The story of how this song came to be is fairly unusual as songwriting stories go.

Some six years ago I had a strange, early-morning encounter. It was about 7am, pitch-black winter gloom, and I was walking to work. As I passed by a tree, I looked up and found two gleaming eyes looking back at me.

It was big, and white, and intense. And as the owl stared at me, as I stared at it, a word imposed itself upon my consciousness.

“Minerva.”

“Oh,” I responded mentally, “Minerva, like Athena!”

“NO. MINERVA.”

This bit of insistence on specificity was interesting given how syncretic the Greek and Roman cults were, and given that I was receiving this message from a North American owl that surely didn’t have much of a relationship with ancient Rome.

Ok, well. We stared at each other for a bit longer (it was very close!) and then I continued on my way. Later I found out that there had been a spate of owl attacks on early morning walkers in the area, but not on me. I did spend some time after that researching Minerva, however, and discovered her to be a central goddess for the Romans, ruling over wisdom, social harmony, reflection, even healing. I was jealous of contemporary Roman reconstructionist pagans: it seemed like those Roman pagans wrote everything down.

At the time I was experiencing a good bit of psychic turmoil and one day in wrestling with this turmoil it visualized itself for me as a cloud of wasps buzzing about me, stinging me with painful thoughts and feelings. “What can I do about this?” I wondered. Then, an imaginary owl came flying in. “If you do what I instruct, I will drive these wasps away from you. Deal?” Deal.

So the owl came in and swept the wasps away with flaps of her strong pinions. And thus was I obliged. I asked Odin about this odd circumstance of suddenly dealing with an ancient Roman goddess at the behest of a modern North American owl. He could have said, “well I’m an Old Norse god and you’re a modern Australian-American, so what the fuck?” Instead he said, “there is some work you need to do and she is the one to help you do it, so I am stepping back for a little while.”

Minerva set me two tasks. The second was to complete a Vipassana meditation retreat, which changed my life. The first was to write “The Owl Song.” Remarkably, many of the sentiments that the song expresses are also concepts that underpin Vipassana practice, so much so that throughout the retreat, the lyrics of the song repeatedly showed up in response to what I was learning.

It was as though Minerva used the song to prepare me for the discipline of the meditation practice, a practice I have maintained in the years since completing the retreat. Highly recommended, folks.

I laugh when I read back over the story of this song, the absurd confluence of mythological and cultural influences – North American owl, Roman goddess, Norse god, Buddhist practice. If the song weren’t so dark, I think I could be rightly pilloried for blinding light new agism.

Because if the whole album is about the tragedy and beauty of the fragile human predicament, then this song really is a thorough summary of the whole catastrophe and delight of incarnation.

And it is a very optimistic song. Not optimism born from ignorance of suffering, but rather optimism because of the very real experience and consciousness of suffering. C. G. Jung: “no tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” The song ends without resolution. That’s because it is written with an honest intention. Optimism without guarantee – that takes a lot of strength.

I have to express gratitude for an unpleasant encounter I had with a narcissistic individual early on in writing the song. The person – who had a reputation for being a bit of a jerk – badgered me to show him what I’d been working on, then proceeded to tear strips off me over it. Well, I didn’t get mad, I got even, and I decided to push the song as far as it could go. He turned out to be a great ally in spite of himself.

I’m stupidly proud of my bass solo. I think with it I have contributed a compelling, if incomplete, statement about the lyrical and technical possibilities of the humble bass guitar.

As always, I’m so grateful to Matthew Raymond for his electric guitar contributions to this truly epic track. I think the choral elements also wouldn’t have been possible without his influence, even though they’re all me.

I wanted to bring together neofolk, progressive rock, classical, and ambient feelings into a cohesive whole, and I think that, somehow (blame the owl goddess?) I managed to do it. It also nicely opens the way for the message and feeling of the final track of the album.