Set Out To Sea

(K. laCour) This is another of Karissa’s message songs, vignettes from her inner dialog. Beautiful thing; certainly not a radio tune. Some of the lyric…

You hope for the best then you leave the rest
Maybe someday, the waves will take you on your way
You tell me of places you long to go
Of all the things that you yearn to know
So tell me why are you still at bay?

Sailor, sail
Set out to sea and start steering
Start steering at the stars

A song of hope and determination, right?

Except that’s not what she wrote. I thought it was for months, but one day when I was mixing it, I just couldn’t, in my mind, make out the word ‘start’. It sounded like ‘stop’. When I asked her about it, she said I had the whole line wrong. It was really ‘stop staring at the stars’.

Oh my God. It hit me like a ton of bricks. It wasn’t a song of determination; going at it with new energy; it was a song of giving up. Setting out to sea wasn’t pursuing her dream. It was about getting on with her life.

We were only two songs away, both hopeless introspections, from her being gone.

Set Out To Sea