Hearth and Home

Written by Briyan Frederick Baker and Joe Maki
Published by Blind Mime Music, ASCAP & Jomah Kai Music, ASCAP
© Briyan Frederick Baker and Joseph Alan Maki. All rights reserved.

Joe started this one with a piano instrumental he wrote on October 25, 2025. He described it like this:

“So I ran across a piano piece that needed fleshing out — I think it might be something. It’s called Hearth, or maybe Fall Ends. I’m deep in the autumn frame of mind, and it suggested a fire slowly dying with the frost creeping in. I had to use a different piano sound in the middle — not sure what I used originally.”

That set the tone. The piece immediately felt like late autumn — quiet, reflective, a little bit haunted by the chill of change.

When I took the inspiration for the lyric, I started from the word Hearth, but my mind wandered to Hearth and Home. The title felt familiar, almost comforting, yet the minor inflection in Joe’s music turned it away from any notion of simple warmth or nostalgia. It became something more complicated — a song about how we try to understand each other but rarely succeed.

The past week’s conversations with people crept into it too. It feels like everyone just wants to be understood and appreciated, but we’re all a little trapped inside our own heads. Words are blunt tools for delicate things. They don’t do us justice. So much gets lost in translation — and yet, we keep trying.

---

Hearth and Home (Lyrics)

You’re stuck inside your head
Despite the universal truths
People are the same, but not the same
An extension of the fears that held their youth

But who am I but just someone
Another man who’s come undone
Unspun around the common thread
Stuck inside this great big head

After all is said and done
You never really know someone
You never know what you don’t know
You never know their hearth and home
You never know their hearth and home

It’s practically impractical
Before it gets dramatical
I’ll leave before the curtain calls
No, you won’t catch me after all… pretending
Words are dumb and never really know
The ending
Yet it’s always the same
It’s always the very same ending
And it’s such a shame

It’s such a shame!…

You’re stuck inside your head
Despite the universal truths
The brutes in us are winning
While all the ghouls in us come grinning

Through their masks at masquerades
They dance around the false facades
Mispronounced like lemonade
The credits roll, the image fades

After all is said and done
You never really know someone
You never know what you don’t know
You never know their hearth and home
You never know their hearth and home

---

About the Song

Hearth and Home sits in that fragile emotional space between intimacy and isolation — the quiet ache of realizing that even when we share our thoughts, we remain mysteries to one another. It’s a song about communication and disconnection, about the warmth we reach for and the chill that inevitably returns.