Category Archives: Video

We Only Had a Few Good Years

I started writing “We Only Had a Few Good Years” in July 2024, and completed it a half year later. Three months after starting the lyrics, I came across Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Yorker piece, and incorporated some quotations from the article into the song’s “long digression” — a rather unusual bridge between the second and third verses that I always thought of as being the pop-song equivalent of Melville’s Moby Dick (which also famously contains some rather incongruous digressions).

We Only Had a Few Good Years
Words and music © Jonathan Ochshorn 2025

1. Much has happened to us Hominins since we’ve been around
We started in the trees and now we’re on the ground
But with the water rising we’re more likely to be drowned
As we watch while the coastline disappears
Looks like we blew it cause we only had a few good years

2. Everyone wants a scapegoat — someone they can blame
But time is running out in this idiotic game
They’ll tell you they can fix it as they stand up and explain
All the while throwing sand in the gears
We definitely screwed it up big time cause we only had a few good years

BRIDGE:

To avoid misunderstanding I provide this long digression
My point is — we’ve always lived with constant warfare and aggression
So when I say we’ve had a few good years I’m just talking ’bout the weather
We’ve had 12,000 years in the Holocene to get our act together (let me explain)

Hominins emerged in a long ice age, the Quaternary Glaciation
Within which was an interglacial period called the the Holocene formation
When global temperatures began to warm and glacial ice receded
Giving human civilization the conditions that it needed

But instead of production based on science and cooperation we build fences at our border
Eat or be eaten, beat or be beaten — nothing’s changed in this new world order
The Holocene gave us opportunities we’ve consistently been squandering
All those wasted years, blood sweat and tears — that’s the subject I’ve been pondering

Now Elizabeth Kolbert* wrote in the New Yorker that it really is no mystery
Why (and I quote) “this is the period that includes all of recorded history
A coincidence that, presumably, is no coincidence,” she writes, since in that span (and I quote again)
“Temperatures settled down and a time of relative climate tranquillity began.” (end quote)

Instrumental verse

3. Our economists adore property and competition
And so we live with war, poverty, and superstition
Always under threat from more bombs and ammunition
Designed by our brightest engineers
People we blew it cause we only had a few good years3. 

Outro

Production notes:

Music arranged and produced by Jonathan Ochshorn
Recorded with Logic Pro X software
Vocals: Jonathan Ochshorn
Background vocals: Jonathan Ochshorn
Real instruments: Jonathan Ochshorn’s leg-slapping intro drums
Software instruments played live on midi keyboard: Jonathan Ochshorn (drums, bass, piano, organ, electric clav)
Recorded at home in Ithaca, NY, February 2025.

I made the video using Final Cut Pro, with my lip-synced simulations recorded on my iPhone, placed on a tripod in front of my portable green screen (except that the final “outro” video was recorded live; hence the headphones and mic). The underlying video background is a live screen-recording of the Logic Pro X interface (with the Logic Pro transcription of the electric clav solo superimposed).

Links to all my songs and music videos can be found here.

* Elizabeth Kolbert, “Letter from Greenland: When the Arctic Melts, What the fate of Greenland means for the rest of the Earth,” New Yorker, October 7, 2024.

Live performance: Ran Through My Mind

This is a live version of my song, Ran Through My Mind (© circa 1980 Jonathan Ochshorn) that I performed at the Cortland Coffeehouse Plus on Feb. 1, 2025 as an unplanned and unexpected guest of Colleen Kattau — bilingual vocalist, award-winning song-maker and dynamic performer of Latin-influenced progressive eclectic folk — who was performing that night at the Coffeehouse.

Find my original music video of Ran Through My Mind from March 2008 here. And, of course, all my original songs and covers are linked from my music homepage.

Basketball at Barton Hall

I’ve been stopping by one of two gyms at Cornell on my daily walks, after discovering that my emeritus status gives me access to basketballs, lockers, uniforms, towels, etc. Most importantly, my retired status gives me lots of discretionary free time — I only saw one other person shooting hoops at Barton Hall today (the other gym is in Helen Newman Hall) during what I thought would be prime time for pick-up games (noon).

My new cover of loml

While I’ve been working on a new (original) song, I’ve also been listening to Taylor Swift’s “Tortured Poets Department” album, and learning one of the songs, loml, on guitar — Swift’s sings her version accompanied by piano. I’ve transposed it up a few semitones — from the key of C to the key of E. Yesterday, I decided to just set up two mics and record the song live, using Logic Pro. I did add just a bit of Login Pro software instrumentation (cello and piano) at the end of the song, played live on my midi keyboard. And I balanced my iPhone on the bookshelf over my computer to create the live video (edited in Final Cut Pro).

Art or accident?

Last night, I stumbled upon this rectangle of light on the Cornell Arts Quad and wondered if it was an art installation or just the random result of an open window with a projector running in Goldwin Smith Hall.

Update (Nov. 26, 2024): The Cornell Council for the Arts confirmed today that “what you captured was an unplanned, serendipitous art happening as far as CCA is aware. But we think it’s very cool!”

Live performance videos from Cortland Coffeehouse Plus

I was the inaugural performer for the opening of the Cortland Coffeehouse Plus, playing two sets of original songs in the basement of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Cortland, New York, also known as “The Old Cobblestone Church.” According to the Church website: “The building was placed on the State and National Register of Historic Buildings in 1993. The ‘Old Cobblestone Church’ is now the oldest building in Cortland County and is one of only two such cobblestone buildings in the country.” Here are two videos recorded at the performance.

Links to my original songs, covers, and videos can be found here.

Time After Time

A number of years ago, I began recording covers of pop songs that were influential in my musical development (or that I just liked). My self-imposed rules were (1) to pick only one song for each year; and (2) to never repeat any artist or group. Well, I started with Surfer Girl from 1963, and I’ve just made it all the way to 1984 with Cyndi Lauper’s hit single, Time After Time.

Some fun facts about the production: I’m playing the keyboard live in the video; I added the vocal, backup vocal, acoustic guitar, harmonica, bass, and drums later. All in Login Pro X. The video was shot in two parts: first the live piano (in my house); second, the background in the Trader Joe’s parking lot in Ithaca, NY, while I was waiting for Susan to finish shopping there. This was assembled in Final Cut Pro. Everything shot with my iPhone.

Links to all my music can be found here.

Book presentation at AAP Launchpad event

I presented my latest book, OMA’s Milstein Hall, at Cornell AAP’s joint book launch event, called Launchpad, on April 17, 2024, at 5:30 PM. Details here. Because I was in Madrid for the 2024 ASHRAE International Building Decarbonization Conference, my presentation consisted of a 7-minute music video. I was thinking of adding something like, “Be there. Will be wild!,” but will resist the temptation. Bad taste.

The video was released on YouTube at the same time as the book launch event. Why not subscribe to my YouTube channel to get notices of such things!

Puzzle of the Heart (new version/remix)

In preparation for my upcoming “Greatest Hits Vol 4” album, I remixed my 2021 song, “Puzzle of the Heart,” by adding drums, bass, organ, and a touch of back-up vocals — starting at the second verse of the song.

This entailed straightening up the free-form, and somewhat uneven, tempo of the live performance, not only for the new Logic Pro X audio, but also for the new Final Cut Pro video. Having  made those subtle modifications, I was able to re-use most elements of the 2021 live video for this 2024 version (with the new 2024 soundtrack).

I Wish I Were a Bee (new version)

I wrote the chorus to this song when I was in high school, but only got around to writing the verses and bridge about 50 years later, i.e., just before first recording it live in January 2020. This is a new recording with a bit more orchestration and back-up vocals.

For those interested, the Sartre references are based on a cursory reading of Being and Nothingness (no, not the book; just the Wikipedia entry):
 
“From Sartre’s phenomenological point of view, nothingness is an experienced reality and cannot be a merely subjective mistake. The absence of a friend and absence of money hint at a being of nothingness. It is part of reality. In the first chapter, Sartre develops a theory of nothingness which is central to the whole book, especially to his account for bad faith and freedom. For him, nothingness is not just a mental concept that sums up negative judgements such as ‘Pierre is not here’ and ‘I have no money.’ Though ‘it is evident that non-being always appears within the limits of a human expectation.’ the concrete nothingness differs from mere abstract inexistence, such as the square circle. A concrete nothingness, e.g. not being able to see, is part of a totality: the life of the blind man in this world. This totality is modified by the nothingness which is part of it.”
 
The idea that “man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have” is from Sartre’s “Temporalité,” in Situations (1947, 1949).
 
And the Kanye reference in the bridge is based on Mr. West’s similar claim that “everything I’m not, made me everything I am.”
 
I Wish I Were a Bee
Words and music by Jonathan Ochshorn 
© J. Ochshorn 2020
 
Chorus
I wish I were a bee
I wish I were a bee
No one would ever ask me
What I wanted to be
 
Verse 1
I hate all questions that presume some cultural identity
Defining who you are in terms of arbitrary norms
Some people get so obsessed with such a dubious ontology
That they become what they dress up as in their uniforms [Chorus]
 
Verse 2
My friend Jean-Paul’s apartment is somewhere on the second floor
I think perhaps apartment “B,” so down the hall I wander
I’m about to ring the bell but doubt sets in as I approach the door
Is it “2-B or not 2-B” — that’s the question that I ponder [Chorus]
 
[Instrumental Chorus]
 
Bridge
Kanye says everything you’re not makes you everything you are
Jean-Paul agrees that it isn’t the sum of what you have thus far
But rather the sum of what you don’t have or could have that really should prevail
Even if, in principle, all human actions are doomed to fail
 
Verse 3
I meet Jean-Paul at a café to talk about reality
His friend Pierre is still not there so we order bread and honey
He says that a concrete nothingness is part of a totality
As he leaves me staring at the bill while I run out of money [Chorus]
 
Links to all my music and videos: https://jonochshorn.com/music/