This song is based on a true story told to me about a 25 year separation between a husband and a wife. They were young, attractive, and both lawyers in the 1940’s and 1950’s. He argued successfully before the supreme court multiple times, and she was excelling as a lawyer in a time when women were not plentiful in that profession. They had two children and moved into a beautiful turn of the century house overlooking a lake. In the late 1950’s, the husband killed himself in the house, leaving his wife to manage her career and the two children. Time passed, she continued to excel in her career but never remarried and never moved from the house over the lake. Her children moved out, and she retired. As she got older, one of her children urged her to sell the big house over the lake. It was too big for her now that she lived alone. She resisted and resisted until finally one day, she relented. She made the arrangements and set a date for the realtor to come and see the house so it could be listed. When the day came, the realtor arrived and rang the bell repeatedly only to have no one answer the door. With the prospect of the house being sold looming over her, the wife died that day before the realtor arrived – 25 years to the day that her husband had committed suicide in the very same house.

The song is my (possibly) romanticized version of this story. A little bit like the movie Ghost. Or at least like I think the movie Ghost might be like since I’ve never actually seen it. In my mind, the wife knew that selling the house meant abandoning the husband who’d stayed behind to wait for her. With the prospect of selling the house becoming real, she died in the house, and their spirits left together. (That is, if you believe in that sort of thing.)

Musically, I really tried to do something different. Many of my friends are into way cooler music than I am capable of (or apparently interested in) making. Generally somewhat downtrodden and sad stuff to my ears. So I tried to inject more melancholy into this track both to be subject matter appropriate and to see if I was even capable of making some music that might be in the spectrum of music some of my friends seem to like. Hope you enjoy it.

In These Walls

[Lyrics]

Here are the lyrics for In These Walls.

VERSE

Just took the moment
to end the torment
I couldn’t know that I would trade your life for mine

I had no choices
Shut out the noises
I know we’d hoped that everything would turn out fine

CHORUS

I’m in these walls
Nowhere for me to go
I’m in these walls
Somewhere deep inside you’ve known

I’m in these walls
Don’t you leave me too
It’s in these walls
That I wait for you

VERSE

Through the crack reminds me
Of the stack that sat beside me
The details of the cases and how they start to swim

I’m looking at you
I’d have loved to join you
But the letters on the pages felt like they were closing in

CHORUS

I’m in these walls
Nowhere for me to go
I’m in these walls
Somewhere deep inside you’ve known

I’m in these walls
Don’t you leave me too
It’s in these walls
That I wait for you

BRIDGE

She’s on her way now
Don’t wait for another minute
Time to decide now
Are you out or are you in it
She’s on her way now
And she’s pretty close to finding
She’s at the door now
And the doorbell sound’s unwinding

VERSE

I think that heaven’s up there
But Helen I’d rather stay where
I could feel your fingers running circles down my arm

Now I just imagine
If I hadn’t turned my badge in
Those tidal waves of sadness, they no longer do me harm

CHORUS

I’m in these walls
Nowhere for me to go
I’m in these walls
Somewhere deep inside you’ve known

I’m in these walls
Don’t you leave me too
It’s in these walls
That I wait for you