How Long Until We Get There?

I wish you could have been there for the moment that we recorded the violin part at the end of "How Long Until We Get There." It was like the tune was flying around outside and at the exact moment we felt we needed a violin part at the outro, it fluttered into Don Chaffer's ears and out his mouth as "Buh, du du du du du de dum, buh buh, du du du dum". Which sounds like nonsense, and it sort of did, until Suzanna played the part. And then I probably teared up...

Two things that inspired Don and I in writing this song:

1. This quote by C.S. Lewis, from The Weight of Glory
"We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty... The books or music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things – the beauty, the memory of our own past – are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited."

2. This photo of David J. Nightengales