Earlier this year we were honoured and humbled to win the Songwriters award at Sunshine Coast Ukulele Festival for our song Bus Stops – a song close to my heart. The song originates from a darkly ironic encounter in Seattle in July 2018.
As our bus pulled out onto the street my eyes were drawn to a tattered canvas tote bag, boldly emblazoned with the LinkedIn logo. This symbol of Silicon Valley – white-collar, corporate networking – carried by a woman who survives each day on Seattle’s streets. On the interstate, Nicki and I talked dejectedly about Seattle’s shiny, bright towers above and the homelessness in the shadows below, and its growing prevalence in our hometown of Melbourne.
By the time we reached Portland it was raining. Raindrops landing on the Portland Transit bus window, driven by the wind to join together, then fly to the windows edge; reflecting the myth of trickle-down economics. This led me to the intro and outro riff of Bus Stops: the regular spattering of drops, on the other side of the window, that never make it down.
The song’s riff invades this stillness with a driving, incessant, 6/4. When you have somewhere to be – a job, a home, an Air BnB, a tourist destination – a buses’ weaving, starting and stopping can bring exhilaration. This especially when you are new to the city. The bus, for us, was the meeting point of what the city promised its tourists and workers, and what it delivered for its most vulnerable citizens. On our many trips in Portland and San Francisco we had conversations with locals and drivers (the true heroes of this story) and uncovered subtler shades to replace the high-contrast glare of our time in Seattle. The words for Bus stops flowed during this time.
Originally, I had hoped to take the song (and me) from frustration and anger to hope. In searching for hope I was reminded “Whenever you see a tragedy, look for the helpers.” The hope in this story starts with the drivers and PT workers who heroically provide the practical care that the state does not. I recommend Nathan Vass’s blog The View from Nathan’s Bus. This song is dedicated to their humanity, as they face the socialised costs of Silicon Valley’s privatised profits. I had a few attempts at writing a hopeful second chorus, but in the current political climate I could only repeat the same refrain: nothing has changed; our cities continue to slide into ever greater inequality.
It was only after condemning the song to this anger, despair and confusion that I could make peace with its narrative point of view. For me, this is the most problematic element of Bus Stops: how can I – a tourist, with somewhere to go – presume to know, let alone express, the vertigo of a fall without a safety net? I did my best, painting in broad brushstrokes of grey. The narrator finds themselves recently homeless. We’re not told why and we’re given no clue as to what will happen next. All we have is one brief glimpse into the present of a life that turns in circles, exposed to the elements, passed by without notice by a whole city.
The chorus cries out to the forces that make this tragedy play out each day. The irony of living close to the centre of the Silicon Valley tech boom while all that ‘trickles down’ is the freezing rain and a poorly made tote bag that holds everything you own. We know what to do to fix this, we’ve done it before and, collectively, we can do it again.