Your Mother’s Hallway

Written by Briyan Frederick Baker
Published by Blind Mime Music, ASAP
© Briyan Frederick Baker. All rights reserved.

This song began with a small, almost laughable spark — me playing a tiny melody on a little plastic toy saxophone. Mara, our labradoodle, wasn’t impressed. You can actually hear her reaction in the background — a bit of real life sneaking into the recording. I decided to leave it in. There’s something honest about that; the unplanned details often become the most human ones.

I uploaded that rough take to Suno AI, using it as the seed to grow the track. From that tiny melody — and Mara’s disapproval — the song started to form its own atmosphere. It’s funny how these experiments with sound sometimes open unexpected emotional doors.

The title came from a cassette I’m reviewing called Hallway Five by Black Pits, released on the ever-curious Public Eyesore label. The word hallway lodged itself in my head and started pulling on threads — memory, nostalgia, family, the passage of time. Before long, the song became a walk through the emotional corridors of the past — real, imagined, and everything in between.

These days, I find my thoughts circling those spaces — the ever-circular in-betweens, as I think of them. The moments that aren’t quite now, but not gone either. A hallway, metaphorically and literally, felt like the right place to set this.

“Your Mother’s Hallway” is filled with photographs, echoes, and the sense that life is still unfolding within the walls that hold our stories. It’s about connection and reflection — and how the smallest things, even a toy sax or a barking dog, can become the starting point for something unexpectedly meaningful.

Your mother’s hallway
Is filled with photographs
Is filled with hugs and laughs
And all kinds of other things
It’s filled with lives lived and lost
And lots of you and one of me
And it’s all right there in
Your mother’s hallway

Your mother’s hallway
Is where I learned of Jay
Your one-eyed cat who strayed
Up on your porch one day
And stayed
He’s pictured there upon your lap
And you were twelve and looking back
You remember when he died and how you cried
And it’s all there in
Your mother’s hallway

My mother’s photos were tucked away
In her dresser drawer; the bottom shelf
And sometimes I would settle there
Hidden under underwear
School photos and Polaroids
That dad would take on distant Sundays
Out in the yard, out in the sun
Four young kids just being young
Just being young

Your mother’s hallway
Is filled with photographs
With room for more it always seems
I find another memory to explore
Hanging there and in between
It’s not unlike you or unlike me
To find us lingering there in
Your mother’s hallway