Singled Out: Sean Spillane's Distracted

About a year and a half ago I sent feature film director Lucky Mckee, the demo version of "Distracted" that I recorded way back when I wrote it eight years before. He loved it and wanted to feature the demo in his film upcoming "The Woman". At the time, he was finishing his shooting script and had asked me to be the composer for the film. His idea was to have me come out to Turners Falls, MA and write and record additional songs while the film was being shot in order to get the vibe and pace of the story. This worked out better than imagined. However, as the new songs began to take shape, I realized the demo version of "Distracted" wasn't going to cut it, especially when played over huge speakers in a movie theater. I re-recorded it and I really feel like this more realized version captured the charm and spontaneity of the demo, while absorbing the despair and angst of the characters in "The Woman".

"Distracted" is one of those songs that feel like I wrote it in 15 minutes because it just poured out of me one evening, lyrics and all. This is not always the case, but sometimes things just click. The world view within "Distracted" relates to life in our modern age which is moving very quickly and bombards us with so much information on a daily basis that as soon as we begin to fully understand and make peace with tragic or confusing events in our lives, our attention is being pulled away in a completely different direction by something even more ridiculous. Therefore, we never have time to fully comprehend most world changing events, which inevitably dooms us to repeat our mistakes. "Distracted before we know/We're distracted and so it goes."

The personal side of "Distracted" deals with the idea that we're all good inside but circumstances and events occurring around us tend to warp and distort our tendency toward goodness. There a moments in our lives in which each of us have lied or done varying degrees of harm to others, sometimes without even knowing it. "'Cause the world is so dark, but there's light deep inside you/We all have been hurt and we all have been lied to" I lament how we are all distracted by our own agendas and quest for survival in these fast paced, unforgiving times and have little or no time to reflect on the consequences of our actions. "Now the consequence of actions and incompetence/ show it's worse than we had feared"

Even though I wrote "Distracted" eight years ago, I feel like it is even more relevant today and should be relevant for a long time, seeing how we won't be throwing away our TV sets, cell phones and computers any time soon, and thank god for that.