7. Vibrations

The story of two trains passing in the night...

Like You Really Care  >  Really Wish I Could  >  Who Can Say?  >  My Father's Hat  >  Gordon Matta Clark  >  Mar y Cielo  >  Vibrations  >  This  >  You Know I Know  >  Who Can Blame Me?  >  Astray  >  Dear Mongolia  >  Mar y Cielo (reprise)

Here's the final version :

When I was living in the Czech Republic, working on Underground (see My Father's Hat), I would take the late train out about an hour east of Prague to a farm in a small village where Heathe and I were living. In this post-Soviet landscape, on this rattling train, I'd get sleepy, and putting my head on the glass and feel every splice in the rail in my head, lulled until you'd got the explosive slam of a train blowing by in the other direction. In the stations you'd have those unexplained delays where someone else in the cabin on the other side, inches away from your face, has their head up against the glass. There's got to be a french movie somewhere that starts with two strangers on scheduled trains, going opposite directions, seeing each other across this silent gap through windows, and falling in love over a series of 5-minute stop overs in a station where neither of them lives. Got to be, right?  

Anyway, it was on one of these late trains that I wrote this song, imagining these lovers being the trains themselves (no faces like Thomas) aware of all inside, in the night between stations, the expectation of that explosion as they pass each other once each night, and then go on their way. 

Here's is a recording I did at the time with a bluegrass band I sat in with in Prague. The Czechs like their bluegrass. Jeržy, Tomaš and Luboš let me sing and play my first wheezy accordion. 

Tearing through the night’s long skirts

This train is on its way to morning

The shifting of the passengers

the sweating of the babies

seduction in the front car

uncovered by the moon

and forests in the cloudless stars

also want to forget you

but I feel vibrations of your passing

underneath my wheels

the rails both tremble slightly

as you somewhere pick up speed

and I’m heading to the east

with your vibrations taunting me

t’turn back...t’turn back...t’turn back

but the track, but the track.

Words and music by Humberto Cordero

Aaron : guitar

Andrew : drums

Jim : bass

Jon : lap stee guitar, piano

Humberto : vocals

Recorded and won by Jon Evans at Brick Hill Studio, Orleans Mass. 

Mastered by Coastal, Berkeley Cal.

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