Only Stories

Melding to my suckling baby boy during a sweltering San Diego Autumn heat wave with temperatures reaching close to ninety degrees, we rocked and gazed into each other's eyes. While the fans whirred peacefully in the uncommonly quiet solitude of our home recording studio, amber light filtered in through the white cotton curtains dancing and swaying like ghosts in the circulating air. 
Our home, normally strewn with cables, mic stands, musicians, instruments and a tireless record producer (who doubled as "Daddy",) pacing in and out of the rooms in an endless ere of setting up sound, working with musicians, refilling his coffee and checking in on his baby mama and son, was now empty. The calm after the storm. Leaving me with an early evening with nothing to do but create new melodies for the lullabies I hoped my son would sing to his babies someday. 

On this particular occasion, my little one played a big part in honing in the perfect melody and I discovered how opinionated (Daddy's) little boy could really be. Along with the gentle hum of the fans and my baby's cooing from time to time, I was hearing a subtle Native American drum beat deep inside my head. I like to think that it was the combination of our hearts beating as one. With it came bits and pieces of a melody that I began to hum out loud. Every few notes, my son would readily coo or grunt depending on whether or not he liked what was developing...in which case, after an hour of humming to avoid his grunts, I somehow became his instrument. While the melody for Only Stories was born, he finally closed his eyes and I laid my son down to sleep with the profound knowledge that he and I were writing our lullaby together. My heart swelled with a tenderness and pride only I can fully comprehend.  
Over the course of the next few weeks, maybe even months, I carried our melody along with a deep desire to create the perfect lyrics for our lullaby. I spent hours writing and re-writing my innermost thoughts scrawled on notebooks, napkins and sometimes even the palm of my hand and used the same method we used to achieve the final melody, testing each line while singing my baby to sleep. 
While most lullabies are laced with Fairy Tales and stories, I reveled in the thought that I could potentially enrich my child's life by telling him the truth, or at least what I've come to believe in the years that I've lived...that everything we're told, everything we tell, whether to ourselves or to others, is essentially a story and what we choose to believe resides deep down inside, sometimes hiding until revealed by the words of a story or Fairy Tale with just the right key to unlock our own inner mysteries. Because each one of us holds in our heart our own truths and that is what guides us on our journeys through life.
Only Stories is about the stories we're told since the day we're born that become the lessons we share until the day we die.
Here, I share with you one of my favorite works of art. One that I will hold close and dear to my heart as the song my baby and I wrote one note, one heartbeat and one belief of truth at a time.

Only Stories
Brooke Mackintosh

I just had a brilliant idea
Let's call it poetry
Wrap it up in black and white
With satin bows
Never mind
The words you've heard before
It's only history
All you need to know
It's really nothing more

They're just stories that we tell
When there's really no one else's
Point to view
Only stories that we chase
When there's nothing
That'll face us with the truth
You'll find what's true
Inside of only you

Let me live each moment as it comes
You love a mystery
I am not your story
I cannot be told
Pay no mind unless you cross that line
A future oh, so fine
Someone wrote it
And they sold it into gold

They're just stories that we tell
When there's really no one else's
Point to view
Only stories that we chase
When there's nothing
That'll face us with the truth
You'll find what's true
Inside of only you
Beware what's there
Disguised as living proof
They're just stories

Build a bridge into a new horizon
Focus on the love each step will take
Deny no neighbor thoughts or dreams of illusion
Befriend,  shake hands, collaborate
They're just stories

They're just stories that we tell
When there's really no one else's
Point to view
Only stories that we chase
When there's nothing that'll face us with the truth




Thank you for reading my blog, for taking the time to listen to my music and for entering a sacred part of my world. Here, in my heart, you are welcome.

You may hear this song at my website www.BrookeMackintoshMusic.com
Written in 2012. Recorded by Sven-Erik Seaholm at Kitsch & Sync Production in San Diego, CA, April 2013.