Everybody love me softer, sweeter

When I finished writing Good Behaviour in a studio in Melbourne, I remember thinking, “This is how I know that the divine is real.” After years of struggling with faith and God: the religious, the sacred and the profane, I wasn’t persuaded into belief by any theological text, but by the simple yet astounding fact that a beautiful song, laced with complex chord structures and melodies beyond my known musical ability, had somehow arisen out of me one morning in a room I had never visited, next to a producer I barely knew, about a feeling I had always read about in books but never actually felt.

“It’s my turn now,” I thought to myself, looking out of the window and seeing leaves shift with the wind, understanding that something beyond me was at play here. Love, at last. I basked in its warmth.

Everybody love my good behaviour,
Everybody love me softer, sweeter.
But you don’t really ask for either,
You only ask that I believe you.

2.11 Good Behaviour (Softer, Sweeter)

Let me know if you’re receiving
A message in this mess as much as me
God behind my carelessness, and
Heaven in the ways that you see me, ‘cause

Everybody love my good behaviour,
Everybody love me softer, sweeter.
But you don’t really ask for either,
You only ask that I believe you.

And I did, one minute
I’m frightened to death and the next I’m just fighting to confess to you
The wildest images gracing my mind,
You and I
Waltzing with bravado
The sunset sticking to our upper bodies
And the dizzy dive follows

And I, know that it’s out of my habit
To be so emphatic
Sometimes it just happens, oh
So the moment you know,
Just let me know