would you walk away from me

So I'm going to share another song, and it actually would have made more sense to share this one first. That's because this song is actually about my feelings and thought processes when it comes to making music. If I ever do release that album this is going to be the first because, for me, it sets the tone for all my songs.

I first wrote a draft of what would become this song back in 2004, based on a story I read in one of my college classes. When I was a freshman I took a class on British Literature, and one of the pieces we read that still sticks with me is James Joyce's short story "The Dead," part of his 1914 anthology Dubliners. The main character in “The Dead” is a man named Gabriel Conroy, tasked with giving a dinner party speech. Conroy is socially awkward and incredibly nervous – basically, not too different from myself. Most of the story consists of Conroy’s inner monologue as he wrestles with himself in preparation for the speech.

James Joyce’s story struck a chord with me. A couple of the lines in the song come almost directly from the story. Specifically, the line "Will I fail with you as I failed with her" refers to a part in the story where Conroy has just attempted to make a joke with a woman at the party and inadvertently offended her. As he sulks away from the encounter, Joyce describes the scene vividly:

He waited outside the drawing-room door until the waltz should finish, listening to the skirts that swept against it and to the shuffling of feet. He was still discomposed by the girl's bitter and sudden retort. It had cast a gloom over him which he tried to dispel by arranging his cuffs and the bows of his tie. He then took from his waistcoat pocket a little paper and glanced at the headings he had made for his speech. He was undecided about the lines from Robert Browning, for he feared they would be above the heads of his hearers. Some quotation that they would recognise from Shakespeare or from the Melodies would be better. The indelicate clacking of the men's heels and the shuffling of their soles reminded him that their grade of culture differed from his. He would only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they could not understand. They would think that he was airing his superior education. He would fail with them just as he had failed with the girl in the pantry. He had taken up a wrong tone. His whole speech was a mistake from first to last, an utter failure.

Joyce wrote this over a hundred years ago, but man, he just nails the feelings of insecurity that I sometimes experience. In that vein, the song has the refrain, "Would you walk away from me?" This line has two meanings. On the one hand, it's a plea: "Would you, please, walk away from me?" On the other hand, it's a question: "Would you listen to me or would you walk away from me?" I think those questions summarize the life of an introvert: on the one hand, we need personal space and time alone, but on the other hand, we desire deep connections with other people.