John Mark McMillan | 4 years ago
Live acoustic version of "Guns / Napoleon" from my basement studio in Charlotte, NC.
I was adulting so hard! “You’re sinking all my ships, you’re climbing on my fences”
When I listen back to the Borderland album it’s so obvious. “I don’t feel like a boy, I don’t feel like a man”. Even the title itself is a tip of the hat to the transitional phases of life.
What’s funny is how I never see it when I’m in it. I feel like people always assume I write a song from an idea, but half of the time I don’t fully understand a song until, maybe even, years later. I know you might think that’s weird, but surely you know a person can feel a thing long before they can articulate it. See, this is the role of the artists in society: to press into the unknown in attempt to give a voice to pre-articulated meaning. To help you find the word “on the tip of your tongue”.
Still it’s always so funny looking back. For instance, “Guns/Napoleon” is clearly about my daughter. Even references to climbing fences, hanging pictures on my walls... These are all things that would come to define her even though she was just a baby when I wrote the song. She would also prove to be a force of nature, the “storm upon my gates”. Don’t get me wrong, she’s everything I ever wanted. She’s a dream come true, but there was a moment when she appeared to be the end of another dream.
I have no place to complain, but if I’m honest, there are things I haven’t done in my career because of my 3 wild birds. I don’t regret it, but in the moment it can be conflicting. There is an economy to life. When a new dream kicks down the door, you’re also suddenly starring at the death of something you once loved at the same time. How are you supposed to feel when a new dream destroys a previous or current dream? It’s disorienting. Anger. Guilt. Shame.
But sometimes what feels like a death in one moment of your life turns out to be something you desired all along. If she hadn’t kicked the door down, you might have never known that she was everything you ever wanted. If she hadn’t ruined your world you might’ve wasted your life on a career and missed out on actual living.
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Lyrics:
You're sinking all my ships
You're climbing all my fences
The storm upon my gate
The breach in my defenses
Like the sun against the morning
You set your face against the doors in
All the houses where I run
And I'm laying down my guns
And you keep coming on
Like Napoleon
And I'll lose my head and throne
In the bloody revolution
You fill the hollows of the halls
In the houses where I walk
You're hanging pictures on the walls
In the houses where I haunt
You're standing on my harbor
You're landing on my shore
I'm handing down my armor
I'm landing on my sword
On the brink of kingdom come
And I'm standing in the flood
Of everything I ever was
And I'm laying down my guns
And you keep coming on
Like Napoleon
And I'll lose my head and throne
In the bloody revolution
You fill the hollows of the halls
In the houses where I walk
You're hanging pictures on the walls
In the houses where I haunt
