Inflatable World

ENS.2004.3 | 19′
Lyrics by Saul Wheeler
Voice & Piano

Score

1. Inflatable World

2. Despondent in Des Moines

3. Because I Was So In Love With You

4. There Is No Rain (When You Love Me)

5. The Bad and the Ugly

6. On Razor’s Edge

7. Geraldine

8. Someting Sad to Wear


Saul Wheeler is one of my oldest friends. In high school we discovered everything from music to movies together, and when as a teenager I decided to start setting words to music I turned repeatedly to him and his unusual sense of humor.

Although he had never written lyrics before, his contributions are small wonders of weird whimsy. Our largest project together was Inflatable World, originally intended to be an album of pseudo-pop songs, now a cycle for soprano and piano. From the remarkable chorus of There is No Rain (When You Love Me) to his masterpiece, Something Sad to Wear, I have tried to do justice to Saul’s inspired lyrics.

Originally composed as a simple skeleton of melodies over chord symbols intended for later realization by instruments, through the next decade I made numerous versions of Inflatable World, but none of them really worked. Finally in 2014 after years of neglect I returned to them and made these definitive straightforward versions.