My mom was messed up for life by her mother’s wild rages. As an adult you learn to forgive people for being bad at adulting. Not everybody is made to be a good parent, so I should do my best to cut grandma Anne Ruth a break.

Playing through this I got an image of a funeral outside on a fall day. It’s not sunny but it’s not gothically dark either. The mourners aren’t crying but they aren’t angry either. A life is complete. People are gathered to show respect to a member of the community.

That’s when my grandma came into my head. It would have been the kind of funeral that made sense for her, if there had been one.

The tune here is Josefin’s Waltz, from a Swedish folk band named Väsen. I learned this from a banjo player at a session at an Irish bar in Peekskill NY.

Musically what I was after was getting a lot of feeling with as little machinery as possible. In the end all I had to use was tempo, timing, and dynamics. A thing about mandolin is how good a plain unprettied note can sound. Just plucking the dang thing like you’re asking nicely makes a pretty decent noise. The instrument is miked up close in mono, with the physical instrument output augmented by a pickup going through a Caroline Météore reverb coming out of a loud PA on the far side of the room. But mainly what you hear is wood and wire.

You’re welcome to use this for films / choreography / whatever. Just email lucas @ gonze.com