Disremember While Maintaining Speed

A lot of the time when I'm heading down the road in the car I wind up listening to a particular album.  I've mentioned it before.  It's my current favorite album of all time, Forget and Not Slow Down.  I've been thinking, and I've decided I'm going to go through the whole album and give it the same treatment I gave "Sahara" a while back.  I'll probably talk about Sahara when I get to that place, and link to the blog where I talk about that song in detail.  I'll warn you again, if you're not prepared for a long blog post, save this for later.  Because this is definitely going to be a doozy.

I'm going to start with the first song, which is titular (for those of you who don't know, that means it shares its name with the album).  But before I let you read the lyrics of "Forget and Not Slow Down" I want to talk a little bit more about the album first.

When I did the blog on "Sahara" I think I gave some of the context for that song (and incidentally this whole album), in that Matt Thiessen, Relient K's frontman, suffered a pretty harsh engagement break-off not long before he was supposed to get married, and that experience was the fuel and subject matter for the album that came afterwards.  Originally, this sounds like it might be a bad idea, but Thiessen has cultivated an artist's touch, the which he uses to exquisite ends in Forget and Not Slow Down.  There's more to the framework I want to outline for the album as a whole.  Thiessen has said (via an interview that had been posted on Relient K's Myspace back when bands were making Myspaces to connect with teens—back when people used Myspace) said songwriting for him works a lot like prayer, and I'd like to put forward that many (if not all) of the songs on FaNSD are prayers, and that the album as a whole functions in some ways like a confession, not necessarily of guilt, but of painful experience.

Part of what makes this fascination and so good is that in putting the album together like he did, Thiessen gave us a good long glimpse at his thought process.  I'll be talking about that more down the road.  But we'll start with the first song.

"Forget and Not Slow Down," as the initial song on the album, serves as an introduction to the rest of the work, and itself frames Thiessen's mindset.  In short, he'd rather forget what's happened and keep moving than bog himself down by dwelling on it.  This point is made pretty clearly in the song, because the phrase is repeated five times throughout the song, usually as part of the chorus.  In fact, now I'll let you read through the lyrics to the song as I've heard them.  There could be a few quibbles over a word or two, but I think this is a suitably accurate transcription of what Thiessen sings.  So here you are, read for yourself:


Forget and Not Slow Down
(lyrics by Matthew Thiessen)

--the next station is Concourse B—Concourse B, as in Bravo--

How many times can I push it aside?
Is it time I befriended all the ghosts
Of all the things that haunt me most
So they leave me alone
Move on with my life
Be certain the steps of left and right
Don't fight the direction of upright

I'd rather forget and not slow down
Than gather regret for the things I can't change now.
If I become what I can't accept
Resurrect the saint from within the wretch
Pour over me and wash my hands of it.

It's time to decide she's out of my mind
'Cause it'll be me unless I put some thoughts to rest
And leave some thoughts behind

I'll wash the glint in my eye
Shine up the spring in my step
And it could be blinding depending
On the amount of You that I reflect

'Cause I could spend my life just
Trying to sift through what I could have done better
But what good do what ifs do?

Oh oh, Oh oh
There's something I should tell you now:

I'd rather forget and not slow down
Than gather regret for the things I can't change now.
If I become what I can't accept
Resurrect the saint from within the wretch
Pour over me and wash my hands
Pour over me and wash my hands...

'Cause I could spend my life just
Trying to sift through
What I could have done better
But what good do what ifs do?

Oh oh, Oh oh
There's something I should tell you
Oh oh, Oh oh
There's something I should tell you now:
I'd rather forget and not slow down
Than gather regret for what I can't change now.
If I become what I cannot accept
Resurrect the saint
Within the wretch

I'd rather forget and not slow down
Than gather regret for the things I can't change now.
If I become what I can't accept
Resurrect the saint from within the wretch

I'd rather forget and not slow down
Than gather regret for the things I can't change now.
If I become what I can't accept
Resurrect
Resurrect

Pour over me and wash my hands
Pour over me and wash my hands of it.

----


Now, you have noticed that Thiessen is saying he'd rather forget and not slow down, not dwell on the past and what it's down, but this is the first song of an album where he seems to do just that.  I don't think that's a mistake, folks.  There are a couple other notes I want to make about the album down here.  There are a lot of things I'm saying about the album as a whole, but this song is kinda central to the whole thing, so this was to be expected.


Surprisingly enough for an album about a painful and difficult breakup, there are few songs that are handled with a mournful attitude.  The whole first half of the album is pretty upbeat, at least musically.  Later on we get to the quieter part of Thiessen's psyche, but not before we have some fun along the way.  Quite frankly the music Relient K makes in this album is nothing short of beautiful, and in my own opinion Thiessen's performances are stellar, especially in their nuance.  I think the beauty and "spring" in Thiessen's musical "step" for this album are part of the attitude he espouses here, in this first song.  He's not going to slow down.  He's not going to let his art get dragged in the mud by this experience.  And he doesn't.  Ugh, let me tell you—okay, I'll stop gushing and get on with the analysis.


The song begins very quietly, and without music.  Instead you hear the rush of some public place of transportation, perhaps a trainway of some sort.  If you (carefully) turn up the sound at the beginning, you can hear a female announcer clearly speak the words I put between dashes before the lyrics kick in.  This little quirky intro sets the scene for moving on, just another flourish of a motif that occurs throughout the album.

Moving into the first verse, we hear that Thiessen is struggling with his demons.  He keeps "push[ing] it aside" but it doesn't seem to want to let him go.  He ponders ways to make peace with what he's dealing with, and his focus is to do this without compromising his integrity.

Then we hit the chorus.  You'll notice that the song structure for "FaNSD" is fairly traditional with a couple verses and a catchy chorus that gets repeated quite often.  Part of the catchiness of the chorus is one of the signatures of Relient K's song style:  one line ends simultaneous with the beginning of the next.  In this instance, the word "now" is sung at the same time as "if."  The whole chorus isn't like this, but the usage of this make the chorus move forward more quickly than you'd expect for how many words in it.  The other secret to fitting so many words in is that Thiessen can twist his tongue around pretty much whatever he wants to sing.

Aside from the idea that must be hammered home by now about forgetting and speeding right along, the chorus expresses another idea tied to Thiessen's desire for integrity.  In the event that he falters, he asks God to bring out the best in him again.  This is a pretty obvious interpretation of "if I become what I cannot accept resurrect the saint from within the wretch."  It's an imperative statement, which includes requests, and it certainly isn't directed at himself.  And to go along with that he includes strong Christian imagery in "pour over me and wash my hands."  Christ's blood pours over us meta-literally to cleanse us, and it's in keeping with Thiessen's attitude to allude to Pilate's refusal to identify himself with those who called for Christ's crucifixion.  Referring to the Godhead by His blood uses a literary technique called synecdoche, to use a part of something or someone to refer to the whole.  This thematic element of the song recurs a few times in the album, and it points out that, while Relient K has gone "mainstream" (or rather, that the band is no longer confined to performing and producing albums under the "Christian" umbrella of the music industry) Thiessen and his bandmates have certainly not given up on their lifestyle, or on explicitly including allusions and direct references to their Christian lifestyle and the messages therein in their music.  They just do it with a bit more class than usual.

In the second verse Thiessen is a lot clearer about what's bothering him, by slipping in the simple, loaded pronoun "she" as the subject that "it's time to decide" is "out of" his "mind."  Or he'll be out of his.  That's a clever play there, that's easier to see in writing than it is to hear it.  It makes me smile.  Then he talks about washing and shining two metaphors for a sunny disposition, for the purpose of reflecting "You."  I capitalize You because I'm quite certain he's talking to God here, supported by the content of the chorus and the common Christian idea of "reflecting God's light."

And then, in case you didn't get it yet, Thiessen doesn't care to bother with "what ifs."

And the rest of what's interesting about the song is musical, because all the words from then on are repeated, other than the "there's something I should tell you" bit.  That phrase is part of Thiessen's framing of the album, because he's telling you here, at the beginning of his album covering his experience and reaction to what's happened to him, that he's moving on from what's inside.  This is his confession, his coping mechanism, his "Therapy."

And with that, my analysis of "Forget and Not Slow Down" is at an end.  I encourage you to go take a listen to the song (and the rest of the album too if you can) to get a real taste of what I'm talking about in this blog post.  See you tomorrow, when I'll (probably) talk to you about the next song on the album, "I Don't Need a Soul."

Concept and Application

I applied to work at Meijer today.  The same one Rachael worked at last year when we were scrambling together money to get married.  Now we'd like to scramble together some money to not end up broke.  Because being broke isn't fun, guys.

You can't exactly be successful at writing and be broke.

Hey, that right there?  That was untrue.  Plenty of people do it.  They're called starving artists, and they're all over the place because our culture has created people who don't want to settle for doing something meaningless with their lives.  They would prefer to suffer in order to do something meaningful.  And for most people the most meaningful thing in the world is art.

But I wasn't planning on talking about art.  I was planning to talk about money.  And how it fits into the world of your story.

In Talas Ke, I took money out of the equation.  Kind of.  I decided it was a barter society with no concept of currency, because I believed (and still kinda do believe) that such a society is better off than one with the hulking abstracted behemoth we call "money."

Maybe I'll outline the way money got to where it is today.

You see, somewhere close to the origin of written language, people decided to start quantifying value.  It likely started with bushels of grain or something similar.  One bushel of grain had a certain amount of value, and people tended to agree on what that value was.  They would trade the bushel for something (or a couple somethings) else of roughly equivalent value to the bushel.  Then, we had the bright idea to start using more portable symbols of that value, worth the standard value of the bushel.  This tended to be easy to move into, because of precious metals and their great worth in societies just developing technology that benefited from such material.

At some point banks came into the equation, and at some point banks started to do two different things:  they would lend out your money (for which, ideally, they would pay you) and they would allow you to carry a waiver that told another bank you were in good standing and could withdraw money from that other bank even though it wasn't physically your money.

And money continued to abstract until the point where today it's more a digital numeral than a physical thing you can grasp in your hands.

So what will you do with that in your story?  Is your world one where the people have begun to abstract the value of an object and give it a number?  Or is a simpler one?  How simple?  Think about it, and if you're creating a world based on development past the one ours has, think about how money might change from where it is now.

Honestly, I can't imagine the behemoth will survive much longer.  That's why I don't think about it too much.  But it's a good thing to consider when you're world-building.

So there.  There's more significance to this blog post.

-shrugs-

Day Trip, Blog Referral

My wife and I spent most of the day helping/hanging out with my cousin and his wife as they moved out of his old room into a townhouse elsewhere in their parents' bed and breakfast.  There was conversation, heavy lifting, and a startlingly fun game of Dominion.  Wow, that's a fun game.  I just want to play again.

It's a card game where you build a deck over the course of the game in order to end the game with the most victory points.  And ugh, it's fun.  Have I mentioned it's fun?

Because most of the day was spent away from the computer, I didn't get to blogging when I had more time today.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll have something interesting to say.  I do have some idea, I just don't have that much time for it tonight.

My house mates from college have a blog now (I'm included in that).  You never know who's actually blogging what post unless you know us, but there's some interesting (and very private-ish sometimes) stuff there.  The main poster is a brilliant writer who perhaps lacks the direction to make his writing transmute from the raw, talent-filled prose of an unemployed twenty-something to genius-level artistic excellence.

Not that you should tell him anything like that about himself.  Like most startlingly intelligent people, he's a complete idiot and kind of full of himself.  Telling him he might be a genius would probably just make him that much worse.

You can read the blog here.  That's all for now.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Anachronized Holidays and The Need For Time Travel

I get busy some days.  Still deliberating about a certain "job opportunity" for my wife, and things, and making plans about tomorrow.  Also, catching up on internet things like webcomics and the like.  Ho boy.  Ho ho boy.

It's July.  You know what that means.

Christmas.

In that vein, the sylvari and asura races will be playable in the final beta weekend event this July 20-22, which is super awesome but I'm still fighting an internal battle between making a crapload of sylvari characters and saving the sylvari for release as a surprise/treat.  It's a hard choice to make, because I like both ideas on their own merits.  My wife thinks I should wait.

There may still be some days in the next few weeks that I don't blog at all for various reasons.  Some of those days may be followed by face punch videos.  Some may not.  Honestly, I kept my original self-made bargain of one month and I did it again, punishments and all, so at this point whether I keep blogging every single day is a moot point.  Stuff is getting crazy around here, with the vacations and the job searching and the crazy little beautiful monster children.  Life only gets more complicated after college, kids.

Get that now.  Understand it.  Grok it.  It is knowledge you will need ingrained in your mind, so that you don't find yourself completely boggled when "Well chips, all my irons just fell right out of that fire."

Don't mind my Homestuck references, I'm freaking out about potatoes right now.  That's really all there is to say on the matter.

-shrugs-

Camping. It's an Adventure.

Okay, only after I wrote that title down did it sound so hokey.  Whatevs, it's official now kids.

That was quite a few days.  I got sick.  Sore throat, stuff/runny nose, pressure headaches, the whole business.  Then I got Rachael sick.  Then we came home, still a little sick, and we have a meeting tomorrow afternoon.

From another angle, I got to spend an incredible amount of time with my nephew.  He's rapidly approaching two years old, and on top of his incredible athletic skill (like kicking a ball straighter than adult) that I've mentioned before, he's got a burgeoning vocabulary.  I think it's fascinating.  For the most part he sounds, in my dad's words, like he's speaking an Eastern European language. He says "Mommy" when he really wants someone to help him with something.  Something it goes where please should go, or help me, or "Grandpa," "Grandma," or other names.  "Bye" is both "See you later," and "I'm back!"  And with all those weirdnesses, he has some really solid phrases down, like "I'm goin' campin'," "This is round," and others.  I've said on multiple occasions how smart he think he is.  But a developing child is a lot less straightforward than a computer.  Smarter, slower, faster, more obtuse, more nuanced.  All of it.

Also, they get to wear cuter shirts.  Giraffes with shades man, giraffes with shades.

Camping is a to-do.  You take a lot more crap than you'd think you need, and without it you starve or freeze or roast.  Your tent gets wet no matter what you do.  You poop and shower in public buildings of various repair.  And you sleep in view of the Mackinac Bridge and across the way the moon sprays orange-cream light over Lake Huron.

Screw the internet, the last few days were awesome.

Screw face punches too.  It wasn't laziness that kept me from blogging.  It was wilderness.  Wilderness and Mackinac Island Fudge.  Blueberry.

Writhe in your jealousy.  Writhe.

Fireworks and Five Dollars

So here I am, sitting on the bed in my good friends' guest room with a soreness in my throat making me some kind of miserable, and I'm thinking about why celebrations have to be such loud, bright affairs, especially momentous ones like the day everyone in America remembers as the one we declared independence from the English Crown.  I'm not complaining, just thinking about it.

It was one of those long days made long especially by all the packing and driving involved in it.  There are more long days ahead, mostly of the "we're out camping" variety, and I can almost guarantee you then that I won't be blogging out something after today.  This is my last chance.

I'm tired.  I don't really feel like I'm allowed to be tired because it's the Fourth of July and you're supposed to stay up late, or something, but I just want to peel out my contacts and bury my face in a pillow.

Actually, what I want is a cough drop.  So that's that.

I hope, whether you're a USian or not you've had a good day.

By the way, this is the first year in the history of my life that the big stuff has been legal in Michigan, fireworks-wise.  So this is one of the first times I've seen that sort of thing up close(ish).

It's another one of those days that I don't have a lot I want to blog about.  Life is good.  I'm tired.  God bless.

Ciao.

Day of Rest

Today was definitely a break from the action.  There really wasn't anything pressing to do (though I did go shopping and mail out a copy of Ashes of Silver, so don't think I turned into a potato today) so it was mostly just hanging out.

There was a giant bug in the living room and the girls had me remove it from the house lest it be squished.  Maybe it was a cockroach.  I dunno.  It was big.  I got it out.  There's that.

Tomorrow we hit the road again, and it's even less likely I'll get a blog in for the next couple days, but we'll see how it goes.  There's really nothing else to say.  I'll catch you later.

Ciao.

Too Tired For Face Punches

Chicago.  Aquarium.  Sharks, Jellies, Dolphins.  Rainforest Cafe.  Filled up, hit the road.  Long drive, super tired.  Arrived home after midnight.  Vacation, exhausting.

Sore feet.

Transcribed From a Blue Notebook

I blog differently than I journal.  The variance is self-explanatory:  no one else is going to read my journal entries.  If you can believe it, I'm more serous with myself than with others.  Any humor I use against myself is really dry.  My journal also predictably consists of deep thoughts about internal issues, like my walk with the Lord, my struggle with sexual purity in my thought life, and logistics of job-getting, time management, and wedding plans (before I got married).  There's also a lot of writing plans, impromptu poems, and analysis of the themes of my own writing.

Sometimes I write letters to myself, in a meta sort of self-address that can be useful for jarring myself back into a mindset that's healthier.  To be honest, that's part of why I talk about my issues on a public blog.  It helps me stop being an idiot, which if you know me at all you know I need sometimes.

There's another reason I'll admit my flaws on a blog like this:  I don't want to be the kind of person who has something to hide.  Secrets, as I have been told, can fester.  So yes, I have sexually impure thoughts, and some strong prejudicial tendencies, both of which I strive to turn on their heads.  But I'm also the writer you've been reading for however long you've been reading this blog.  And by the way, thank you for that.  I appreciate it.  My dream to write and be heard and appreciated has been lifelong, and the dozen or so folks who take the time to read my words are a blessed first step.

I'm writing this blog on paper first, in case you skipped over the title.  That's because I'm in a car on the way to Chicago.  Family vacation has begun.  This means I might not get a blog in every day a week or so.  This post itself might be late.
I think my brain works differently when I'm hardly on the computer all day.  My macbook hasn't been on yet today (at the moment I'm writing this (but now I'm transcribing it so it have)).  I still caught Homestuck updates and played a Facebook game, but that's largely because my family got home quite a bit later than expected.

What I really want for these long car rides is a new book or two to read.  The trouble with that is the money, specifically, the me not having any to spare.  So I need to make money.

But I'm on a vacation with family.  Kinda hard to drive around applying for jobs on vacation.  Oh well, I'm going to enjoy this week for what it is.

In that vein, I'm gonna go.  Enjoy your first day of July, even if it's come and gone for you.

Ciao.

I Can't Even Think of A Title Right Now

Hanging out with the coolest of peeps all day.  No time to bother with blogging.  Like seriously, I'm busy.  Maybe I'll just...

Sort of...

We ate at Casa Real and that was awesome.  We also played Dag and went swimming, both of which were also excellent.  There was also attempting to mail things (after post office closed) and attempting to get an oil change (after that place closed) and being a little late for a business (casual) meeting after missing all the traffic lights on the way (okay just most of them).

There was talk about Hearthstead and errand-running, and setting up of tents.  It was a busy, busy day of epicosity, and it's not over.  So, um... there.

The most important advice I have about writing in your world is to do it.  Seriously, make time and write.  I know I keep saying I don't take the time for it.  I don't.  It's bad.  Don't be like me.  If you want to write in a world do it.  It's the only way to get better, and it's the only way to get it done.

There's that.

Ciao.