The Question
Who am I beneath the roles life has given me? This Fleeting Glimpse is less a statement than a self-portrait drawn in questions rather than answers.
This Fleeting Glimpse - © 2023
The Spark
Some songs begin with a melody. This one began with a realization.
I found myself living within the competing responsibilities of an unsuccessful marriage and parenthood, trying to understand not only the life I had built, but the person I had become inside it. I wasn't looking backward with regret or forward with certainty. I was simply trying to take an honest snapshot of where I was emotionally and mentally at that moment.
The Journey
This Fleeting Glimpse is built around a single melody.
That melody becomes more than a musical idea—it becomes a thread of identity woven throughout the entire piece.
At first it grows with confidence, expanding into unity before being interrupted without warning. What follows is intentionally unsettled. The rhythms become jagged. The meter resists comfort. Familiar ground disappears beneath the listener's feet, reflecting the emotional disorientation of trying to navigate an unhappy marriage while parenting strong-willed children.
Several times the original melody returns.
Never for long.
Like memory itself, it offers only a fleeting glimpse of where the journey began before being swallowed once again by the weight of the present.The second half of the piece shifts from conflict toward reflection.
When the opening melody returns it transitions to a minor key, no longer carrying the optimism of the beginning. Experience has changed it.
The guitar and bass then become two voices in conversation.
The guitar speaks for my now ex-wife.
The bass answers for me.
Neither is portrayed as right or wrong.
Both are grieving something they cannot give the other.
Although their voices are different, they end in exactly the same way—reaching upward before disappearing back into the music, reminding me that pain is rarely experienced by only one person.
The closing statement belongs to my children.
The original melody returns one final time, no longer standing alone but surrounded by harmony.
To me, it represents the legacy of parenthood.
Children begin with the melodies we give them.
What they build from those melodies becomes entirely their own.