First Impressions: “11:11” by Mikaela Davis

I fell into bed late, fell asleep even later, and woke early, just as a dream about a porpoise I’d taken as a pet played its way offstage. Maisie and Mo, the kittens we adopted a month and a half ago, cast bemused glances at me when I entered their sanctuary—i.e., the guest bedroom/my office—as if to say, “What the hell are you doing here at this hour?!” They proceeded to put on a show, knocking tchotchkes from the nightstand and—as is their wont—gnawing on several of the LPs I have stacked against the stereo hutch. (Tiny teeth marks on an album’s sleeve increases the value, right?) After an hour or so of entertaining each other, Maisie curled up by my feet and Mo splayed across me as if I was a hammock.

We all have our crosses to bear.

My tongue’s a tad in cheek, obviously. In point of fact, however, some nights I’m kept awake not from the curios of my imagination, but by fraying memories of loved ones, friends, and even work colleagues, and the fun, fights and downtime we shared. Some moved on to the great beyond, sad to say, while others—who I kinda-sorta recognize—haunt me as folks who Facebook suggests I (re)connect with. To borrow from the lyrics of “11:11,” the new single from Mikaela Davis, “Oh how I try/but I just can’t seem to recognize your face/Fading away like a photograph forgotten on the wall/What can I say/when the time has come and gone?”

The song finds her backed in part by Circles Around the Sun, the Grateful Dead-inspired band she jams with on occasion, and digging into a loved one’s exit from a relationship and family: “Taking a drive/on a one way trip to a place you’ve never been/I guess you lied/when you said that you’d be coming home again/Running away/from a place where everybody knows your name/Isn’t it great?/Sometimes you need a change.” The lush lament is the flip side of Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart,” if you think about it, and told from the perspective of one of the kids left behind.

11:11, for those unaware, is considered a spiritual gateway by some, the time of day (and night) when angels are near and prayers may be answered. Such is the case here: “Never say never/nothing’s forever/Make a wish and light the candle/11:11 again and again…” But what becomes a prayer that goes unanswered? In that sense, the song reminds me to a degree of the closing lines of Denise Levertov’s “Oblique Prayer”: “I can remember (is it asking you/that/ makes me remember?)/even here/the blessed light that caressed the world/before I stumbled into/this place of mere/not-darkness.”

Davis, of course, handles the harp in addition to keyboards and subtle synths. Circle Around the Sun’s John Lee Shannon, who cowrote the song with her, plays guitar, while the band’s bassist and drummer, Dan Horne and Austin Beede, provide supple rhythms. Rounding out the sound is Southern Star guitarist Kurt G. Johnson.

The song is available to stream from all the usual suspects, plus can be purchased on Bandcamp.