Machinery of the Human Heart
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By The Willow Tree: behind the song (:
🕑 Added 2025-11-25 17:57:33 +0000 UTCHI, it was suggested that I try to make behind-the-songs posts about the writing process and lyrics, so I thought I'd do that today! I've linked a song from an artist who heavily inspired By The Willow Tree!
I wrote By The Willow Tree years ago about the death of my first real long-term relationship with my high school sweetheart. I knew what was happening, maybe before he did. Our life paths split into two completely different directions in our earlier adulthood, and I think we became mutually disappointed in each other. It was painful watching him drift from being the person I had fallen in love with to try to fit the mold of fraternity and college party life when he had been someone so naturally beautiful all along, all the while feeling increasingly deprioritized over time.
We had talked about a future many times. In its place were double standards, hurt feelings, and blame. I was told I wasn't brave or adventurous enough; he refused to learn to drive. I felt that expressing frustration felt risky as he seemed sensitive to it.
I went to visit him at college once and noticed a girl he seemed to be friends with and knew they would end up together once we broke up (they eventually did). I was feeling the weight of all of this, so I wrote By The Willow Tree.
I sat down with the intention of writing a letter from me in the future to him in the present, soon to become the past. A message in a bottle inked with a fountain pen and thrown out into the oceans of time for him to find. My soul pushed out the words:
"By the time that you kiss me by the willow tree
I'll be more in love with you than you are with me
By the first snow of the season
We will fall apart
And if I die, I'll die of a broken heart"
In our youth, we walked all over town together, and through a park system with many willow trees. Nature was the life-thread of our relationship. We had spent many hours out walking, talking, laughing, and enjoying each other's spontaneity and creative energy. I wrote this song in November, before the first snow, and knew we didn't have much time left together. As simple as it sounds, I thought of the changing seasons - things dying in the fall and winter, having to find shelter before the cold sets in.
I started to write the music immediately after. It felt like I was merely a vessel for something greater than myself.
He ended the 2 and a half year relationship on a video call.
"Why can't we find another way?"
I was listening to a lot of Bright Eyes and Iron and Wine when I wrote this song - Iron and Wine with their frequent mentions of wild trees, plants, and nature, and Bright Eyes with the confessional nature of their lyrics both helped to shape Willow Tree.
Here are some song suggestions for both bands!
Iron and Wine:
(Listen to both albums "Our Endless Numbered Days" and "The Shepherd's Dog")
Carousel
Upward Over The Mountain
Teeth In The Grass
Fever Dream
Passing Afternoon
Joy
Bright Eyes:
(highly recommend the album "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning"
First Day Of My Life
A Perfect Sonnet
Waste of Paint
Lua
Land-Locked Blues
Comments
Marvin
Of course, this was fun to write!
Dawsen
This was already my favorite MOTHH song but this really sealed the deal. This was really insightful, thank you <3
