Beast - Lyrics and Thoughts

Innocence and trusting eyes

Heart untouched by lovers break

Can’t she see under my smiles

The demons that would harm her wait

Darling, run from all I am

As this twist of soul pervades

Darling, please take my hand

For without you, I’m lost, afraid

Darling I love you

Please will you love me

Twisted and ugly

Won’t you see be

‘Neath all my horror

Beating so torrid

Heart less than sure of

Beast or beauty

Sharpened claws on paper skin

Heart to heart our matching beats

Gentle kiss and then its twin

Shield and sword, Oh gods grant mercy

Will I beast or beauty be (give me beauty)

Will I beast or beauty be (give me beauty)

Now in the final

Hours of night will

Monster unbridled

Darling save me

Please be my angel

Quiet my rage and

Help me to change from

Beast to beauty

Vision red slowly clears

to reveal my angels face

Dearest love only bruised by tears

Holding firm to our embrace

Will I beast or beauty be (give me beauty)

Will I beast or beauty be (give me beauty)

Analysis:

Tempest: I had the honor of being invited to perform at Belladonna's Raven's Night in DC in Fall 2012, and the piece had to be a dark twist on a traditional fairytale. And I wanted Nathan to create the music for it. So many choices and possibilities! But I kept coming back again and again to “Beauty and The Beast” which has been one of my long-time favorites – particularly Robin McKinley's retellings of the tale – but how to perform a two-character story solo? And how to twist it? So I decided to challenge society's concepts of who is “Beauty” and who is a “Beast” - is it physical, emotional, spiritual – what about what is below the surface? The description for the piece ended being: “Beauty/Beast: Society backhandedly teaches us that on the surface beauty=goodness and ugly=bad or evil. Appearances can surely be deceiving to others, as well as to ourselves, but is it so wrong to be the Beast, and so right to be the Beauty?” There were no costume changes, no masks, no props besides a single rose that I carried on stage, eventually discarded, and collected again. It was up to the audience to determine who I was portraying and when from my expression, movements, and body language, making it a psychological thriller. This was all done to an earlier version of the song without lyrics, and I'm curious to try it again with the words and see what happens.

Nathan: I was listening to Bauhaus' song Double Dare and was struck by the tone that David J got out of his bass. It was an aggressive, choppy, distorted sound and I decided that I needed to do something with it. The bass groove came out fully formed. From there it was strictly groove and ambience and there was no real melody that came to mind. I passed the song around to my small group of collaborators and two of them, Paul Mercer (violin) and Jessica Leppaluoto (piano) sent me tracks that, though almost entirely unrelated fit together to make a wonderful brooding texture. In the end it sounded nothing like the tune that inspired it. That's generally the way of things.

Once I decided to put this on the album I decided to put some lyrics to it so that the story was a little more explicit. I wanted to have a conflict in the mind of one person – a battle between Beauty and Beast. We all have our darker side that sometimes makes us say and do things we regret later and a part of growing up is learning how to temper that so we can make our way in society without getting into too much trouble. I put together a patchwork of a lyric and sent it off to Alyssa for feedback. She ended up scrapping the words entirely and replacing them a whole new lyric. A good decision, I think.

Alyssa: Nathan sent me this track a while back and kept sending me iterations of it as it progressed. He told me he wanted to write a song expressing Beauty and the Beast but combine it into one person, one person who was struggling to between being evil and good. I immediately came up with two images in my mind: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the Phantom of the Opera. Both were good men, desperate to find the best of themselves for love. However, they are preyed upon by a monster inside, a monster who is much stronger. The song is about that struggle and needing the love of a partner but terrified that, by staying, you will destroy that person you love so much. Nathan convinced me to end the song on a bit more hopeful note than I had originally wanted, but the song is just a battle scene. The war rages on.