dae·mon
noun: daemon; plural noun: daemons; noun: daimon(s)
(in ancient Greek belief) a divinity or supernatural being of a nature between gods and humans.
an inner or attendant spirit or inspiring force.
"Socrates claimed to have lived his life according to the dictates of his daemon"
The 5th and second-to-last track of Dear Ghost (EP) is here. I wrote Ephemeral Shannon (originally titled Shannon Song) over the course of a year. The song’s incarnation began while walking west on Bleecker Street in early 2021. I overheard a man on the phone say “I wonder what Shannon thinks about it,” and I felt compelled to write the phrase down immediately. A perceivably mundane statement to the inattentive psyche, but to mine, I felt an array of affect: the absence of Shannon, possible estrangement from Shannon, simple regard for Shannon and her input, and a real indirectness, possible avoidance, as he vocalized to a third party his desire to be in touch with Shannon. Which broadened into “who is he in Shannon’s eyes?” and “where is Shannon?” and “what part of him does Shannon represent to him?” or “what power does he perceive Shannon has over him, beside him, or even beneath him?”
The choruses allude to Shannon and the narrator once planting trees, pruning them together, which was their communication pipeline. As I wrote the song I realized the narrator was completely estranged from Shannon, alluding to how their connection is now “buried in concrete,” which is a reference to the premise of Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi. Shannon could be an inner child, could be a sister, could be the narrator’s daemon, could be the paradise of nature.