Memoir

from Re:union (EP) by Surreal

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about

This is one of the more personal songs (lyrically) I've ever written in many ways. There's a stark acoustic version recorded on 2005's WHEN THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU, and that's where it first was given life. With Surreal, "Memoir" becomes a midtempo ballad that holds onto its underlying tensions and doesn't really ever release them, which is, I guess, one of the points the song is trying to make about the human condition.

lyrics

Memoir

You thought you could stay up for a while and write about it
You thought you could stay new
You thought you could transform everything that you touched
You liked to think it through
You thought you could sell pineapples to oranges
And poetry too
You thought the plan was simple when you started now
Before it became true

Is this love
Is this love
Is this love
Is this love

You thought you checked your catalog of smiles
To find the right one to show them
You thought this feeling would stay young
That you'd never crawl out of it
You said you like to spin in circles
Until you fall down
So why did you go and tell all my friends you like to spin in circles
But you never fall down

Is this love
Is this love
Is this love
Is this love

And every single passage
Leads back to this
It's the memory, it's the question
That never leaves my head

Is this love
Is this love
Is this love
Is this love

credits

from Re:union (EP), released March 27, 2020
Written by Alan Semerdjian and Surreal. Performed by Surreal.

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about

Alan Semerdjian New York, New York

Songwriter, poet, and educator Alan Semerdjian has been making and performing music in the NYC/Long Island area and beyond since 1990. His entire annotated musical catalog will be available exclusively here on bandcamp by 2023.

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