June 13 - Rescue Breathing

John's ephemera (and this sat in a notebook for twenty years before being recorded) are often the places where he is at his most playful. And by playful I definitely don't mean unserious or lighthearted. Often the sweetest smallest song is the most direct route to the darkest and most painful material, with the light of the melody allowing the lyrics to carry what they need to carry. And here what they carry is a combination of tenderness and everyday horror.

This is an overdose story framed as a love story. Someone giving another the simplest gift possible: breath, life, lips on lips, a sweetness that can only exist in the context of the horror around it.

John notes that this narrative is from life, only with what he did becoming "you" and what happened to someone else becoming "me". It's a technique at once tender and raw, making this song a simulation. And what a small depressing gift it is to be allowed to sit in someone's stead in a moment like this.