Slides From Carolyn’s Trip To Turkey (Circa 1953)

2025-02-02

Words and music by Briyan Frederick
© Brian F Baker | Published by Blind Mime Music, ASCAP
Guitar and bass seeds by Briyan Frederick
Other sounds and mix by Sunoai

Vocal by Riyan

My daughter met a woman at the copy shop where she works who mentioned her friend who is a 90-year-old retired latin professor who tutors students at her home and my daughter said she would love to learn latin.

The song was created on February 1 with acoustic guitar in hand. I landed on a pattern for the verse/chorus using Em-A-Dm-G and C-Am-B7. There’s enough modulation between possible key centers which seemed to work with the words. I fed that into Suno along with a very rough sketch poem and spent the rest of the day, off and on, writing and refining the words to shape into the finished track. The chords and tonality evolved over time.

We have a lot of older seniors who come into the copy shop for copies of old photos or items for keepsake journals or cards or personal histories. They all have stories to tell but no one to tell them too. The bridge is about that.

Lyrics

Slides From Carolyn’s Trip to Turkey (Circa 1953)

Circa Nineteen-Fifty Something
On a steamer off to Turkey
She lives alone now in her nineties
Here In Salt Lake City

She’s lived an amazing life
It’s all on slides (It’s all on slides)
I can’t imagine what it was like
A young woman less than thirty
Traveling in Turkey

[chorus]
I can’t imagine (I can’t imagine)
I can’t imagine what I’ll see
Slides from Carolyn’s trip to Turkey
Circa nineteen-fifty…three

She charted once to ride a fairy
For an excursion on the Black Sea
Then haunted archives whispered latin
I told her friend that would be awesome
Circa twenty-twenty…me

[chorus]
I can’t imagine (I can’t imagine)
I can’t imagine what I’ll see
Slides from Carolyn’s trip to Turkey
Circa nineteen-fifty…three

[bridge]
Living with their memories
Discarded among people (nobody asks)
Alone with lives of memories
Amazing things they tell no one (nobody asks)
Stored away in dusty boxes
Slides and cards and whutses (nobody asks)
Untouched at the estate sale
Left to fade from yesterday (nobody asks)

She was quite cosmopolitan
(She was Harvard educated)
I thought it would be fun
To study Latin
(Can you imagine?)
But it’s so much more
(So much in store)

[chorus]
I can’t imagine (I can’t imagine)
I can’t imagine what I’ll see
Slides from Carolyn’s trip to Turkey
Circa nineteen-fifty… three

Circa nineteen-fifty…three
Circa nineteen-fifty…three
Circa nineteen-fifty… three

Comments

• @avdyk – 2025-02-24Beautiful song. Great work. Wonderful voice
• @mal70 – 2025-02-23This is just wonderful! Love it!! Delivery, melody, arrangement, storyline. You’ve made something memorable out of Carolyn’s photographic memories. Something Turkish about the arrangement, or am I imagining things?
• @doug52 – 2025-02-09This is great! What a trip and story. Everything about this drew me in. Great Job! 😀
• @noah_canning – 2025-02-02Just in the spirit of giving honest feedback I initially really liked it and immediately felt tricked and disappointed to learn it was Ai assisted. It’s inevitable but personally I say no but I can’t deny that it sounds nice.
• @lcad – 2025-02-02This is so cool. Love the subject and how specific you get. Wonderful exploration and awesome production and vocals, love the changes on the bridge. I love this so much