Following last year’s creamy-smooth hook-heavy aural confection of ‘Home for Halloween’, Dr. Joseph Abramo and I decided to go a little more raw and experimental for this year’s Halloween song. Entitled ‘Mr. Halloween Man‘ I wrote out the lyrics in the middle of a single night, taking into account where Joe and I were finding ourselves in the middle of our 40’s, which some say is the start of the most dangerous years of a man’s life. I left the rest of the musical magic (and the bulk of the work) to him. We’d never crafted a Halloween song in such a distant and disconnected format – usually we are collaborating in person to make sure the cadence of words flows with the music – but both of us were interested in how this would go, and the end result is a trip.
He walks down the street unaware of the stares
A top hat he swings, the cape that he wears
He doesn’t succumb to the light of day
He doesn’t get down by the words they say
He sings his own song, the devil may care
Pretends it doesn’t matter, it makes its own wear
There’s the pitch and the howl of the great theremin
Filled with fire and noise, filled up with flare and din
Mister Halloween Man,
Hollowing man
Mister Halloween Man
Hollowing man…
Across jittery beats of tense and unresolved progression, the song moves in jagged and jilted fashion, unsure of where and when to stop, unsure how to navigate such new and chilly waters. It’s the perfect metaphor for the shifting sense of time perception, and what might come of the second half of our lives ~ ambivalence cloaked in some sick beats. Joe took the raw lyrics and refined them to fit in with his own vision, which is exactly what I hoped would happen, picking up where I left off, and incorporating his own mid-life experience into the song.
A half-life of rage, a half-life of porridge
A heart overflowing and empty of storage
All regret at the point of no turning back
He takes one step ahead, a click and a clack
Mister Halloween Man,
Hollowing man
Mister Halloween Man
Hollowing man…
The words and sentiment were partly informed by this powerful quote by Colin Harrison – no stranger to conveying the crisis of the mid-life of a man: “Such men believe in luck, they watch for signs, and they conduct private rituals that structure their despair and mark their waiting. They are relatively easy to recognize but hard to know, especially during the years when a man is most dangerous to himself, which begins at about age thirty-five, when he starts to tally his losses as well as his wins, and ends at about fifty, when, if he has not destroyed himself, he has learned that the force of time is better caught softly, and in small pieces. Between those points, however, he’d better watch out, better guard against the dangerous journey that beckons to him -the siege, the quest, the grandiosity, the dream.”
The original lyrics are as follows, so you’ll have to listen closely to Joe’s interpretation to hear his slant on it (which is, admittedly, better suited to the music and flow of the song).
It’s the pills that we take just to keep us from flight
It’s the carving out of parts we’re not ready to lose
It’s when we face that there might not be a choice left to choose
It’s the rolling of time when we just want to be still
It’s the hill that we climb when what is left is the chill…
Of the hollowing man.
Mister Halloween Man
Oh the hollowing man
Mister Halloween Man
Halloween is supposed to be scary, but it’s a cakewalk compared to getting older and confronting where we find ourselves midway through life. Such a crux is often rife with conflict, internal and external, and finding the way through while making sensible and noble choices doesn’t get easier. There is also the terrifying recognition that our decisions now may not be easily reversed or rewound, the way such decisions might have been forgivable or forgettable in our youth. We don’t have as much time to turn it all around. That adds to the tension and worry at hand, giving an underlying darkness to this spooky time of the year. It’s all there in the music, especially the melancholic ending that ultimately resolves itself in a contemplative moment of beauty and grace.
The age when it matters is the age when it won’t,
A life of can and do switched to can’t and don’t
He’s not what he was, just a hollowed out shell
He’s not what he is, but he never will tell
He’s Mister Halloween Man
He’s the hollowing man
He’s Mister Halloween Man
Just a hollowed out man.
