As I write this in 2023, in my mountain home that I have to vacate in two weeks with no home secured for me at this point, I have been in the last months, curating the volumes of musical files I have from the past dates of my recording my solo piano work.

I was/am very serious about all of my compositions and the fact that I have a mic in front of me, whether or not I am singing, is heard in this exploration of this tune, How Did We Get So Lonely. After rediscovering this several weeks ago, and listening to the versions as well as re-playing-relearning and, more importantly, writing verses for it which as changed the whole context.

What was once a song about a relationship is now a song about the development of the USA.

Lyrics below. The versions are rendered here in the order they were designed.

March 27, 2015…In this file, I am bringing back a song I had created earlier. As of 2023, I have not found the earlier version simply because that means I have to listen to audio that is not identified in the name. Still, here in 2023 I have revised this once again and have laid down some lyrics.

A few days later, April 1, 2015 and I am still on the trail.

The next day, April 2, 2015…there are two takes both in the early evening.

The songs in the audio were composed in 2015. The words heard on the tape are spontaneous. The lyrics down below were written in April, 2023. The song will be tightened up as well as the lyrics and performed at the White Horse Listening room in Black Mountain on an open mic night…maybe the 24th of April.

How Did We Ever Get So Lonely

Am                  Em                   Am

How did we ever get so lonely

Am                  G                     Am

Both as a country and a people

Am                  Em                   Am

Where did the love of Discovery

Am                  G                     Am

Become a fight to be equal.

(same)

Why is the movie more important

Than the story it tells on the street.

Why do we lock up our Freedom

Only to be the prisoners of Belief.

            E                      Dm                  C

Maybe it was because we were so brutal

C                                              E

And raised the flag over countless graves

Am                  Em

Leaders building liberty

Am                  G

With shackles and charisma

Am                  E                      Am

And everyone else looks the other way.

How did we ever get so divided

Maybe it was the way we arrived.

Armed with a Bible

With bullets sending silence

Naming every Devil we had to slay.

Everyone is anyone anytime.

This was true for history, yours and mine.

All that we pretend

Can be worn by the wind

Until we all become our own next of kin.

Maybe it was because we came with Cruelty

And raised the flag over countless graves

Leaders building liberty

With shackles and charisma

And everyone else looks the other way.

There is no conclusion like suspicion

And Truth never finds a home in detention.

Belonging to the past

Will only come to last

When the future gives us permission.

We all know that money is worshiped

Even as it kills and substitutes

What might have been a life

Is now a pitiful pile

Of sorrow in a world that must remain cute.

            Maybe someone can bring us to the factory

            Where gods and angels are mass produced.

            An assembly line of saints

            Will never hesitate

            To sell us a match and a fuse.

-J. Olschner (6/27/2023)