Vita Brevis by Paul Spring

n my junior year of high school, I started learning Classical Latin in a Geodesic dome made of particle board. My mother built the dome when our family of 12 outgrew our two-bedroom house in Argyle, MN - a town of 500 people in the sugar beet fields near the Canadian border. We spent the fall there, but once the negative temperatures arrived, we packed the van and traveled south, camping in state parks throughout Virginia, the Carolinas and Florida. During this year of wandering, my younger brother and I were homeschooled by our liberal arts professor parents, with a focus on the learning of Classical Latin and Greek. My little brother excelled at both, and I tried my best.
I continued to study Latin for a couple more years, and then I put the books away for 12 years, never finding the time to keep up with studying. Recently, the weight of the times recalled lessons on Caligula and Nero, and I felt drawn back to my old textbook to read about a crumbling empire.
Vita Brevis was recorded live in Altadena, CA in October 2024 at the studio of Taylor Goldsmith and Griffin Goldsmith. Unfortunately, this is the only album to be completed in their recently finished recording studio before it tragically burned down in the Eaton Fire. The 7 songs feature Griffin Goldsmith on Drums, Taylor Goldsmith on Bass, and Robert Shelton on Clavichord and Farfisa. I must say O was on some level of heaven during the three weeks I spent in LA recording with these guys. Beautiful weather, a cabin up the hill on Zorthian ranch, lots of laughs, and the company of fantastic musicians who I greatly admire.
Their playing on this record is unreal, I was thrilled with the tracking. But, when I opened back up the stems in NYC later that winter, I was not happy with my vocals. Taylor, Griffin, and I recorded the tracks huddled close in a room, and I sang loudly - which meant there was a lot of bleed. I had to use an AI program to remove my voice from drum overheads and the guitar mic.
Because of the election, and other recent shitty events, I had things I wanted to sing but couldn’t. Simple cathartic phrases and statements, nothing fancy, just things like ‘I curse our evil empire’ or ‘Life is short’ or ‘May there be peace on earth for all nations.’ But I know that if I were to play a record and hear someone sing these lines - I would turn it off immediately. Perhaps that’s a problem with our jaded culture, or perhaps it’s always been corny to say these things outside of a hushed prayer or hymn. But man, it felt so good to sing them. The music side was influenced by old hymns, the writings of Karl Marx, Beach Boys acapella stems (specifically the unused background vocal stems of ‘don’t talk put your head on my shoulder’), and Bach Motets / Chorales.