Ghost

Our instincts and survival mechanism as human beings have wired us to run away from anything that might endanger our lives. If you hear an explosion, and you’re a sane person, automatically you would run for cover and not towards it. If you see a fire or a lion, or a speeding car, you, as an intelligent being, would avoid the aforementioned like the plague.

That’s how our species survived on this planet for more than five million years.

The problem arises when we take this survival instinct mode from “life or death matters” into other aspects of our lives.

We tend to shy away from confrontation. We avoid taking chances and instead choose the path of least resistance. We run away from our fears. We don’t follow our dreams. We don’t talk about our darkness, our real desires, and our real concerns.

Like children, we think that if we swipe things under the rug or if we shut our eyes, our problems and demons will go away.

Eventually, our secrets will burden us, our dreams will fade away and the people we care about will run away. We become miserable and sad, haunted by our ghosts.

That’s essentially what my new song “Ghost” is about. It is a call to face our demons, to pursue our dreams, and to have hard conversations with people that you care about. Don’t succumb to your survival mode instincts in matters that are not related to your actual physical survival.

Musically when I was writing the song, I thought it was going to be a 10-minute song. I think this is the most progressive Greyfade has ever been. Listening to and watching Dream Theater live does that to you I guess. (Note: I’m not comparing my technical abilities to them at all here; I’m slightly better. Just kidding.)


There are too many riffs; complicated ones as well. There are too many moving parts and too many ebbs and flows. I was really surprised that that song didn’t hit the five-minute mark. I’m very proud of the end result. To me, it feels like mature songwriting.

Finally, this is not preaching. As I was writing the song, thousands of scenarios from my personal life came to mind which I need to work on as well. This is a call to action for me as well.

Don’t run away from your ghosts.  Make friends with them. We cannot escape from our demons, and we cannot run away from ourselves. It’s better to befriend the ghosts and be comfortable having them around us.

It is not easy. It is not the path of least resistance; it is the road less trodden.

However, this is what makes life interesting, I guess.