I wrote the lyrics while I wrestled with a moral reckoning I felt I needed to face, taking a personal and spiritual inventory before the Florida death row execution of Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., a serial murderer I had helped investigate and apprehend 30 years earlier. I had been searching for exactly the right melody, something that seemed to stay just out of reach, on the tip of my tongue, so to speak. Then, completely out of the blue, a very musically talented and gifted friend, Brently L. Carr, sent me a video of himself at the piano sharing an original melody he had written. It was the sound I had been searching for but had not been able to find on my own. Somewhere between his melody and my words, the song found its voice. We did use modern AI technology to expand his melody to fit the length of the lyric, but the melody is, and always will be, his.
At its heart, the message of the song is about the idea that the people, love, memories, kindness, and even the music that touch our lives don’t simply disappear when we do. What we leave behind through our own actions affects and changes others too. What we touch, and who we touch, goes on through time like the ripple from a stone tossed into still water, radiating outward farther than we will ever know. The ways we love people, hurt them, help them, encourage them, or simply show up in their lives can keep moving long after the moment itself has passed.
A voice becomes an echo. A moment becomes a memory. Love becomes something we carry forward. In one way or another, nothing ever really leaves.
I leave it up to the listener to contemplate or decide what it is, and what kind of energy they wish to leave behind to ripple forward through time.
Lyrics
Somewhere a bell is ringin'
Long after hands let go
Somewhere a song is playin'
For someone we'll never know
Maybe the smallest kindness
Travels farther than we see
Maybe a life keeps movin'
Through every life it meets
Nothing ever really leaves
It only changes shape
A voice becomes an echo
A memory becomes faith
A hand we held for one short while
Still reaches through the years
Nothing ever really leaves
It just disappears
Somebody wrote a letter
And folded up their heart
Never knew who'd find it
Or what that page would start
Somebody played a melody
Then laid the instrument down
But somewhere in the distance
You can still hear the sound
Nothing ever really leaves
It only changes shape
A voice becomes an echo
A memory becomes faith
A hand we held for one short while
Still reaches through the years
Nothing ever really leaves
It just disappears
Maybe we've met before
Maybe we will again
Maybe love remembers
What time makes us forget
And every soul we've touched
Carries something on
Like a note still trembling
After the singer's gone
Nothing ever really leaves
It only changes form
A light becomes another light
A shelter from a storm
And somewhere past the edge of us
Where endings disappear
Nothing ever really leaves
It's still somewhere from here
Like a note still trembling
After the singer's gone