Track 10: "Monument"

Podcast

Oct 27

Written By Sycamore Consulting, LLC

Welcome to I Owe You an Explication, I’m your host, Sean Della Croce and today we’re discussing the song "Monument".

Stream Illuminations here: https://ffm.to/qqk1jjd

Cover Image by Alex Crawford

All songs written and recorded by Sean Della Croce

Produced by Alan Deremo

What this Song is About

Monument is without question the oldest song on the record. I wrote it in 2007 when I was 15 years old and a sophomore in high school. It was probably one of the first complete songs I ever composed, and with the help of some introductory guitar instruction from my stepdad Pete, it all came together to form a time capsule.

"Monument" is about leaving home, specifically being forced to say goodbye. It's an anthem for my inner child of divorce. The person who thought four walls and a front door could keep the world at bay or stop time. It's about the artifacts we leave behind in the rubble of heartbreak, change, and loss. My monument is a log house on the edge of town, what is yours?

The Lyrical Crux

I'll tell you a secret about this song. When I went to record it for the album in 2017 I felt really insecure about how young I had been when I wrote "Monument" so I went back and changed a few lyrics. After all, it was a decade later, and it only made sense to update the material. I feel good about the edit in general, but there is one child-like line that I sort of wish I had kept. In the chorus I sing, "What if the sky fell tomorrow, down on my monument and all of the love that we left there imperfect document." The original lyric was "what if the world we had built there was sold for 50¢ ". Something in me just didn't want to sing "fifty cents" but when I think about it now, I feel like I should have just kept it. Monument takes place squarely in the midsts of the housing crisis of 2008 and at the time I really didn’t understand how a house could be sold at all. How it could ever be so necessary or worth it. I think for many people that is the hardest aspect of a divorce or familial loss. Especially for children. So as far as I was concerned, any amount of money might as well be 50¢ in comparison to the world we had built which is now just a monument.

Music Notes

The most important musical aspect of this song to me is that it includes a performance from my late stepfather, the guitarist, Pete Huttlinger. He helped me demo the song when I originally wrote it, and it felt fitting to use his same performance as the building block for this version. You can hear him in the introduction and throughout on acoustic and electric guitar. He taught me how to play "Blackbird" by The Beatles when I firs picked up the instrument, and this song was created from the same shapes I learned from that one. It makes me really happy to play the song alongside Pete forever on this recording, and I love that we are joined by Alan Deremo and Mollie Weaver, who spent countless hours playing with Pete as bandmates and collaborators all over the world. In that way, the song itself is a sort of monument.

Closing Reflections

When I really think about it, "Monument" emerged from the feeling of being lost and by the end it finds a home that is no place. After all, monuments stand for something else. They point to a story, not to themselves. They are prompts, and any true meaning they might hold lies in something that has already come and gone. And the sky can't fall on a story or a memory or a song.