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Stone

from Lantern by Tom Doncourt

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

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about

Although “Stone” was composed near the end of Tom’s life, the seeds that inspired it were sown in his heart long ago, during his early childhood. It is an ode to his paternal grandmother, who loved him so dearly and believed in him completely. As he wrote in his notes to the singer, “[This song] really isn’t all about a stone; it is secretly about my Grandma. I didn’t even know that until I was deep into writing it!” Tom revered that remarkable woman, whose presence nurtured his formative years. Symbolically, she is represented as “the stone in the garden,” but to the young Tom, “[that stone] was a mountain,” strong and enduring. Its existence made him ponder deep questions: “Where did it come from? How far underground [does] it go?” However, the stone remained silent; it “had no answers for [him].” As he concluded in a line that he chose to delete in the final draft, “Its only secret was that it just was.” Answers didn’t matter so much. Even shrouded in mystery, he could still rely on the stone’s solidity and perseverance – or so he believed. But his beloved grandmother died in due course; her physical presence left the world. When Tom went back to look for the stone many years later (to re-affirm its existence), he discovered that “the gardens were gone; paved over, for cars to park.” And “the stone had disappeared,” leaving no trace -- nothing to touch or cling to, except memory.

This song is the cornerstone and abiding metaphor of Tom’s emotional life: the stone that ‘was’ and eventually ‘was no more’ (a painful and shocking realization, since one does not expect that which is ‘solid’ to disappear without a trace). In a sense, the childhood emotions underlying the lyrics in “Stone” could be considered Tom’s first love song, experientially. He spent the rest of his life searching for the kind of solidity of the stone that ‘was’ (and which he had thought he could rely on forever, like the fixed images on his childhood lantern, expressed in the song by that title on his final album. In “Lantern,” the speaker yearns for a world in which two lovers could dwell “in the spinning light forever; the fire would never go out; the stream would just keep flowing.” He laments that he “tried to hold onto it, but it all just flickered away”). This recurring theme – Tom’s search for solidity, his need for enduring love – consistently appears throughout his body of work. Toward the end of his life, facing terminal illness, he might have identified with “the stone that [would soon] disappear.” And yet, in the song “Lantern,” there is a hopeful tone in the final stanza. As Tom stares into the painted world of the lantern “every night before [he sleeps],” he is able to bring that spinning Light within himself, in the Lotus of his Heart. He becomes his own Eternal Shining One.

lyrics

“Stone”

How do you write a song about a stone?
They don’t move or speak.
Do you write about what happens around them?

How do you write a song about a stone?
The stone sat in the middle of my grandma’s garden,
Under a magnolia tree --
A big stone rising out from the ground,
The gray of quiet.

To me, it was a mountain
Surrounded by flowers --
Solemn, a Spirit untouchable.
Where did it come from?
How far underground did it go?
But it had no answers for me.

How do you write a song about a stone?
Nothing to say,
No history and no fame;
No secrets and noble secrets.
Its surface absorbing the night and day,
Silent in a neighborhood of silence.

Many years have passed after that house was sold.
I returned, but the gardens were gone --
Paved over, for cars to park.
And the stone had disappeared.

credits

from Lantern, released February 28, 2020

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about

Tom Doncourt New York, New York

Thomas Carlton Doncourt (December 10, 1955 – March 20, 2019), was an American mellotronist.

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