My friend and bandmate Skyler Skjelset’s birthday is May 3, and our album Helplessness Blues was released on May 3, 2011. The song “Third of May / Ōdaigahara” is about my relationship with Skye. It addresses our distance in the years after touring that album, the feeling of having an unresolved, unrequited relationship that is lingering psychologically. Even if some time apart was necessary and progressive for both of us as individuals, I missed our connection, especially the one we had when we were teenagers, and the lyrics for the song grew out of that feeling.

It felt like a funny coincidence to see a Goya painting called Third of May. The compounded coincidences, and how the whole experience of playing music with him itself felt like a series of lucky breaks and coincidences, left me feeling like it was a good phrase to use for the title of a song.