4 Song Ep: "I Will Wait"

I wrote 4 songs for school. I worked very hard on them and have decided to share them. I hope you like them.

This is song 3 of 4. Here are songs ONE and TWO if you are interested.

Now on to Song 3 - I Will Wait.

This song may be familiar to some of you. I have been recording and messing around with it for a while. There is a new ending for sure. The reader's digest version on my opinion of this song is that I like it but I don't love it. I love how technical the song is and I spent a great deal of creative time on the song, especially adding the Taize part at the end, but its ok. The full effect of what I was aiming for is described below!



“I Will Wait”
Your love has hit me from the start, filled the holes in the deepest part
I cannot wait but I will wait forever
Hope for me I am not strong; tell me what takes so long
I cannot wait but I will wait forever

And I will faint in your presence

Please I pray you come and meet me
I will, I will wait for you
Hope’s last hope I won’t let go
I will, I will wait for you

My heart burst from my chest. Whose fault is all this mess?
My soul beseech you, I’ve lost my speech now
I pushed you far away, I push too hard they say!
I cannot wait but I will wait forever

And I will faint in your presence

Please I pray you come and meet me
I will, I will wait for you
Hope’s last hope I won’t let go
I will, I will wait for you

(chanting: Veni Sancte Spiritus)
Come Thou Holy Spirit, Fill the Hearts of your Faithful,
Kindle A Fire within us – of your love
Come Thou Holy Spirit, And We shall be created,
You will renew the whole – of the earth

           
            This song comes from a topic explored in John Wesley's sermon on “The Means of Grace.” Wesley is advocating that people seeking Jesus should wait in the means of grace (e.g. Scripture, worship, communion, prayer) until the Spirit shows up, saying, “According to this, according to the decision of Holy Writ, all who desire the grace of God are to wait for it in the means which he hath ordained; in using, not laying aside.”[1] This song echoes this sentiment.
            The song is fast in tempo to convey the fast paced way we live of our lives. The drums symbolize the constancy of our pounding stress. The words imply that we are weak, fading, even pushing God away, not being able to wait on our own power, but realizing that we must wait for the Lord who alone is our strength, our only hope and our very life. So we wait because we must.
            Then there builds a fainting point, a point where we can’t hold on and so we let go. The guitar builds harsher and harsher as we are letting go. Then the interaction with the Lord happens. 4/4 is the most popular time signature for the most popular music. The time signature changes from 4/4 to 3/4, illustrating the normalcy of our lives changing signatures as we approach the divine. The 3 in the 3/4 can be the trinity though the words are uniquely addressed to the Holy Spirit. The music here is inspired by my encounter with the Taize service at St. James’ Catholic church in Seattle as part of a Seminary experience.
            The service was very new to me. I loved the participatory nature of the service. One song stood out to me. The congregation was prompted to sing “Veni Sancte Spiritus” over and over again as a drone for the choir to sing in Latin something so gorgeous. I too, in this song, drone the Veni, but since I don’t know Latin, I borrowed a Catholic prayer about the coming of the Holy Spirit. I soared the lyrics over the drone similar to the choir. The electric guitar soars as well. I apply more reverb to the lyrics here to give it the cathedral effect. I let the song pitter out leaving it open for the next song to impinge. Our encounter with the Holy Spirit cannot go without consequence and it certainly cannot go back to the stressed out, fast paced life that we just came from. We must depart the experienced changed.

[1]    Albert C. Outler and Richard P. Heitzenrater, edit., John Wesley’s Sermons: An Anthology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1987), 162.

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