Stranger at the Door

This is a song that I don’t even remember writing. I tend to write in bursts, with a handful of songs emerging over the course of a month or so, and this one slipped through in that way. Now that I’ve lived with it for a few years, I think of it as a country-folk "Once In a Lifetime." Both songs evoke that moment where you look around at your life and can’t quite recall how you got here.

When I was a kid in Bristol, I didn’t even know what country Minneapolis was in. I thought I was going to be a cartoonist—“educational non-profit” wouldn’t have meant anything to me back then. As I got older, I was certain I’d be an actor, which I am in a way, though it’s not how I pay the rent.

There’s a moment in the song that captures how I feel about this odd sense of alienation from my own life in a positive light. I remember being out for a walk (Kid James: "No thanks. Walking is boring.") and seeing a house someone had made for bluebirds, with actual bluebirds living in it. Jesus, the joy that dumb clump of sticks inspired in my sleepy gray heart was an embarrassing sight to behold. In that moment, I felt so glad that unknown forces had brought me to something I never knew I wanted to encounter.

Oh, I awake, and I am dazed
Where is my home?
Where is my home?
Where is my home?
Oh, when was it I went away?
All alone
All alone
All alone

In the darkness of our room, you draw a breath
I’m a stranger by the door, you’re scared to death
Oh, who am I
And how did I get here?
So far from where I laid my path
Where did I go?
Where did I go?
Where did I go?

They say you cannot push the river
It’s gonna go
Where it’s gonna go
Don’t care what you know

In the darkness of our room, you draw a breath
I’m a stranger by the door, you’re scared to death
Oh, who am I
And how did I get here?

There’s a bluebird in a box that someone made
With its bluebird eggs and grassy barricade
And I never knew to set my sights for this
Yet here I here I am

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