Drive

This song is about losing touch with someone who I used to keep really close. It's about an ex girlfriend. The one that most of my "girl songs" are about.... I'm sure you could pick them out if you tried.

I intially wrote more but for as comfortable as I am talking about my shit... and as much as she factors into my shit... she doesn't deserve to be dragged into this. My life is my mess. Nobody elses. My words are weapons and I'm not looking to do any more damage tonight.






Drive

"On a darkened stretch of highway just outside of town
With inches between us I feel the distance of worlds
I realize that I've never felt so empty in my whole life
There's just the two of us and the silence, and we drive.

Her words cut through the silence when she turns to me and asks,
'Why is it that you're the only one with whom I can be completely exposed?'
My skin grows cold as the words climb up my throat
I answer, 'My darling when we're together you will always be alone.'

The silence crashes back on us as we continue driving on
And I feel the heartache in the truth that we're, all of us, alone.

We're, all of us, wounded
We're, all of us, burned
We're, all of us, scarred
and we're, all of us, alone."


I wrote this song on the airplane on my way to Rivalry Showcase in January of this year. It's an excerpt from my notebook taken from February of 2007. I believe the night that this song references was sometime in the mid-summer of 2006. I'm sure you don't care but it matters to me.

I remember the night pretty vividly. She was trying to show me some Feist record that I didn't give a damn about and even though we were getting along and laughing the air was awkward. I had 'Brick' by ben folds five playing on a loop in my head " Driving back to her apartment. For the moment we're alone. She's alone. I'm alone. Now I know it". So in the irony of the moment when she asked me why she felt so comfortable when I couldn't have been more uncomfortable the words were already primed to cross my lips. That night I felt so disconnected from absolutely everything.

When I think about being alone in the purest existential sense the video of that night pops into my head. It's why I've held onto it and made it into a song. I don't usually tell stories but this one just really hits a sad desperate place for me. The kind of alone I felt that night hit much deeper than the kind of alone one feels in a crowd. The people in a crowd are all strangers. To realize you're still alone when you're face to face with someone that knows your history, has seen your scars, that knows all of your secrets.... well that's just different. That's an utterly hopelessly depressing awful kind of alone.


I swear this record isn't all gloom. It's just really important for me to drive home the idea of isolation. In my search for truth I've realized that one of the fundamental tasks is to come to terms with the fact that every human being is born alone, dies alone, and remains alone despite anything that he/she does to convince himself/herself otherwise. I can rationally accept this idea but to really let it in is terrifying. So it's always on my mind. And leaks into everything that I touch.

This song also touches one of the other themes of this record which is silence. There is truth in silence if you only care to listen to it. But we're usually too busy trying to drown it out to even pay attention. This song is one of many that attempts to drive that point home and one of the things I like about it is that it musically and lyrically tells more of a story with silence than I think it does with the actual words.

And here you thought we just wanted to jump on each other and have sing alongs. Another Breath - deepest dudes in hardcore.


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Let's Talk about Feelings

I'm not a very open honest touchy feely dude. At least not in real life. I keep to myself. I talk when I feel comfortable talking. And I shut my mouth when I think it's a good idea to keep my mouth shut. And honestly, even though I'm pretty tight-lipped in a lot of situations I still feel like my "shut the fuck up" sensor isn't doing a good enough job sometimes because I still end up talking a lot and eventually putting my foot in my mouth.

But then I get on here or sit down to write a song and everything changes. I can let that part of myself that's a little more honest and a little less worried about how I'm going to be perceived show a little bit more. No... that's not quite right. That sounds like I'm saying that I'm dishonest to everybody I see on the street on a daily basis and the only time when I can actually be me is on some stupid blog on the internet. That's not the case at all and if it were I think it would be pathetic. The basic jist of it is that this is a different forum than the local bar, my office, a classroom, or any of the other litany of places that I exist.

The original title or premise of this blog was "Letters to God". Who's God? God's the person I can talk to about anything at any time. I can go to Him in times of need and in times of utter bliss. He gives a damn about every dumbshit piece of nonsense that comes into my overactive and sometimes pointless mind. The only catch? Yeah, you guessed it. He's not there. He's a figment of my fucking imagination. But I can accept that. Because writing down some of the dumbshit nonsense that pops into my head is kind of cathartic and helps me get my thoughts in order.

So one day after I start writing letters to this God dude it hits me that when you write a real letter and stick it in an envelope and send it off to God or Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or Zeuss or whoever you feel like writing to that it just ends up somewhere. I think it's called the dead letter department. Anyway, there's a guy (or a girl - Women can work for the US postal service too) in the dead letter department and he's in charge of overseeing the whole deal. His job is simple because his mail doesn't need to go anywhere. So I'm guessing that he gets bored and curious some days and starts tearing open letters. I know I would. I'd be fascinated to see what innerworkings of the human condition could be found in the unadulterated conversation between a person and his/her chosen superpower (or jolly gift bringer). So this person exists and is opening my letters to God.

And you know what. I'm ok with that. The postman can read my letters. Maybe he'll get something out of it. You're the postman. So read my letters. And enjoy. Or don't. I don't give a shit. I'm just writing my dumbshit thoughts and feelings into a little textbox and shipping them off to God. In the meantime I don't mind if you peer over my shoulder.

The thing I haven't been able to come to terms with is what happens when people start writing back. What happens when my mom finds out about this and starts reading it? What happens when classmates and coworkers stumble onto my little letters? What do I do with that? This stuff wasn't meant for discussion. It was meant to straighten up my little brain.

So I guess this is sort of a half explanation and half excuse about why I'm not real psyched to have conversations about my blog on the street. I take my private stuff and I make it public. But it's always in a letters to God kind of way. I don't write songs to anyone in particular. I just write them. I don't write this blog to anyone in particular. I just write it.

So with that in mind I'm going to get to what's actually swimming around in my head.

I've spent a long time terrified that the closest I would ever be able to come to another human being might be the exact fucking length of a microphone cable.... that the closest I could come to connecting with someone else might be screaming the same songs at the same place at the same time. Kind of acknowledging that we're in the same boat without ever really talking about it. But I've learned in the last year and especially in the last few days that I have the ability to be extremely honest and almost sickeningly vulnerable with another human being. For something that I used to be so afraid of it was such a relief to actually do.

For a long time I was just alone. Completely detached from everything. Then I found hardcore and learned how to feel connected while still keeping myself isolated. That's what hardcore is about to me in a lot of ways. It's what this stupid blog is about. It's what my songs are about. It made sense to me recently what I was actually trying to say in this song. It's called Still No God. It will be the first track on the new record.

Still No God

"There's still no God
We are still all alone

No voice to guide
No words can save
No faith can heal

And there's still no God

No salvation for lost souls
Still No God
But we needed more than everything.

We're all alone together
We're all alone alone
We're all alone together
Waiting for some kind of fucking miracle

No salvation for false souls
Still No God
But we needed more than everything

There's still no God."

I guess I could explain everything about what it means in context of the record but I think I'll leave that for a later day. The basic point is this: We're lost and we're desperate. We're reaching out to something that we see as really far away because we're too blind to see everything that's right in front of us... "We needed more than everything".. So we're all alone together. We're all alone even when we're staring in the very face of the things that could connect us. Save us. Hardcore kids are notorious for this kind of thing. We know what it means to be alone in a crowd.

So why are we all alone even when we have all these people around? My reasoning for it is because I'm too scared to bridge the gap. Everyone has their own reasoning. We all want to be connected. Some of us just don't know how. Some of us are scared. Some of us are stubborn. Some of us have just been burned too deeply by the right people.

I know this has been my issue for a long time. I'm alone but I realize it's because I keep myself so guarded. I keep everyone at a safe distance. But I'm in the process of crossing the bridge right now. Not with everybody. But with somebody. And in all honesty, it's so much harder to give myself to somebody in a real intimate and honest way than it is to hang my dirty laundry out in a forum like this. This is cake to me. One on one is waaaay harder and waaay more terrifying. Maybe that's just me though.

You can't legitimately give yourself to everybody. You can't legitimately accept everyone else's shit. These hardcore songs that we shout in each other's faces make us feel connected and in a way they tie us together. But a lot of us are still alone in the crowd. A lot of us are hiding in our ipods or in our record collections and in our pile ons. It's a great set up for people who are desperate to be close to people but terrified to be legitimately close to people. It's myspace. It's meaningless sex. It's sing-a-longs to your favorite band. It's sloppy drunken conversations late on a Saturday night. It's that stupid sheet of plastic that your grandmother puts on her couch. It's all a buffer. It's all a placeholder or an acting out of real human intimacy while at the same time trying to protecting ourselves from getting hurt. It will never touch legitimate human intimacy. Ever.

This makes hardcore seem cheap and meaningless. It isn't. It's been one of the most important things in my life. But it has the ability to be a breeding ground for meaninglessness disguised as meaning if you're not careful.

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Silence

I skipped class to ride my bike today (Big no no in grad school). It may have been the best decision I've made in a long time. Jon AB, our friend Bugjuice, and I started riding and 5 hours later we had covered at least 20-30 miles.

In the beginning of the trip we spent a pretty good amount of time on the road trying not to get hit by cars but after a while we decided to turn down a dirt path that led to a little bridge crossing a stream to see where it went. So we popped through and suddenly we were on the cart path of a golf course. As soon as we were on the course it was like we were in a different world. The hustle and bustle of the cars on the road faded away and I heard something that I haven't heard in a really long time: Nothing. Everything was still and there was just silence. It seems weird to describe it this way but the silence was gorgeous. I mean the golf course was nice, there was a nice little pond, there were birds around, and it was the first moderately warm day of spring. All of that stuff was great. But it was the silence that pulled it together.

So I sat there appreciating this landscape with all of it's silence and I started soaking it in. It lasted for about 2 and a half seconds before I ruined it by saying, "Man it's quiet here. It rules." and thus destroyed the thing I was appreciating... and like that it slipped away.

Silence is usually something we avoid. Most of us can't fucking stand it. We'll do anything to escape it. Chances are you're listening to music or watching TV as you're reading this. Maybe you're on Myspace or AIM. Maybe you're doing your homework or having a conversation. We do these things to distract ourselves. We do a handful of things at once. Just in case the record ends I've got this blog to look at. That way we never have to endure silence - we always have something to fill the space. Because silence is painful and uncomfortable. Why? Because the only thing that exists in pure silence is your own stupid thought process rattling on in a million different directions causing you to wonder every now and again, "Did I really just think that?" That leads to the thought that you might be weird... or crazy. "Do other people think this stuff?" And all of those insecurities that you usually keep locked away start bubbling to the surface, one after another. Nobody wants that, so you turn the record over and continue on.

Part of the self awareness thing I was talking about before deals with being able to tolerate silence.. because silence is non distracted reality. And in a reality without distraction the only thing that's left is you and the thing you're looking at. You, the golf course, and the silence. Most of the time it's you, the golf course, the song on your ipod, and a million thoughts that are so tangentially related that it's sometimes hard to figure out where the hell you even started.

That's what the rest of this song is about. I've been having such a hard time finding the words but they came today on that golf course and I just wanted to share.

"There's truth in the lies I tell
There's silence and it's all around
There's a sound in a city where it's all drowned out
And if I only had a match I'd burn it to the ground"

It's about how we miss what's right in front of us because we spend so much time distracting ourselves. We live lifestyles that are conducive to all sorts of denial; where we do so many things at once that we miss every individual thing we were doing because we were distracted by everything else. Think about it. You haven't been paying attention to whatever record you're listening to for the last 3 songs. And if you go back and reread what you think you just read you'll see you've probably missed a whole lot of it.

There's no such thing as ADHD. There is life in America. How the hell are you supposed to find focus when there are always a million things going on? It's impossible. Unless you learn to appreciate silence when it's there and not fuck it up. Let me tell you something, that is an ability I wish I had and given that I lasted 2.5 seconds I'm pretty proud of myself because that 2.5 seconds was fucking great. It made the whole rest of the trip (which was gorgeous in so many ways) totally worthwhile.


Oh... and to cap everything off... I got Chinese food when I got home and my fortune was: "You find beauty in ordinary things, do not lose this ability." ..... yeah, today fucking rules.


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Belly of the Whale

A couple of years ago I thought it would be a good idea to become a mental health counselor. "No big deal," I thought. I can just learn some theories and talk people out of being crazy. I can actually sharpen up my ability to fuck with people's heads and use it for good. So I went to school and along the way not only did I learn that this stuff is way more complicated than I ever expected, but it's anyone's guess as to what a good counselor actually does.

'Oh and by the way, Ted. Even though you think you're learning how to help other people you're actually just going to be going through your own two-year therapy session. You need to become self-aware to help others. If we assign you a paper about theory we really don't want a paper about theory. We want a paper about how the theory relates to you. You get better grades if you tell us the real filthy stuff you keep hidden away. Along the way we're going to put you under a microscope, figure out where you're vulnerable and poke you in those spots with a pointed stick until you think you're going to lose your mind all together (as if I wasn't on the brink of insanity anyway). Yeah, you can thank us later.'


In the last couple of years I've learned some pretty interesting stuff about myself but it's all come with a cost. Self awareness is not an easy thing to achieve and isn't necessarily all that great. It's not like some sort of self-actualized enlightened bliss. As you become more self aware you basically have to take the good with the bad. You have to accept your failures and shortcomings for what they are. And that sucks because there are consequences that come with that kind of knowledge.

The analogy that keeps coming to my mind that will hopefully help me explain this is my last car. My beautiful Rock and Roll Chevy Malibu. When I got her she was in pretty decent condition which was good because I was broke and wasn't going to be able to afford a fixer-upper. One day RnR Chevy Malibu started making this weird squeaking noise when I hit the brake. I thought to myself, "Something's probably just wet. Everything is fine." And I kept on truckin'. A few weeks later, when I pressed on the brake, the pedal would rumble. "Road's just rough" I thought. Kept going. It wasn't until the thing would barely stop that I brought it in and got it checked out. The guy who was working on it looked at me and asked me what the hell my problem is. The brakes were clearly fucked. How had I been driving on them for this long? How was I too stupid or too lazy to have them checked out before hand? Well the answer to that is simple. I wasn't stupid or lazy (ok maybe a little of both) but I was broke. I couldn't deal with having to pay for new brakes. So my brain just automatically shifted to denial. Why? Because denying there was a problem made the problem go away. I tricked myself into believing everything was great because it kept me from having to face the reality that my car was fucking up. That would mean having to be worried about what I was going to do, scrambling to come up with money, maybe even asking my parents for help. No fucking way was I doing that. So I just acted like nothing was wrong.

We do this kind of thing all the time. I don't know if it's an adaptive survival strategy or what but we take the stuff that we don't like and we put it somewhere we can't get to. This place is what Freud called the Unconscious. (If you don't know about Sigmund Freud then I suggest you read up a little bit because he came up with some fascinating theories about how the human mind works. If nothing else you can drop his name should you ever end up at some trendy party full of psychologists that you'd like to impress.)That unconscious thing is nuts because while we aren't really able to access the information that we put in there, it's still a part of our brain and it still causes us to act out on it. Here's an example that you might have come across: You hate some person that you work with. Want to grab him by his stupid throat every time he opens his mouth. You can't do that though. Not only would you get fired, you'd go to jail. So you keep it to yourself. You tell yourself to just forget about it. So you do. Then one day you're off hanging out with some buddies drinking beers and the thought never enters your mind that you have some TPS report due the next morning that has a big impact on this person you hate. The next day, because you somehow forgot to do what you were supposed to do you've unintentionally fucked that person that you hate. You didn't do it on purpose. You legitimately forgot. In some ways your unconscious mind could be at work. I'm not saying it's a definite. This kind of stuff is hard to prove. But things like this happen on a pretty regular basis. Most of us who have ever had an "I wonder why I did that" or "I wonder why I said that" have probably run up against the idea that there are things at work in our brains that we are not even the slightest bit aware of.

So self awareness is basically taking that unconscious stuff and trying to be conscious of it so you can have some rational input into how you want to deal with it. But it means you have to sit with the fact that you hate your coworker or that you're really sad about something awful that happened or that you're not really as smart and funny as you let yourself believe. Sitting with that stuff sucks because most of it isn't pretty. If it was it wouldn't have gotten into that unconscious place to begin with.


Still with me? OK so this isn't supposed to be a psychology lesson, just making sure we're on the same page with this stuff. Anyway... we're getting closer to the point. The other night I was watching a PBS special on Joseph Campbell that Chuck had rented. This dude is a legitimate genius. He started talking about mythology and how it ties into religion and how those things are all metaphors for the human condition. Of course he had me listening. I've been trying to piece all this stuff together in my own way for a while now. I thought if nothing else I could steal what he was saying, turn it into songs, and then take credit for it.

So as he's talking he starts talking about Star Wars. I'm not sure which episode it was but there's a scene where Han Solo, Princess Leia, and Chewbaca are stuck in this pool of water with the walls closing in. They show a clip from it and Campbell starts talking about how thematically this part of the movie is telling the story of Jonah and the Whale. He goes on to explain that both of these stories are really dealing with the fear of entering the unconscious. In much of literature water ends up representing the unconscious. In fact, when the unconscious was first explained to me in high school it was represented as an iceberg that poked out a little but was mostly kept under water (which I thought was pretty cool). So whatever, Campbell basically explains that in the Jonah and the Whale myth the water represents the unconscious mind and the Whale is a representation of what exists in the unconscious. The whale is terrifying. It can swallow you whole. If you're not careful you can become trapped there. At the same time though, it is a place of contemplation and realization. I think when Jonah was in the belly of the whale he realized that he should be faithful to God. He realized that even though he had been cast into the murky depths of the ocean and even though it sucked to be in the belly of the whale he wasn't drowning and was actually safe.

So this song is based on all of that. It's about what I've learned in the belly of the whale. I'm coming to terms with what I am and what I allow myself both to see and to present to other people. Before I was calling this song The Middle but it doesn't do justice to what the song is about so I'm changing it (just like I said I would). Because even thought it's about embracing good and bad at the same time, at the heart of it, it's about seeing myself for what I really am and presenting something quite different to the outside world. This struggle to come to terms with my own self-image is what I think Marla was getting at. I know how people want me to be and act. So I give it to them.

I've got the kind of face that seems innocent. I don't look like I'm up to no good. So people trust that I'm doing what I'm supposed to and that everything is cool. If they only had a clue...

Belly of the Whale

"There's poison in the water but I'm thirsty just the same.
I hear. I see. Know the truth but I'm telling lies.
I understand that we're all dying. Funny that life just gets in the way.

There's truth in the lies I tell
There's silence and it's all around
There's sound in the city where it's all drowned out
And if I only had a match I'd burn it to the ground

There's a war and it's always inside me
Overshadowed by docile blue eyes
It never matters 'cause the sheep are all blind
And if the Devil had a face it would look like mine"


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What are you, lost?

Chuck and I finished up Dogtown (I wrote about it a couple of posts down) and it came out great. He came to practice a few nights ago and we practiced what we had.. it sounded fucking incredible. I couldn't be happier with how this is working out and I couldn't be happier that Chuck is the guy with the other mic. Over the last year and a half he's become one of my best friends in the world... like the kind of guy you would call to bring you to the airport or help you move. The kind of guy I enjoy getting into fights with an that I'm not afraid to hug in public. So this is going to be extremely fun. We're unveiling it Wednesday night (1/2/08) at Polski where we will be seeing off Modern Life is War. I'm real psyched.


DOGTOWN

"I've gotta do this my way, gotta make my own sense of this life
You don't have the answers and I don't have the time
Yeah I've got a history but I'm not looking to be saved
You couldn't fucking save me anyway

I gotta do what I gotta do
To keep from ending up like you
One more submissive fuck who swallowed all the rules
I've got no respect for any law that takes what's mine from birth
I'm a citizen and I punch a clock but I'm fucking human first

Call the authorities
And I'm calling fraud
There are no untouchables
Not one.

Inside every pig there hides a kid whose feet never filled his fathers shoes
A broken child who missed every chance he had to pay his dues

I'm nothing without reason
And there's something that just isn't right
I created all my own Gods
In the image of my tainted fucking self

I gotta do what I gotta do
To keep from ending up like you
One more submissive fuck who swallowed all the rules
I've got no respect for any law that takes what's mine from birth
I'm a citizen and I punch a clock but I'm fucking human first

You wear the face of some high authority
But underneath it you're rotten. Just like me."


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A Flight and a Crash

Sometimes I forget that all of the old stories that have lasted the test of time have done so because they sum up important life lessons that encompass the general human condition. Maybe I should have paid more attention in high school. I might have learned something from all of those books I just pretended to read.

Ted, what the fuck are you talking about?

I'm talking about Daedalus and Icarus. In Greek mythology (I think) These two (father and son) were trapped on some island - Crete? I think it was Crete. And I think they were prisoners there although I'm not sure why. Anyway, the father, Daedalus, gets the idea to build two sets of wings and with them fly to freedom. As he's explaining flight to Icarus he warns him not to fly too low because the waves and rising mist of the ocean could get his feathers wet and cause him to crash. He also warns Icarus not to fly too high because getting too close to the sun will cause the wax in the wings to melt and cause him to fall to his death in the ocean below.

Well, at first they jump off some cliff with their wings and they get to flying and everything is great. But this kid Icarus just can't resist the temptation to soar. He's never flown before and he gets excited and just starts climbing. He climbs and he climbs until, just as his father warned, the sun melts his wings and he falls to his death.

I'll be damned if that Icarus character doesn't sound just like me. Especially lately. I've been soaring butI feel the next crash coming on. I've been acting like a maniac for the last few days. I get to the point where I just can't or don't want to sleep. I want to do as much as I possibly can in the time I have. I become entirely impulse driven - if I want something I find a way to get it right this second. I can't sit still. I can't stop talking. I'm extremely social. I'm still figuring out if it's that I can't control the manic swings or that I'm just so excited to be in a good mood that controlling it is the last thing from my mind. Regardless, I've been off the wall lately and I'm close to another crash if I don't figure something out. I've been spending money like there's no tomorrow and I came close to committing 4000 dollars that I don't necessarily have to a motorcycle. I actually just got done applying for yet another student loan so I can buy one in the next 2 months. I'm digging myself into more debt. I just don't care.

I really am trying to learn the middle way that the story of Icarus attempts to teach but it's so hard. My life has been characterized by tremendous highs that alternate with tremendous lows (my psych books refer to it as bipolar disorder). If you read anything that I write it's littered with references to depression that give way to something better (and then eventually come back). Mill City was one giant metaphor for it. It starts desperate and hopeless and ends clairvoyant and hopeful. In the middle of all of it is a mess of jumbled thoughts and words that somehow relate to the point of it all but manage to run in different tangents. This is my life. There's never any sense made. Just the promise that no matter what is happening it will certainly give way to something quite the opposite.

This is my real attraction to Buddhism. Buddhism is the middle way. It doesn't distinguish between opposites but rather asserts that everything contains its opposite and both should be embraced at all times (It's what stupid yin yang thing that everybody got tattooed on their ankles in the 90s represents). Buddhism basically says, try not to fly too high and try not to fly too low because the middle is where it's at. How will you know if you aren't in the middle? Pay attention and you won't have any trouble recognizing that you've crashed.


So this wasn't meant to end up here. I'm not sure how I got talking about Buddha. I only meant to say that I partied to hard and now it's looking like I'm going to have to pay my dues. I wrote a song about it a few weeks ago. It's called the middle (clever title eh?) and it's about how my life embodies the notion that everything contains its opposite. It's a little more weird and abstract than the stuff that I usually write but I'm pretty happy with the way it came out.... here are the lyrics (for now, until I change them):

"There's poison in the water but I'm thirsty just the same.
I hear. I see. Know the truth but I'm telling lies.
I understand that we're all dying. Funny that life just gets in the way.

There's truth in the lies I tell
There's silence and it's all around
There's sound in the city where it's all drowned out
And if I only had a match I'd burn it to the ground

There's a war and it's always inside me
Overshadowed by docile blue eyes
It never matters 'cause the sheep are all blind
And if the Devil had a face it would look like mine"



I guess that's it.. I'm going to get some sleep and hopefully when I wake up I'll be able to figure out a way to slow down for a minute and get some balance back because if I don't I'm sure bad things will be knocking at my door.


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Best day of my life.

Dear Journal,

Today Patti and I went on our first real date..... er um... yeah... wrong thingy....

Anyway, blogging community, hopefully you got my mid 90s Nicktoon reference. Now let's get down to business - Today is the best day of my life. Lately this is something I've made it a point to say every single day. It started as a joke. I'd get an office with a window for the day or find out that my paperwork had been done for me and exclaim, "This is the best day of my life!" to fuck around with coworkers and see if I could get them to shake some of the glaze off their faces and smile a little. But as I started to do it more and more I realized I really liked this little saying. I like believing it was true. So I'd start looking for stupid little good things to happen so I could say my little saying... and I started finding more cool things... and days kept getting better and better and here I am.

I don't know if you've seen Office Space but there's a part where the lead character is seeing a counselor and explaining that every day is worse than the day before so every time you see him it's the worst day of his life. The therapist just stares at him and finally says, "that's fucked up". I don't know why that stuck with me for so long but I decided one day that the opposite can be true. Things can keep getting better and better if you let them. I'm psyched on a pretty regular basis lately and it helps to remember to be excited that it's the best day of my life (for you fans of my boy Gautama Buddha, I'll concede that the reason it's always the best day of my life is because it's always the ONLY day of my life. For the rest of you- just trust me). So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Anyway, I didn't trick you into coming to this blog to bore you with my hippie bullshit. The reason I'm writing this is 1) to document that I'm in love with my life right now because I'm sure it will come as a handy reminder in a couple of months when I'm locked in my room for a week writing about death, and 2) to tell you a little bit about how fucking excited I am about the new Another Breath songs.



After an entire day of internship and class I got in my car and went straight to practice. When I got there the other dudes were tightening up 3 songs that they put together at the last couple of practices that I couldn't make it to. All I can say is holy fuck. I walked down the stairs and listened to them rocking out this incredibly groovy riff that literally had me pounding my fist in the air and smiling like an idiot before my feet even hit the bottom step. I can't really explain it other than it sort of sounds like Quicksand and sort of sounds like newer Achilles ... you know... if you put them in a blender with some cumin or something. It is so fucking heavy and just had be bobbing my head and stomping my foot immediately. (I made a recording of it and I'm listening to it on repeat as I write this. I literally cannot get enough of it.) Then when they're done and I start hooting at how good it is, Steve shoots me a smirk and says, "Seriously, check this one out." Then they tear into another song that rocks my face. This one more straight forward and balls out rock and roll. At the end I just stood there with my jaw dropped to the floor. All I could think is that there's a possibility that I am suddenly in my favorite band... It's like The Smashing Pumpkins suddenly zapped to our practice space and I looked down to notice that I'm Billy Corgan and have been all along. It was a really surreal feeling. I mean, I've always liked my band. If I didn't I wouldn't be in it. But if I wasn't in the thing I don't think I'd want to kick down anyone's door and be all, "you have to check this band out. They are incredible." Right now though I feel like I want to do that. I want these songs to be recorded so I can listen to them on repeat. That's a cool thing.

In any band the aim is to get everyone in the same boat and do the best you can with your combined talents. You argue over stuff and compromise and in the end you come out with something that works for everyone. Nobody gets their own way entirely but you swallow the differences opinion in the name of the greater good. Lately it just seems like we are all on the same page and we all love everything that's coming out. There's no bitching about which part should go where. We're all so pleased with what we're doing that we don't WANT to change anything. People who haven't in a band before might not understand this but that NEVER fucking happens. It's hard enough to get the 5 of us in the same room, let alone get us in the same room and have us agree on something. We've caught an incredible stride and the songs that have come out of it have been phenomenal.


We've started playing a couple of the completed new songs live and nobody seems to know what to make of them. I really feel like Jon and Scott just got annoyed at all the Mill City reviews that likened us to Verse, Modern Life is War, Comeback Kid, The Suicide File, Bane, and American Nightmare and blatantly missed every other band we ripped off that sound nothing like late 90s fast hardcore. It's not that any of those bands are bad. We're influenced by those bands a bunch. But we really tried to push the boundaries of that style of music with the last record by incorporating elements of bands that are in no way shape or form related but just happen to all be on the same playlist in our van (Green Day, Johnny Cash, Tragedy, Isis, Bad Religion, Third Eye Blind, etc.) and nobody got it. So this time I feel like all the stops are pulled out. Every one of these songs screams "Fuck You" and I think that's what I love about them. Every one is straight forward and will rock anyone with ears and a sense of rhythm and at the same time every one is weird and seems to say, "I dare you to try to put me in a fucking box." I like that. We tried to do that with Mill City and in some places we failed. Now it just seems that those dudes have the balls to tell everybody to fuck off because we're going to write the weirdo record we want to write.

The bottom line right now is that I am beyond psyched on this band. Every song those guys bring to practice is better than the last. They've thrown out the complicated writing process that we used to torture ourselves with by trying to add all sorts of parts and transitions and musical snobbery into and simplified the whole thing by sticking to one or two riffs and just rocking them. What is coming out is brilliant in my mind and if this theme and the lyrics attached to it can do them justice then this record is probably going to make people forget about anything we've ever done before (if they ever knew about it to begin with). Mark my words. This thing is going to rip.


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