Where I’m from there’s always this one day in the year, sometime in late May, when the seasons spill over into one another. In late afternoon the air is so dense with magic and fragrance, nudging around breezes that carry the breath of the Antarctic, muddled with salt and wilting jasmin. It’s this kind of ephemeral Anemological changing of the guards, where for a moment Autumn and Winter are in the same room as each other, shaking hands against a sky of oil paints. I normally just walk around saying things like “god it’s great to be alive” and such and so. it’s my favourite day of the year, and I figure must be what the start of a new life feels like, if you believe in reincarnation.

Deciduo is the story of how on one of those walks, I came across this tree on a hill. It was the centrepiece of somebody’s garden and its branches sprawled out over all the other plants, endowing them with its medieval beauty. All of its leaves had almost fallen and it glowed in the way that things glow after rain. I ended up just sitting there in awe of the thing for what felt like hours, during which I think I came the closest I ever have to understanding those objectophile people you see on TV specials when producers are really clutching for ideas. I didn’t try and fuck it or anything, it was just like submerging in a bath of tactile pleasure, warm enough to not wanna get out (I was two pipes deep, mind you and my tolerance these days is less than formidable).

Safe to say I had never seen a tree quite in that way before. And for all my love I was helpless, doomed to sit and watch the sunset fold over and close the book on it. No one else would ever see this, so I had to try and preserve it - kind of like Jean-Baptiste Grenouille with his red headed girls, but without the casualties – and all I could do to come close was to write a song.