2014 – for The Frank Horvat Band – 3:53

Music and words by Frank Horvat

Recording

Album: Strange Machine
Buy Song: iTunes or CDBaby
Date: May-August 2014
Location: THE FARM, Toronto
Musicians: Frank Horvat (piano), Thom Gill (vocals & guitar), Bram Gielen (bass), Jean Martin (percussion)
Producer: Frank Horvat and Jean Martin
 

Programme Notes

Do You Ever Notice? is a personal song for me as I have always been hyper-aware of being alone in quiet or silent places. I guess this must be the result of growing up as an only child and having to entertain myself within my own thoughts.

The lyrics were written in the late 1990s in a period in which I was working at home alone after having graduated from university where I had been constantly surrounded by people. The change was a bit of a shock, despite my childhood. So I started making a list of everything I wasn’t supposed to notice in my silent surrounding. These lyrics are what emerged.

When writing for my band album, Strange Machine, I set the poetry to music. The theme seems to fit well as the album explored both physical and spiritual machines and being aware of one’s surrounding (and in essence, subconscious), fell into line with what the collection of pieces ending up being about.

– Frank Horvat

Lyrics

Do you ever notice
the constant hum that surrounds us?
Simon & Garfunkel liked to talk about it
Something unreal that could never exist around us
creaks and leaks that peek through space
What a beauty to bask in this sound

Listen to the pulse of the breathing
scribbles and dribbles on something white
Footsteps carefully stomping
humming, oh what great humming

Do you ever notice
such a numbing feeling to bask in this sound
The room get’s dark, the cover shifts
rubber dust flies with a scurrying swat
Do you ever notice?

Do you ever notice
I am still, in this outer peace
outer becomes inner, farther becomes closer
How annoying to bask in this sound
I turn my head and see nothing
Do you ever notice?

Nothing is flashing, nothing’s sleeping
nothing’s moving, nothing is smoking
Seeds of stone shoot down my neck
so frightening to bask in this sound
Do you ever notice?

LT#102