"But we decide which is right, and which is an illusion..."

Well, the last few days have been rough for me, some of the pain self-inflicted. But the community is reeling from the loss of Adrian Wilson, who passed away a week ago. I don't know how good I would be at a tribute to Adrian, so I won't try. He was a great kid, heart of gold, and he is going to be missed tremendously. Please pray for his family and his friends, especially Frank Eanes.

I wrote a poem about time and leaves and love. You know this can't be good. But it's the only decent poem I've written in a month, so forgive me for how Robert Frost the themes are.


daily calendar

the tear-off sheets fall like leaves
leaves that can't come soon enough
leaves that will be too late to save us
leaves that are already too late to save us


I am heading to Nicaragua on Monday with my mom for a fellowship trip for church. My brother and sister are already down there for an immersion program. Maybe a week and half in a country where many have nothing will change my life-view, even a little bit.

Maybe that's all I need to snap out of this funk. A fresh look.

"He was bored and tired of my laments..."

Brand New sucks.

I really hate the boring cookie-cutter style of rock that they play. They are a high school garage band that made it without any real reason, or true inkling of talent. It's the worst kind of music, where it's bad, and they don't appear to care because they are laughing about their four bland, artless chords all the way to the bank. Mike told me that they had a new album out that was amazing. But Mike couldn't be trusted with something like this... he liked them when they were terrible!

It was my first day back in my apartment in over a month. Mike and I were burning incense and working on a puzzle of the Civil War, piecing together our fine country's history with Sia playing in the background. When her album ended, Mike put on something else.

It was dark, heavier... it fit how I felt to a T. The last time I was in the apartment, I was in a ball, in nothing but boxers, shivering and sobbing with no tears coming out of my eyes. Though I could see, in my mind was where my reality existed, far more real than the floor of my apartment or Duke or later Mike and my mom talking to me. In my reality where I watched myself die, again and again. I couldn't figure it out... I knew I had so much to live for. I have people who love me, friends all around, a good life. And yet my prison was showing these things to me and I couldn't escape. They didn't go away for days, waking or sleeping. They were there as my pastor and mom drove me home, at the hospital, at the ultimate tournament I played in despite my condition, as I threw up on my empty stomach. I never did want to kill myself, understand. It's just that that's what consumed me. It's not all that I thought about. It's what I lived for three days. And now this Zoloft was numbing me up to the world. A few days after the puzzle, I would park on the sofa and sit. And think about nothing. And care about nothing. And listen to Pink Floyd. I would stay there for a month.

But right then, the Zoloft hadn't gotten me all the way. And this album was playing, each song better than the last. Finally we got the the fifth song on the album. It started soft, slow, hazy. Then, almost two minutes, there is a drum fill, and the track is suddenly coated in guitars, dissonant and distorted, with the singer's untamed voice, moments before soft, now in agony.

Then just as suddenly and only half a minute later, the song shifts back into gear, lead in by four words from the vocals and the guitars suddenly falling into order, the words soaring.

I set down my puzzle piece.

"Your beauty is supreme.
Yeah, you were right about me.
But can I get myself out from underneath
this guilt that will crush me?
And in the choir I saw our sad Messiah.
He was bored and tired of my laments,
said, 'I died for you one time,
but never again.'
Never again.
Never again."

I sat down, stunned by this song, this powerful music. The song went back to the beginning's soft, dark contemplations, repeating and building, and building... as I sat, the second wave of the song reached it's peak, and somehow stayed there, riding on those wild guitars once again. Finally it hit the shoreline, not so much breaking as getting dispersed by the beach.

I didn't cry. I hadn't cried in weeks. But there it was. The song that caught the moment of being back to my private house of horrors. Beautiful and terrible.

"Who is this?" I asked Mike.
"Oh, it's Brand New's latest album," he said, smiling back at me and popping a puzzle piece into it's spot.

I later found out that "Limousine" is about a girl and a limo driver who were killed by a drunk driver, a tragic story (found here, here and here). But for me it was the song that made me feel something one last time before the drugs swept my emotions away for a while.

Music (and real music, not just songs), has a way of sticking with me, of making sense of things I cannot. There aren't words for everything.

But Brand New... they aren't so bad.