Ball of Wax 68 Songs: Peter Colclasure – “Us. Still”

I owe Peter Colclasure an apology. As you may have noticed, we had been posting Ball of Wax 68 track reviews once or twice a day, or at least a few per week, since May. (You may have also noticed there are a lot of tracks on Ball of Wax 68.) And then nothing since June 30th, more than two weeks ago. You might have thought, reasonably enough, that Nick Jaina’s “Cauterize” was the last track on this volume, but oh no, there are three more tracks! And they’re great! And I have been meaning to write this track review for more than two weeks, but the world just started to get on top of me (as it did a lot of us around late June in particular), and I felt overwhelmed and unable to focus, and then every couple days I would say “Okay, this is it, I’m writing this goddamn blog post about this beautiful goddamn piece of piano music by my goddamn friend Peter,” and I would sit at the computer and put the song on, and it would just wash over me, an undulating wave of loveliness and emotion that seemed to be exactly what I needed to hear as a human, that left me with a moment of peace and stillness, but never left my brain with any words to express what it was I was feeling or hearing, because how can we truly express what it is to live through this exhausting, draining, horrible moment in America and then be confronted with a thing of such heart-rending beauty? We can’t. I can’t, anyway. So, Peter, I wish I had better words right now, but thank you for the music. I needed it.