AI Process/Open Source Software: HUMAN, Google Flow Music, Claude.ai, ChatGPT, Perchance.org – DAW: Audacity 4 (alpha), OS: Linux (Ubuntu 26.04)
I love to build, and I love to rebuild.
This song is about the heavy labor of starting over when the landscape of your life has fundamentally shifted. “New Ground, Same Fire” is a tough piece for me. As a writer, I usually prefer to mask truth within a fictional veneer, but this track is one of the few truly autobiographical things I have ever put to words and sound. It was written as a way to process a transition that redefined everything I believed I knew. The lyrics focus on the work of hands, digging up stones and moving a fire pit, but that is simply the metaphor I needed to help navigate the new terra firma. It’s about the discernment required to see what from your past is solid enough to carry forward and what has crumbled under the weight of time. I didn’t want to put the old fire out. I just had to find a new place for it to burn. I hope you find your own warmth in these stones.
Google Deep Dive Podcast: The Stones We Keep
Lyrics
Intro
Grab the shovel, mark the spot,
count the stones I’ve got.
Old ash blown off in the wind,
time to build again.
Verse 1
Dug up where the last one stood,
kept what stone was good.
Some of it just crumbled through my hands,
some of it still stands.
Verse 2
Moved it twenty feet or so,
closer to the things I know.
Same sky, different angle now,
A different kind of ground.
Chorus
It’s a new direction, same fire,
same flame, higher wire.
I didn’t put the old one out,
I just moved it round.
New ground, same fire,
still my heart’s desire
you can dig me up and set me down,
I still burn the same.
Verse 3
Stacked the stones the way I choose,
not the way I used to.
Every fire pit tells on you
how you build, what you knew.
Verse 4
Struck the match with steady hands,
watched it catch and stand.
Didn’t need the old spot’s ghost,
this one’s mine the most.
Chorus
It’s new ground, same fire,
same flame, higher wire.
I didn’t put the old one out,
I just moved it round.
New ground, same fire,
still my heart’s desire
you can dig me up and set me down,
I still burn the same.
Bridge
Every pit I’ve ever built
has a little of the last one in it
the parts that worked, I carry on,
the rest I let burn out.
It’s not about the ground you’re on,
it’s whether you still light it.
Chorus
It’s new ground, same fire,
same flame, higher wire.
I didn’t put the old one out,
I just moved it round.
New ground, same fire,
still my heart’s desire
you can dig me up and set me down,
I still burn the same.
Outro
Same fire…
new ground…
same fire…
burning now.