divide

I saw 1000 candles flickering

And through a peasant’s eyes I saw a green-clad man

Ringing blue bells of offering

Beside him, astride, in neon fuchsia robes

And more beautiful than anything

A woman the sight of whom changed his mind

In a permanent way

Well, as for me, I rode the three miles north

Back to old York town

And lodged my horse in a stable there

Before walking to the castle grounds

Strange to make a parade so far away

Where there were so few others around

But I let the thought drop from my head

And that night my sleep was sound

When I awoke, I knew not the hour

But it seemed all the people had fled

I returned to my room and where the mirror had been

I found a blue doorway instead

Bracing myself against a bone-chilling wind

I wrapped my scarf around my head

And entered down a rainbow crystal pathway

Strangely compelled to follow where it led

Well, ever since then I’ve been in this gem-sea land

Where the night is as warm as the day

People talk on phones and they drive down roads

To places many miles away

As for me, I remain by my edge-of-town home

Watching the ocean’s peaceful sway

I’ve been drifting in and out of a mysterious dream

Of that old-time passageway

Is this what I get for listening to “Iris”

At nine o’clock on a Monday morning

In the shadow of the foreboding sculpture

In the diamond circular saw ring?

Far away, the dawn-bright dew

On some blue fields sparkling

In the deep mind, in the well,

In the heart of things