Invisible Machine

lyrics and music by Tom Sanderson

I left my home to get away
No more to see the light of day
No more gravity to hold me
I orbit earth above the sky
In case you’d ask this spaceman why,
the strife and discourse overwhelmed me

The cold winds freeze, the tempers burn
So I remain unseen
The world’s a distant memory
Invisible machine

Up here I gaze far down below
I’m floating higher than you know
I watch the world in distant yearning
This spacecraft orbits mother earth
The dreary soil of my birth
The noise persists, the sun is burning

The cold winds freeze, the tempers burn
So I remain unseen
The world’s a distant memory
Invisible machine

Tom Sanderson: vocals, keyboards, bass, percussion. Recorded November 2023 to February 2024

The “backbone” to this song came together rather quickly. The chorus was a the first idea – I looped what I had done and then added what effectively became the verses and bridge. I liked the phrases, but I felt they were in the wrong order. I moved each segment to where it made sense and trimmed some excess repetitions.

I finally had the song structure ironed out but the percussion had been a steady techno beat the whole way through, mainly as a rhythmic placeholder. This seemed to work for a potential dance remix (if a DJ is offering, I am certain they could chop the whole thing up nicely), but I found it repetitive and not very interesting. I auditioned several rhythm possibilities and ended up using bits of each, filtering some at the beginning part of the song.

Where the keyboard sequence had been a quick process, life got busy and I lost my momentum with this composition. I had initially had some temporary words for the chorus: something like “how the west was won.” I didn’t think these words fit the existing music. As the new year (2024) clicked around, I thought about calling this song “Hyperbole” but as I attempted writing lyrics, I could tell this wasn’t a great fit either.

The music suggested something spacey, at times sterile. And perhaps I heard in the music some wonder and simultaneous loneliness. These thoughts eventually steered me towards a reclusive astronaut who loves the earth from afar but finds aversion to the overload of stimulation and conflict of the planet. He chooses to detach but still wants the best of both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial dwellings.

Listener challenge: Do you notice the vocoder? If so, what lyrics are being sung?