The Making of “Hinman Park”

Lyrics and music inspired by a dream from 6/21/2020

Written July 2021

The song was inspired by a brief dream that I only remember vaguely; at the end of the dream, I knew I had committed a crime, and I had gone to the nearby park to wait until I knew I was just going to get caught anyway. I started to hear the song as a soundtrack to the dream. My dreams about serious crimes and tragedies are emotionally resonant for me, especially when it’s about me doing something I wouldn’t have wanted to do. In the lyrics, I compare the image of standing in the park after committing a crime to the feeling of waiting with anxiety about completely insignificant circumstances. 

I didn’t remember what genre the song from the dream was, so I took this song as a blank slate, and chose arrangements that I thought would fit the thematic atmosphere. I recruited my previous collaborator Mestup to help me with the piano. I wanted something more detailed and dark as the song progressed, but I couldn’t come up with anything beyond simple chords. Thankfully, Mestup came through with an absolutely gorgeous composition for the rest of the song on the first try, and the song was almost done. After spending a lot of time pondering over how to complete the song, I added the minimalist synthesized string arrangement.