This is one track for which I made time to record harmonies using Nate's equipment. I think I got sorta carried away, but I think it's a great experiment all the same to this day ;) Any dissonance or ugliness due to the cacophony of a capella voice I think supports the emotion of the piece. I still perform this song (which I call my "angriest song") though, once again, as with most of my songs written before the last couple of years, the emotional need to sing it and that from which it was born no longer active in me--but I think it's a great creation and vibrates honestly with the meaning of what intense process I was going through at the time. Follows is what I recently wrote to an acquaintance in response to their request for further explanation of the song.


Simply put: a song about loss. Losing faith in myself, my God, my abilities as an artist and capabilities and value as a person— the song is more so a reflection of anger and confusion due to the loss of someone I loved—someone by whom I felt a bit damaged, yet evolved—that conflict and confusion, the aftermath of feeling abandoned by someone by whom I'd felt seen and understood me like no other. This song is about looking around after this powerful person left my life and realizing that nothing familiar or comforting remained in my world, for my world had changed incredibly in a short amount of time while this person was in my life—in part, though not wholly, due to them. The piece is a picture of the turmoil, emptiness, anger, and pain I felt at the time—some of the words should be taken quite literally, such as: “I don't believe in God anymore”* and “the hollow you left in the nest of my bed has left me humble”. Obviously I am, at times, comparing the gone other to a god who has abandoned me—tying my loss of faith in god to a loss of faith in love. I compare the singer to a prophet who feels self-conscious of her words and visions—as if her babblings come from nowhere and mean nothing to anyone. I actually think this song is pretty clear in all it's multiple meanings.

Those who are not familiar with the tale of Lazarus or other tales in the Bible may not understand the allusions made near the end of the poem. A “blackness moves across the air” is in itself a wonderful symbol of a storm, of spiritual darkness, or of depression, but also alludes to what happened on the day that Christ died. “Roll the stone back 'cross my grave, I want to stay dead” compares the speaker to Lazarus who was once risen from the dead by Jesus. This is my attempt as the speaker to tell my lover-abondoner-enlightener that I wish he had not awoken me and changed me from my place of ignorant bliss—I blatantly tell him that he and all his deeds—from awakening my love, to helping change my perceptions of reality, to following his own path—do not automanticlly make him brave—I spit on his ego. To educate me about without my consent for that which I am not ready to learn is not a necessary sacrifice of my ego—it is careless, dangerous, and cruel. (Spoiler alert: ta Da! I mentally survived and live to tell the tale in vague terms! —in large part due to the healing of music and my ability to write this song for myself. I am thankful for all the lessons I was experiencing at the time—but it was a dangerous mental state all the same. ) I compare the singer to Lazarus and a prophet who has lost all peace of mind, and faith in god. I compare the listener to God, to Jesus, and to a callous powerful presence now gone. This song is a cry of agony I desperately needed to articulate at the time. It is a cry from within a cave. It is the sound of me caving. It is the sound of me exiting this cave, this void, this pit, this grave, this black hell of a mental space that took place in my mind as I sat in my bedroom. Four walls can be such an elastic setting—from cathedral to cave—a room like a mind and a mind like a room. These days I like to think of a room as simply shelter from the elements, hopefully with generous windows for the letting in of sun and visions—these days I have a better relationship with my emotions and spirituality and physical space—more control and acceptance over my perceptions of reality.

* * *

If I did not have the tools of language, poetry, and song to which to turn when feeling helpless, I don't know what I'd do. Art is a tool for survival. When a person can create something, like a song, a dance or a painting and hold it up and say This—THIS—is what I am feeling, then they can name it, then it has been articulated, it can be claimed and controlled and healed. The tools of art are tools of self-care, of expressing one's own essence and power. Thus when I feel powerless, attempting to create something, or process it in some way outside of myself—whether it's painting, or crafting a rap, or speaking aloud words to a confidant, or scribbling in a journal—is crucial to understanding my own pain and moving through it and with it and feeling strong again. Art is how I create what I need—it is me inventing my own medicine because what I need doesn't yet exist. Those people who do not have a way to express themselves to themselves—my heart aches for them, yet who am I to assume they must suffer more for it—I wonder what it is like to not have an artistic practice—or does everyone to some degree, it just not being as obvious a method as song-writing? All tools of self-expression should be foremost on education agendas: reading, writing, rhetoric, debate, poetry, song, music, painting, dancing, playing—teaching one another to listen to ourselves, and each other, body and mind, is critical to our well-being. What would happen if what we taught in our public schools was an agenda based around knowledge of how brains, bodies, and emotions worked? We would inevitably be educating ourselves in how to critically think, how to help and heal ourselves, how we learn in different ways, and, thus, how to teach ourselves and each other better—to understand and communicate better—which is along the lines of an agenda aiming for world peace. World peace is gonna start with self peace, bro'. Why don't we teach that, yo'?



*To say I definitely don't believe in God anymore is an inaccurate finality too simply here worded. I believe that what I once thought of as God still exists—but I understand it in a very different way than I once did—so different that at first the new interpretation doesn't seem related to the old dogma by which I used to adhere. My new vision of what is mysterious and spiritual is entirely more vague and mysterious than the Catholic dogma into which I was born and raised. But I still find deep meaning in the unexplainable mysteries of life. I see great wisdom in the teachings of Jesus. Currently I have more and growing respect and acceptance for the belief in God than I did the year I wrote this song. Of course, in the terms of this song, I mean God to be taken as both the literal traditional meaning of a father almighty, as well a metaphor for anything into which one ties faith, meaning, and power.