"Second Hand Smoke" by William Fitzsimmons ft. Abby Gunderson, Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Before becoming a full-time musician, William Fitzsimmons was a practicing mental health therapist. Music was always a presence in the singer's life when he was growing up. His father built a pipe organ in their family residence. Turning to music, the former therapist writes songs about intellectual conundrums, love and loss. Graduating from the Reformed Presbyterian Geneva College, the artist, throughout his career, has kept a faith in the musical conversation. Throughout the singer-songwriter's discography, music has been therapeutic. His sophomore record, Goodnight, helped him process his parents' divorce when he was a teenager. But the story behind Mission Bell is about a personal mental health crisis in the making. 

WASHED HANDS, CHANGED PLANS. In an interview with Two Story Melody, Fitzsimmons revealed that he had recorded with his friend and bandmate, but he found out that his wife had been having an affair with this friend. He threw away the original recordings, rewrote the songs, and recorded a breakup record. The soft-voiced, big bearded singer keeps his music mellow as always. Mission Bell is still the same kind of Grey's Anatomy/ Brothers and Sisters coffeeshop music of his early career, not even using a profane word to express the emotion, though he would curse on following releases. But throughout the 10-song journey that is Mission Bell, listeners hear a full range of emotion. From the first single and opening track "Second Hand Smoke," the song of the day, to the closer "Afterlife" with its eerie electronic guitar/synth production, the songs are bathed in metaphor. I listened to "Afterlife" a lot last year. My Apple Music play count has the song in my Top 30 plays. There was something about the song that made it very 2020, pandemic-friendly. "Second Hand Smoke" gets the album off the ground quickly, establishing the "William Fitzsimmon" sound. The metaphor is a hazy comparison, equating love to something toxic like the secondhand smoke from a cigarette. The music video depicts the stages of a love affair in a rural costal area, ultimately leaving the couple parting ways in the end. Smoke isn't good for the lungs. Smoking is bad for your health. The fumes that the relationship was running on, left an unpleasant film on the clothes, and at some point, you have to change them. 

I WAS HOPING THAT SOMEBODY WOULD BREAK MY COVER.  Honesty hides behind the wisps of smoke, and when the smoke has cleared, will you like what you see? It's a question at the center of the song. Ultimately, the very person whom Fitzsimmons has entrusted his heavy, poet's heart to, breaks his trust. But this story is as old as humanity. Ever since people have decided to be monogamous beings--whether we believe in the Genesis story or if we look at the historical joining of two families as a mutually beneficial arrangement--the sacred union has had some problems. While problems like infidelity are as old as time, "love marriages," as opposed to arranged marriages became more prevalent after the Enlightenment of the 1700s, which marriage researcher Stephanie Coontz called the "Radical Idea of Marrying for Love." As more emphasis was placed on women's rights, a marriage, ideally, became an equal meeting of the minds and bodies. But in this equality, there is more that can go wrong. Questions about if you can ever really know another person, if another person can really accept the darkest parts of you, if a marriage commitment can really last from the time a person is 18 or 28 or 38 until "death due us part." No two marriages are alike, whether successful or failed. Questions about if it's more of an intellectual partnership, a sexual outlet, an old-fashioned business alliance keep marriage therapists in business. And then there's the fact that we turn on television and the series that play William Fitzsimmons' music can't keep a married couple together happily. As audiences, we get bored seeing marital bliss. Our own upbringings, whether watching our parents or our parents' close friends' marriages fall apart, make us wonder is there such a thing as an equal meeting of the body and the mind? Or is all as toxic as secondhand smoke?

https://genius.com/William-fitzsimmons-second-hand-smoke-lyrics