Adventures in Rewriting – “Turning My Steps”

“Writing is rewriting.”

I wasn’t the first to say it. I wouldn’t be surprised if that quip pre-dates Shakespeare. But it’s an important truth for writers to accept as a crucial part of their creative efforts.  It’s a (sometimes brutal) reality that has borne itself out in my career time and again. The rewrite may take moments, days, or even weeks. But if I want my work to be the best I can make it, the rewriting must happen. 

And now – in this late stage of my career – I’m finding that the rewrite can take quite literally years.  As I’ve written about before, the song “Church” took me two years to complete.  A couple of years later, when Luke Garrett was about to record it, I was able to improve a single line in the chorus that had always bothered me. You can never know when the rewriting is finally done.

That said, I’ve recently completed another “years later” sort of rewrite. And by “recently,” I mean from 1996 to 2024.

“Turning My Steps to Jerusalem” – The Beginning (November 1996)

In the late 1990s, I discovered a marvelous little book by Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water, Reflections on Faith and Art. My copy is so dog-eared and awash in highlighted and underlined passages that I really should buy a new copy and start marking it up.  In a particular passage Ms. L’Engle wrote that when Jesus “turned his steps towards Jerusalem, he was making a choice which led him to Calvary.”  That line jumped out at me, and served as the germ for a song, “Turning My Steps to Jerusalem.”

The original lyric for the song opened with lines that I thought were really poetic, painting a noir sort of picture of the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. The “story” approach required me to flip the point-of-view as I went into the chorus, which is never an easy thing for the listener to follow.  (That should have been a red flag.) What’s more, by doing so I ended putting words in Jesus’ mouth (sort of), which is never a smart thing to do.  (Another red flag) Here’s the original first verse and chorus, written in November, 1996:

In a garden on a mountain’s brow
Under a weeping midnight moon
The law and an innocent man are sealing his fate.
It didn’t have to come to this.
It didn’t have to have to end this way.
But he knows love has a price,
So, I wonder do they hear him say… 
(Chorus)
I’m turning my steps to Jerusalem,
Turning my face to the setting sun,
Choosing to follow a higher voice,
Denying desires to turn and run,
Knowing the night will take over me,
But dreaming of daylight that’s sure to come.
I’m doing it for love.
I’m turning my steps to Jerusalem.

Now – I think that’s a pretty artful opening. I was pleased with myself after writing it. BUT – the fact was (Biblically speaking), Jesus was already in Jerusalem at the time of his arrest in the garden, which makes the point of the title somewhat moot. I made the fatal mistake of allowing my love for a cool-sounding opening to lead me astray for an entire verse. Not good. What’s worse, I, who have been in Sunday School my entire life, didn’t notice that mistake for years. Worse still, no one at my publishing company, and no one who ever listened to the demo ever seemed to notice it, either.  The song was never recorded, so the theological error never escaped into the world, other than in a few song seminars.  But I can assure you, when it did finally dawn on me, I felt pretty stupid.

As for the chorus, other than that nagging feeling of putting words in Jesus’ mouth, I liked the shape of the lines, the metaphors, and the resolution. It was a chorus that would hold up after the second verse, as well.

The second verse turned the focus back to the singer, facing the challenge to live a life like the example set by Jesus. By the chorus, he makes his commitment to do so: 

Sometimes the ways of Providence
Look to be fools among the wise,
Testing the heart of a man, daring him to change.
There’s a vagabond carpenter king
Madly giving his kingdom away.
I may be out of my mind,
But I swear I hear him calling my name.
(Chorus)
So, I’m turning my steps to Jerusalem,
Etc. (cont. repeat chorus)

There is much I liked about the second verse, and still do.  The rewrite to come only changed a single line – the second – which always felt awkward.  It was one of those lines that almost said what I wanted it to say – but somehow missed the mark.  As for the chorus, now that the song is coming from the singer’s point-of-view, the chorus lyric works just fine. Well, almost just fine.  It so happened that the rewrite made two small improvements in the chorus lyric.

And the music? The problem was the song was too long. I’ve never held strenuously to the “keep it under 3 ½ minutes” dogma. But the original demo was well over five minutes long.  This was partly thanks to a long intro and bridge that served merely as a break between choruses.  But even after I edited the intro and bridge, the demo still was just shy of five minutes. So, when I revisited the song in 2023, I knew I had to do something to shorten it still.

“Turning My Steps to Jerusalem” – The Rewrite (March 2023)

“Turning My Steps” had been sitting in my computer files, as a demo recording, lead sheet, and lyric document, for two decades. Nothing had ever happened with it. The original publisher had long ago returned the copyright to me. I still liked the song. One day, as I am wont to do on occasion, I was going through old material and I dragged the song out.

I don’t know exactly when or how the theological inconsistency of the original first verse struck me, but once it did, I knew I needed to rewrite the entire verse. I must have gone back to Bible (what a concept) and read about Jesus explaining things to his disciples.  I couldn’t help but notice how clueless those guys were. (I’m not finding fault.  I would’ve been as blind as the rest of them.)  They were never going to understand what Jesus was really about until the tragedy of his death and the victory of his resurrection. And that became the new material for the 1^st verse.

This time I maintained the 3rd-person point-of-view as I went from verse one into the chorus.  This solved two problems from the original. It solved the problem of the changing POV, and it no longer put words into the mouth of Jesus. But the rewrite did create a new a “wrinkle.”  In the Pop Verse-Chorus song form, we pretty much always want the repeated choruses to be identical, if possible.  It wasn’t possible. Notice that when the 2^nd chorus rolls around, the words change slightly, from “he” to “I.”  This change is about as small as can be.  And it’s a logical change, following the 2^nd verse. So, chastise me if you will.

The 2^nd verse is largely unchanged, except for the 2^nd line.  If we writers are guilty of returning to certain themes in our work, this is one of my favorites: the seemingly illogical, upside-down, and even foolish ways of the Gospel. I tried to say that in the original version, but this new line says it more clearly.

As for the chorus, it has two very small changes. But it is often in the smallest of changes that our craft is worked the hardest. The 5^th and 6^th lines have been subtly changed. “Knowing the night is now closing in” is a stronger picture, and it adds one more bit of alliteration to the line. “But certain that daylight is sure to dawn” adds a needed sense of assurance to the lyric’s message, and moves the alliteration to the end of the line. Here is the final lyric:

He told them all so many times.
But how could they really understand?
They’d only make sense of it all once the work was through.       
He knew where he had to go.
He knew the price he would have to pay.
But they couldn’t see it all then,
No matter all the times he explained.
(Chorus)
He’s turning his steps to Jerusalem,
Turning his face to the setting sun,
Choosing to follow a higher voice,
Denying desires to turn and run,
Knowing the night is now closing in,
But certain that daylight is sure to dawn.
He’s doing it for love.
He’s turning his steps to Jerusalem.

Sometimes the ways of Providence,
They challenge the where, the how, the why,
Testing the heart of a man, daring him to change.
There’s a vagabond carpenter king
Madly giving his kingdom away.
I may be out of my mind,
But I swear I hear him calling my name.
(Chorus)
I’m turning my steps to Jerusalem,
Turning my face to the setting sun,
Choosing to follow a higher voice,
Denying desires to turn and run,
Knowing the night is now closing in,
But certain that daylight is sure to dawn.
I’m doing it for love.
I’m turning my steps to Jerusalem.

By the way – as for a rhyme scheme, the chorus has a definite rhyme scheme.  The verses, however, have no intended rhyme at all. There may feel like there is some soft rhyme, but that is purely unintentional.  The verses are almost conversational. 

But what of the music?  It remained much the same, though I finally removed the bridge altogether.  That brought the song down to about 4:40. It wasn’t until I was mixing the demo, and was blown away by how powerfully Regi Stone sang the opening lines, that I decided to dump the intro altogether and do a “cold start” on the lyric.  This also led me to bring in the instruments more gradually, till they all really “hit” hard on the first chorus.  As a result – you could say that the final rewrite didn’t happen until July 2024, when I finally got the demo recording completed.

So, there you have it. I’ll try not to rewrite this song again. Well, not unless an artist wants to cut it and make a tiny change or two…

You can listen to the demo on YouTube here. (Don’t be fooled by the silence underneath the opening panel. The music starts at about 16 seconds.)