Hey Everybody,
Wanted to fill you guys in on EP land… specifically a song we’ve just decided to add on to the list…
Today Matt and I are working on guitars for a song called “When Everything Else Is Gone”… maybe the longest title of any song I’ve written… just couldn’t find a good way to shorten it. It’s a song I wrote maybe 6 months ago… I recorded a lot of it back then in a flurry of inspiration… well, equal parts inspiration, fear, frustration and semi-angry, desperate hope.
I was in a place then (which feels like a long time ago now) where I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. Lost at home. Awake and sleeping. Completely free and yet stuck in the mud. If you’re alive, you’ve been there. It’s nothing unique. But there I was, it hurt, it pissed me off. But God IS good. Whether we know it or not… or believe it or not. And getting out of my own way while at the same time stepping up and owning those gut feelings about which direction to go was the only way to drag my way out of the mud. But I needed help… and God helps those who help themselves, eh?… looking back that feels just about right… and He sent a few things: new words, new music, new desire, and a person with an unbreakable belief in me. What a gift. I’ve been writing at least a few songs a week… sometimes two a day. It’s nourishing.
Anyways, last week, when I listened to what I had written and recorded 6 months ago, I got a little misty:-)… not because the song was so awesome… who knows if anyone will like it… but because of how it took me RIGHT BACK to how I felt then… and reminded me of how far I’ve been taken since then. There’s a lot of hopeful DNA in the song… but when I was writing it, the “hope” was more of a concept… a fleeting emotion… the “hope” was like a text message I got, and as soon as I read it, it deleted itself… what I was FEELING the most was more negative and confused… the hopeful elements were there out of faith and maybe a little bit of inspiration and desperation… I was reaching for the only thing I could reach for with any confidence: the Lord. It was a preview of what was to come… a snapshot of where I was heading…. And now when I listen to the song, I’m FEELING the hope and I’m reminded of the fear and anger. It all sounds so narcissistic!! haha… And I guess in one sense it is, but not if part of the reason for creating things is to connect to other people and that’s the biggest reason I do it… but the creative process is also therapeutic. There are subconscious things going on that have a kind of “time-release” element to them… I guess this song is really the labor pains and elation of a turning point and a REBIRTH for me… AND for the band. In a way finishing this song now, is exactly the cherry on top on this new EP. It reminds me of when I got married… I didn’t want to look at the photos of the wedding until the memories had sufficiently faded to the point where the photos would BE memories rather than just give me a different perspective on ones I already had… now I can’t tell the difference between the photos and my actual memories… and the same with the song… it cements that time and points a finger in the direction I need to stay pointed in.
- A
