The title and the song are both a nod to my favorite childhood story, Alice in Wonderland. Similar to Alice’s journey following a hurried, confused and narrow-minded White Rabbit, this song is about chasing a love that becomes more and more distant the closer you seemed to approach it. Mirroring my hardship of letting go of a relationship that was falling apart, White Rabbit takes you on a spiraling, introspective and metaphorical journey, all the while highlighting the importance of healthy communication.

LYRICS:

The moon’s surface is rough, it changes shapes and often reflects the mystery & fear within our souls, and even poets sometimes refer to the moon as a symbol of unrequited love.

Despite it being a focal night light and providing a calming effect, the moon also represents a deceiving comfort since its light is, in essence, a cold one. Refusing to see reality I was in, completed that warmth. 

I was following him faithfully despite the signs (the broken watch), and even though I try to step back and go back to happier times, when my fantasy & the reality of my relationship clashed, it all became a whirlwind. That madness. That spiral. I will never forget.

V1:

Wrapped in
Your Moonlight
I weighed time
On your broken watch
Backwards motion
Spiraling into madness 

Leaving behind the comfort of all she’s known, Alice’s adventures begin with her fateful fall. The White Rabbit keeps running, hurriedly and nervously, without noticing her presence and confusion. Meanwhile, Alice faithfully keeps following. Yet, nowhere in that journey is there a healthy communication. I tried so much to understand why this person was slipping away from me that my effort to get him to open up and acknowledge my feelings felt like an impossible weight on my body, keeping me from waking up from a never-ending loop, a nightmare.

PRE:

Falling I’m Falling
Falling upside down
You’re running, you’re running
But I’ll find you in my playground
Even though I can’t wake up
You know I’ll keep trying
Falling, I’m falling again

Throughout the book, Alice's challenge is to grow into a strong and compassionate person, despite the peculiarity of the creatures she meets in Wonderland. In the chorus, I wanted to capture her, as well as my determination to find meaning in the irrationality of the White Rabbit’s actions and words. It highlights a growing and strong sense of justice, an inner voice which becomes clearer, and more specifically, a willingness to point out the weaknesses rather than accepting them and letting them bubble up eventually.

CH:

I don’t know how to talk to you
I just keep finding
Your lies are unfolding under my skin
I don’t know how to talk to you
I just keep calling
But your lies are unfolding under my skin

I would drink the poison, and just like Alice, although my mind was processing delicious flavors, I was shrinking, falling short from the person I was, all to accommodate and reach the White Rabbit.

There is a passage in the book that was genuinely etched into my brain at the time I wrote this song. The Rabbit finally acknowledges Alice for the first time; only he doesn’t even see her for who she is, he mistakes her for his servant. He then sends her into a house to his fetch gloves. She saw a drink with no label, thought it harmless, and then grew to a claustrophobic size. The Rabbit’s reaction? “ ’We must burn the house down!’ These are the burning embers turning into scars. His words. Or sometimes, lack thereof. 

V2:

Your kiss is poison
Burning embers fade to scars
Darkness in lost words
Nothing is forever ours

To conclude, if Alice had never followed the White Rabbit, she wouldn’t have had the adventures she did. She wouldn’t have had the growth. So, the wasted days written in the bridge of the song don’t refer to the experience as a whole, just to the period of unnecessary pain, and struggle. 

I shrunk to chase this love. I lost a part of myself to be closer to someone who was even more lost than I was. 

At the end of the story, Alice grows more confident & finds that a more beautiful world exists beyond the confines of her environment. At the end of the song, I conclude that, despite the trauma, I’m happy I didn’t lose all my sanity, and that I became a little bit wiser, just like Alice.

“It’s no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then” - L. Carroll

BRIDGE:

Fell in your maze,
Wasted my days
Just to find you were lost in your design
Made myself small 
To fit your twisted charm
With all the dreams I had of us two
I never lost my head