This is the track that I started first when I moved from Brooklyn to Santa Fe, and finished the very last of tracks on this record, in May, 2020. I never thought it was going to be the last in the sequence of tracks on the album because up until a week ago, when it was finally finished, it was such a downer of a song. The optimistic chorus at the end of this track was the final part I wrote and recorded on this album.
The lyric that ends with the words “it’s not what, but how you see twenty twenty” as in, 20/20 vision, and 2020 this year, was a reworking of a less hopeful and more ironic sentiment that I shared with Aja - I hadn’t shared my process of writing any of the other songs with anyone - and she did not like it. The previous lyrics had this cool circularity which I was hung up on using, but when recorded, it felt forced:
“Tomorrow will be better but if it isn't, say it again tomorrow will be better but if it isn't, say it again tomorrow will be better but if it isn't, say it again tomorrow…”
I started working on this song from a place of existential frustration and mental anguish, a place of seeing my life as a total failure, of being imprisoned in the hermetically sealed box of boundless low self esteem, low self worth, a sense of painful responsibility for things I cannot control, and gasping for air at the very bottom of my life, where my comfort was the thought that tomorrow could only be better.
I first shared the tracks on this album when Mathew visited. Before that no one but me and Darrell, the mix engineer, had heard them. I played what I now view as a preview of this song, at that time, I thought it was a finished version. It ended abruptly after one of the loud interludes, and did not have the final chorus section. The motion of the track was just a pendulum swinging between aggressive shoegaze walls of sound, and sad, plaintive bargaining with the future. Mathew said that right away during the mournful intro, he predicted and felt the necessity of the heavy guitars before they happened.
The energy of fury in this song represents the fire that has often helped lift me like a heat lantern out of stuckness and depression. This song is my journey from down in the void of despair, running in circles, until my path takes an upward slant from sadness, and makes me fight the hill, building energy, through the vortexes of anger, and finally to the daylight of identifying with my future self, who looks back on my life, and helps me realize how much I love today.
lyrics
TWENTY TWENTY - from "Truth and Fun" by Eight Two
Morrow will be better,
Than today, or yesterday
There, will be better,
Than here, or where we were
Morrow will be better,
Than today or yesterday
Sad as today may seem,
Soon we will say
Sad as today may seem
Soon we will say
Those were the days
The past is over,
But the now lasts forever, yeah
The past is over,
But the now lasts forever
Future, you will be better
Than now or yesterday,
Than today or yesterday.
Future, you will be better
Than now or yesterday
Sad as today may seem
Soon I will say
Those were the days
Tomorrow show me how
To love today
As future me
Looking back from tomorrow
I love today
Now is where I’ll stay
Tomorrow it’s not what
But how you see
Twenty twenty
credits
from Truth and Fun,
released July 20, 2020
Lyrics and Music by Misha Bittleston
Everything recorded, produced, arranged and performed by Misha Bittleston a.k.a Eight Two at ET Studio, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Gerardo Giraldo played acoustic guitar on “Twenty Twenty” in Rionegro, Colombia.
Mixed by Darrell Thorp
Mastered by Emily Lazar at The Lodge, NYC
assisted by Chris Allgood
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