Songwriting is often a simple form of storytelling. The trick is telling a story using minimal words. Many of the songs I’ve written are story songs. But I also have a lot of stories I could tell that may not work in song. Today, I’m sharing a video of one of those stories.
A Train Called Forgiveness
When I was a child, I was the victim of an extreme cult that my parents chose to join. That experience led to some struggles with mental health issues. So, in my mid-20s, I started trying to deal with the trauma I suffered as a kid. One way I did this was by traveling. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I took several trains around the U.S.
In 2012, after my father died, I wrote a book about my childhood in a cult, A Train Called Forgiveness. The narrator of the story, Andy Burden, is a guy in his late 20s who’s trying to make amends with his past while taking a train across the country.
The Man with His Head Caved in
On one of my train journeys, I met a young African American man with an entire side of his head caved in. He’d been the victim of a tragic accident. I tell the story about “The Man with His Head Caved in” in my book A Train Called Forgiveness. The story is a bit too much to work into a song. So today’s video is simply that story in spoken form.
The story is 100% true, and at its foundation is a theme of forgiveness.
Oral storytelling, like songwriting and writing, is another great art form to practice. I might throw more spoken word stories into my Youtube Channel mix in the future. – dse
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