Purchase download/unlimited streaming here: https://walterehresman.bandcamp.com/album/cassandra-cursed

This song was influenced by latter-day Utopia, which is unsurprising given Ehresman's lifelong love of Todd Rungren. Aside from the obvious power pop element, and the extensive use of synths, you can hear the Utopia influence in Ehresman stepping out to try new and more complex vocal arrangements.

He tells us: "This song is about something that I think we all face, to some degree--trying to have our reactions to people and situations be in the "now" as opposed to being controlled by traumas from our past."

These Strings (© 2023 Walter Ehresman)

We all want personal autonomy

--control our actions in the “now’;

Holding fast in each calamity

--looking forward still somehow.

No one perched above the stage

--slyly pulling on our strings;

No one writing on our page

--trying to tell us when to sing.

And so we go and flow, although tempo is slow as we bestow these changes--on ourselves;

And try to hide the scars inside, as we deride the glorified outrages

--that we tell.

[chorus]

What to do with these strings?

I’m so vigilant to keep them off of my back;

Now I can’t see a thing,

but I feel them stretching backwards into my past;

What to do with these strings? What to do with these strings? What to do with these strings?

Just play.

I tell you that I will always be

--here with you in the “now”;

And I’ll never stop my work on me

--‘cause you deserve no lesser vow.

Walter Ehresman: vocals; keyboards & key percussion; electric rhythm & slide guitar; 5-string electric bass; talking drum; drum machine manipulations.

Produced & engineered by Walter Ehresman at Snipe Bog Studios, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

p. 2023 Walter Ehresman. All rights reserved. Snipe Bog Records