"Eleven Letters" by Liam Cloud

I write stories. Stories require such a holistic integration of pieces in order to work that, at times, the only way to explain what a story does to your brain is “witchcraft, dude. Don’t question it.”

I feel lucky that I get to write stories. It’s one of the more dynamic artforms we’ve figured out, we typewriter-whacking chimpanzees seeking to improve this universe.

Photo by Mike Marchetti

I’m not so lucky, though. Know who’s lucky? Songwriters. Those bastards get to use words to tell stories, but then they also get to short-circuit the entire process with cheap tricks like literal tones. Stories have to stumble around attempting to evoke a feeling with these chicken scratches creating and seeking liminal space between yearning and meaning.

Musicians, those irritating bastards, can just strum a guitar, and set a literal tone. I spend many words struggling to express the heartfelt, yearning tone of "Eleven Letters" in this here blog. Meanwhile, Liam Cloud plays one chord and reaches right into your liminal spaces and conjures a world of feeling in a half a moment.

Bastard.

Anyway, raise your glasses to the liminal spaces. After all, I only write and rant about artists I actually admire!

Liam Cloud’s ELEVEN LETTERS is dedicated to those liminal spaces created by long-distance relationships. We’ve all either been in or at least contemplated the true poignancy of the slow heartbreak and joyous haunting feeling of a long-distance relationship. Liam’s personal experiences informed the smoothly quiet, simultaneously uplifting and down-tempo love song to being oh so far away from the “her” of legend that lives in the liminal space of objective want in so much rock and roll.

Song’s called “Eleven Letters.” You can inquire of the song what the letters represent, and like so many good stories you can bring your own meaning to these eleven letters. There’s a lot of context given in the chorus. “There’s only eleven letters between you and I,” Liam claims. “One, two, three, four, five, six thousand miles,” he says. (Which is twenty-one thousand miles, for those of you doing the math at home. Which is one eleventh the distance of the Earth to the Moon! A clue!)

Maybe it’s the name of the liminal “her.”

Maybe it’s the name of “her” home.

Maybe it’s how many letters it takes to spell out the distance between the narrator and “her.” (Which…doing some rough math…would put her on the moon…. Cool. Science fiction angle! Done. That’s my meaning.)

Liam’s given answer—what he calls the “real” answer—is it’s a play on words produced from time spent with his Scrabble-addicted parents. There’s eleven letters between the letters “U” and “I” in the alphabet song, you see.

So it doesn’t take that long to “sing that song”—the alphabet song—which brings “I” and “U” together in less than a minute. Given that fact, the six thousand miles between Barcelona and San Francisco isn’t so far.

Some pretty artistic mental gymnastics there, Mr. Cloud.

As Liam says, though, “Complicated, I know. But so are relationships.”

Fine! You win this round, Mr. Poet.

So that’s Liam Cloud’s explanation of his lyrics. You get to decide what you want about it, though. That’s how stories work.

As odes to long distances in relationships go, Liam has captured both the slow heartbreak of that state, while uplifting the dreamlike serenity that can come from that sense of globe-spanning love. His lyrics are clever, and sung in that pretty, jazzy way that he’s been developing. I’m so excited to hear Cloud truly lean into himself with his recent songs, show-casing the vocal purity and expressiveness that make Liam Cloud himself.

All that’s great to hear, but if you really want a reason to put this song on repeat, he just lets loose with this wicked Kenny Wayne Shepherd-esque guitar solo near the end. Why, Liam? I mean, it’s perfect right there. It’s exactly what you want to be able to do when you’re in a long distance relationship: give full spleen to the feelings you can’t physically express, so it’s perfect. But it’s a huge surprise! It’s exactly like that erupting excitement you feel when seeing your loved one for the first time after a long time apart.

…

Ah. Right.

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