Song Stories: Here I Am

8/20/2024

"Here I Am" was written in 2009 when I lived in Edinburgh before SoulJahm days in continental Europe. A studio version was never recorded and released until 2017 when it was put out as a SoulJahm digital single. Although we intended to do a version of it in Budapest, 2014, that never came about and I had to record it all myself, with my brother on bass, but I always thought of it as a SoulJahm song.

There is an interesting story to this song in terms of the nature of reality. The line "tempted by the devil's hand" was in the very first version of the song from back in 2009. When I was in Berlin throughout the summer of 2014, after Kate's death, at a point where I was staying in hotels and desperately needed some stability, an apartment with a piano showed up. Everything seemed to point towards going there as it was close by to the hotel I was staying and it was cheap. I thought I could get some stability and perhaps get on with Music.

I found out when I arrived the owner was a musician. She had the radio on in the kitchen, which was full of plants she wanted me to look after, and was listening to a pop/rock station and commented that she was more into classical music but was going off to write some pop songs in the Netherlands with someone so she was getting inspiration from the radio. She asked a bit about my story, why I was in Berlin, etc and although I was reluctant to go into the story with anyone because past experiences had shown me most people didn't understand and just looked at us weirdly, I briefly told her what had happened with Kate. When I told her we were called SoulJahm, she looked at me and said "you don't look like a Rasta to me". She offered me to stay with some people she knew in Berlin after her apartment, which sounded like some sort of bohemian art crowd and not my scene. Anyway, her Rasta comment immediately confirmed to me that she didn't pick up the spiritual vibe and what we were about. When you meet the right people, they usually pick it up without anything needing to be said. There's just an understanding between you both, even in passing interactions.

So after niceties were over and she left, the first thing I saw on her wall was this poster:

It had meaning for me at the time because it felt like that throughout that summer in Berlin. It was this way or that way. I was trying to remain there but options were running out and eventually I had no choice but to leave and return to Edinburgh. I sometimes wondered if that was literally the turning point because it was the only real opportunity to perhaps stay in Berlin long-term. Yet nothing about the encounter with the woman made me want to go in that direction.

When I unpacked in the bedroom I noticed this:

A little later in the living room I noticed this poster for her band, The Pentatones (note the inverted N), for their tour entitled 'The Devil's Hand Tour'.

What the hell?!! So I write a song in 2009 called "Here I Am" with a line in it about being tempted by the devil's hand and here I am five (penta!) years later and this woman has a literal devil's hand jewellery holder (circled in the photo) in her bedroom and a poster of her band advertising The Devil's Hand tour. There were so many crazy synchronicities like this going on during that period in Berlin but that one was quite something.

When I wrote the song, that line was meant for all of us. We are all "tempted by the devil's hand" in the sense the very system and society we live in seems to mostly be a manifestation of the devil and we're all trying to find our way out of it and home to Consciousness, so living in this world, the struggle is to find home, avoiding the distractions put there by the devil mind. Was this woman and her apartment one of them for me? Who knows? But if this was the best opportunity I had to remain in Berlin at that time I have no regrets.

I should clear up something in the song that might confuse some people. There is a line about "Zion's calling out to me". Nowadays, Zion might be associated with Zionism (not good!) but when I wrote it, I was referring to the Zion the Rasta's speak of, which could be seen as a symbolic representation of spiritual home, or Consciousness. A holy or sacred place, whether that be an actual physical location in this world or a place within spiritually.

Overall, the song is about stripping away, seeing past the various ways we're conditioned and coming to that pure place inside yourself, which is the real you, the unpolluted you ("there's nothing between who I am oh who I am oh here I am").

I recorded the song in Edinburgh after returning from Berlin and it was acoustic-based because that's all I had to work with at that point.