Where do you get your inspiration?

It's been a while since I've typed words into this familiar little box. Every so often I'll get an idea for something to write about but it's never anything I care about so I let it go. I have to remind myself that it doesn't matter if I don't update this. I have to remind myself that I'm writing in this for my own sake and I just happen to have you looking over my shoulder. I have to remember to do this for myself because if I do it for you it will become watered down garbage. It's like anything isn't it? If you do something for the sake of doing it or because you're expected to, it just loses any sort of passion. It becomes routine. It lacks substance.

I used to prepare like 2 or 3 little speeches for every set we did. Or at least I'd make it a point to talk during the long breaks that were marked by a line on our setlist. After a while it just became routine. I wasn't talking because I had anything earth shattering to say. I was talking because there was a break in the set. It became a schtick. We became a band that "had things to say" regardless of whether those things were pertinent in any way. Well that's just pointless. So at some point instead of talking for the sake of talking I started to just let it ride. It was weird but it was better than talking to fill the dead space. I've been doing the same thing with this. Because I want to be the kind of person that says something when there's something to be said and who doesn't when there isn't.

So I've set this one up pretty well. I haven't been blogging (hate that word) because I haven't had anything to say. But I'm back. That must mean I'm going to say something pertinent or intelligent or important, right? Yeah. Not so much. I'm sitting in front of this computer because I have NOTHING to say and I'm hoping that writing about it will ease some of my frustration, help me find the inspiration that I was overflowing with a month ago, and help me get my second wind. So I'm going to talk about the concept of the record and what the songs are about and what I'm trying to do. This post is going to be like cliff notes to the new Another Breath record. If you don't want the surprise or whatever to be ruined don't read it. Here we go.

Fun Fact: This entire God Complex concept came from me misinterpreting the lyrics on a Songs: Ohia record (It's called Ghost Tropic and I just put it on because it's been a while). The opening lyrics to that record are "Still no Guides" and the first time I put the record on I heard "still no God". I thought that was so fucking powerful. Then I found out that I had misheard it so I immediately decided that the next record we did would have "Still no God" as the opening lyrics. So right off the bat I had that. I wanted to write a song about religion and about God and try to put into words the way I felt when I first thought I heard those words on that record.

I think we had just put out Mill City and I just wasn't happy with how that record came out lyrically. I mean the songs on their own were good and I was happy but I didn't like the record as a whole. I felt that it would have been better as a single piece of art if every song stuck to the central theme of relationship with place and dealing with depression and my relationship with my home as a glaring metaphor for my relationship with myself. Instead it ended up being a concept record with these little "commercials" breaking it up. We'd have a couple of songs that had to do with the record and then one or two that really didn't relate at all. To be honest I really don't think anybody gave a shit but to me it was really important. I felt that we could have done better and I decided that whatever we recorded next would do a better job at what we tried to do with Mill City. It would be a concept driven record but it would be no-bullshit. It would tell a story. Each song would follow in logical order and relate to the one before it. Each song would add a new dimension to what was happening. And at the same time, for people who bought a hardcore record with no intentions of getting into a literary review, every song would be able to stand on it's own and have something to say. The songs would be good but for those who cared to look a little deeper the whole would be greater than the sum of it's parts. I wanted to write a record that could be experienced in completely different ways by different people and at the same time I didn't want anybody to know that so much effort had been put into making it that way (looks like the cat is out of the bag).

So I knew I wanted to have a religious element to this record. I knew I wanted it to be a concept record that could read like a novel. Then I sat down and watched Magnolia and everything fell into place. At one part during that movie a part of Exodus was quoted and the basic concept of the record was written. The quote, "The sins of the fathers laid upon the children," got me thinking about this record and about God and about the multiple meanings of the word Father in a religious context and suddenly everything just started coming together.

The basic thought process I had is how I want(ed) the record to follow. Intially it's a straight forward rejection of Christianity. I rebelled hard against the church when I was younger. I mentioned before that I went to Catholic school and made a decision to drop out. I have plenty of qualms with that particular institution and am not at a loss for words when it comes to slamming it. I got thinking about that in the context of this record and I started thinking about how my disdain for organized religion seems to relate to the fact that I just can't stand authority in general. This God motherfucker is just a different kind of cop or principal or (insert dickhead with title here). Fuck the Holy Father.... oh. I seem to remember a scene from fight club that's burned in my memory....

Tyler Durden: Shut up! Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?
Narrator: No, no, I... don't... 
Tyler Durden: Listen to me! You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen.
 Narrator: It isn't? 
Tyler Durden: We don't need him!

Suddenly this was a record about my father. It starts at the surface with disdain for religon, moves to authority, and at some point a discovery is made that we've been talking about my old man all along. And with this discovery we can then go back and relisten to or reread those first few songs and they can suddenly mean something completely different.

The rest of the record, strangely enough, reverts back to religion and a search for meaning. When my Dad fails (and subsequently God fails with him) how do I cope with this new feeling of meaningless, abandonment, and isolation? How do I cope with the discovery that this idea of God is just an illusion? How do I cope with the fact that my own Father is, in reality, just a guy who fucked a woman who would later become my mother? There are no superpowers. There is no magic. And everything I ever believed about God, about my parents, about anything, is just an elaborate hoax.

So in a nutshell that's what the record is about... or will hopefully end up saying. The idea is that, to steal a line from Sage Francis (that I will almost definitely incorporate into the lyrics in some way), I don't have a God complex, you have a simple God.

I'm feeling energized after writing this. I think I need to pick up a pen and see how stirred my inspiration is. Thanks for reading.

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