Stories Behind the Songs: “The Curse”
“The Curse”, a pivotal song in Act I of Transposition, was written during a burst of creativity in January 2005. The chorus and second verse came to me while walking in the woods on the mountain behind my parents’ house. In the days before satellite TV, our TV antenna was way up on this mountain; it seemed like every time we had a thunderstorm, we had to walk the whole thing and repair lightning damage. It was a lot of work to maintain for only 2-3 channels! The first verse was in part inspired by Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times, Bad Times”. The bowed psaltery (also called a bowed psaltry) used in the final recording is an interesting-looking triangular wooden instrument with 24 strings, played with a bow. My future wife bought it for me from a shop called Song of the Wood in Black Mountain, North Carolina.
This song, and the later “Vibrations”, explain most of the motivations for Jack’s actions in Act II , and his contradictory mixture of self-loathing, hopelessness, pride, and defiance. Anyone who feels like an outsider in the family or the culture into which they were born may see a bit of themselves in Jack; even in the midst of his own home, he is a stranger in a strange land.