"I was chasin' something, but I wasn't sure just what"

I saw this a month or two ago, it was one of those transcendent moments that don't happen as often as I'd like.



For me, this song might rate up there with Cannonball as one of the best ever written.

A Hangover from Memory Lane.

I used to be in a band. A few actually. And they were good, actually.

It's strange and surreal and somewhat painful to look back into those memories. I've kind of locked them away and given the keys to 4 other guys. And only on rare occasions, inebriated by nostalgia, do we open the locked cabinets and drink from them.

By the time I'd graduated high-school we had 3 recordings out under three different band names. We'd changed members only once, for the most part, the core of us remained forged. By my first year of college, we had been in talks with a few record labels, and I had all but dropped out of my second semester - missing so many classes to record our first (what would be our only) full-length record. That summer, we set out on tour.

MTV feeds our fantasies with visions of two-story busses that pick band members up from their Gatsby-esque mansions, our reality picked us up from our parents' houses in a 1986 conversion van clocking around 218,000 miles on the odometer. One troubled tour began with us breaking down 1/2 mile from setting off from my house. Literally, five minutes after hugging my parents and loosely promising to send postcards, I was calling them to come to the rescue of our sorry situation. I'd never once doubted that we'd be fine. And so, we were.

I have a lot of memories of these summers, the best probably coming from the first stop on our first tour ever. We'd been booked in Yuma, Arizona. Aside from one (still) deeply depressing turnaround trip to Fresno, the band had never been on any adventure with more than one destination. We'd reached Yuma in a few hours. The van was smoking a little from inappropriate (see: not engine) places, and seemed to handle her maiden voyage with the effort of a moderately healthy octogenarian. The city is dusty, or at least I remember it being dusty. Plenty of wind and Mexicans; we were absolutely alive. As we stopped and began to unload the only guitars we had, and the equipment we'd be sharing with another band for the next two months, a kid about my age approached me.

He was wearing one of our shirts.

The thing is, we didn't have shirts. We had arranged some last-minute screen printing and were due to pick them up in a city or two down the schedule. He had made his own Falling Cycle shirt. In Arizona. Hundreds of miles from the suburban bedroom where I'd sit for hours in my underwear creating parts to his "favorite songs." To this day, the reality of this does not make any sense to me.

He thanked us for coming to Arizona, and I thanked him too, for coming. We played that night to probably 30 people; it is still one of the proudest moments of my life.

This is a (horrible) video from our last show ever, almost exactly 6 years ago. Another one of the proudest moments of my life.

EDIT: Someone at about 3:22 yells "What the hell is going on?" - a great question my anonymous friend. After 6 years, I still don't know, either.

I have to do something. I do not want to do it. I need strength and grace. Maybe peace will come.

Enter: Beauty

It's been a hard few months.

It’s not that I’m bad with the truth, it just comes slower for me. The abrasion of transparency is too easily avoidable, and while I’m sure it’s been apparent to my closest friends, I haven’t been on the up-and-up as of late.

Personally, and probably too honestly, the last few months have been dark for me. For a few weeks, I was sure that God had grown dim in my heart. For a few days, I knew I had wandered too far outside of his grace. And for a few terrifying hours, I wondered if there was a God at all. "Maybe" I thought, "my western paradigm needs a convenient creation tale to sate the ugly questions and my fragile consciousness needs a story to believe that explains why, for some reason, we all feel orphaned in some way." Truly, it felt dark and wholly unnatural, like breathing underwater. If I'm honest, my lungs are still sore.

The doubt came in the desert. A dry and dusty few months with as little spiritual life as the terrain suggests. I’d been working constantly and was overwhelmed with obligations. I wasn’t sure what hours He kept, but my schedule never seemed to sync with God’s. Our shoulders would brush, and surely he was ready to talk, but honestly, I didn’t have the time.

Enter: Beauty.

Oh, Beauty. A notion as sincere as the sun and probably just as old. I have been confronted lately with the almost tangible and ubiquitous truth in beauty. I would argue that everyone, at some moment (hopefully many moments) has experienced some level of unmistakable beauty. No matter how often we overlook or avoid it, It is, for must of us, a regularity. But why is anything beautiful? A rocky coast and angry waves have very little evolutionary value, but I’d dare anyone to dismiss them as unremarkable. What good is it to be reminded of our fragility, and why does it stir into us something like wonder, rather than paralyzing fear (and, truly a wonderful mixture of each?) Beauty adjusts our compasses; it drives us northward.

It is laughter and pain (in equal, liberal doses) that forges bonds into brotherhood. It is joy that unites lovers and it is love that confirms them. The heart of God seems so full with desire that to ignore ours is probably the only way to walk in the opposite direction of Him. I'm learning that it's good to feel small, to measure ourselves against the bigness of a God so good He uses beauty, not codes or commandments, to fill our sails, to drive us northward, towards Himself.

It's so easy to live in an existence that feels determined by me, but living this way, is it any wonder I feel helpless, anxious, lifeless? Like a ship sinking from stilled seas, I need wind and I need waves and I need to plunge into the blue every so often, if only to see it’s terrible and beautiful depth.

And to remind ourselves, that the pool of grace is deeper than we can dive.

On Coasting and Climbing.

A few years ago, I launched a mission to engage myself in the most uncomfortable situations possible. I actively sought the awkward. You had a place I didn't want to be? I'd go with you. You've got a person I didn't want to meet? I'd get their number (This didn't turn out well.) Reluctance became routine. The results were as expected, a full year of goosebumps, pocket-hands and witty banter. But, more importantly I've been blessed with a few new friendships and mentors I now wouldn't trade for anything. I also became an expert at moving furniture. It's very much like tetris.

I'm taking a similar approach this season, this time focusing on finishing things. It doesn't have to be indulging in a passion or driving the final nail into some life-changing project, but I think the challenge itself will change my life. And, it will be difficult.

I've always been excellent at starting things. From reports to relationships, the best part is the beginning. The part where you're swept into inspiration and the conversation flows naturally, and you think "this is how it should be." But I'm realizing that the beginning stages of anything are supposed to feel like beginning stages, and the hard, determined middle-stages have a feeling all their own. And the final stages are even better (so I hear.) My downfall is expecting the latter stages to feel as euphoric as the beginning. But coasting downhill can only take you into valleys. I'm learning that maybe there's a beauty in climbing out of them.

If I'm honest, I'm afraid of finishing. I'm afraid that I'll have to own the results, stand next to them; speak on their behalf. What if they aren't good enough? What if no one cares? But I'm tired of that and I'm tired of justifying my failure to finish.

I guess I'm learning that there is no climax without conflict. Here's to finishing things, starting with this blog.

On Writing

Okay. I’ll do it.

I've given myself permission to write. And it's terrifying.

And here’s my promise. I'll only write from the deep part; the true part.

I remember that old myth before it was ruined by medical shows or friends in nursing school; the old yarn that told us our blood was actually blue while in our body, and only turns red when exposed to oxygen. Writing for me is proving that myth false or else watching my blue blood become red. My skin is cold and dry so I'll have to dig into the deep veins. I'm learning life is not best lived from the deep parts.

It's only lived from the deep parts. We are orphans anywhere else.

I've had some kind of affair with writing for a few years now. Some days, I'm gifted. Some days, I wonder if maybe English was my second language. Most days, though, writing feels like owing money to God. He’s a big benevolent bill collector and upon non-payment His whispers become wails, and his chasing becomes chastising. Honestly, it feels terrible to ignore God. But it's beautiful, because it's nothing like guilt.

It feels something like being shipped off to a foreign country where the language sounds familiar, but it’s not. You get by for awhile with lots of nodding and pointing, but ultimately you’re left hungry and can’t find the bathroom. Writing has felt much this way for me. It's been both catharsis and chaos. But it’s good, and it’s important and I have to believe in it.

I guess this is how I know that God is good; that we are pursued by our desires, we are hunted by passions. To me, this begs the existence of some kind of adventurous, persistent, desiring and beautiful creator who travels unreasonable distances to display something profound, leaving us surrendered and exhausted, arrested and whole.

So this year, I will write. It feels a little like dancing and fighting at the same time, but I really hope you will read it. And while I hope it's more dancing than fighting, I have to go where the blood is.

Stream of consciousness and a conversation with oneself.

Sometimes we sit there, our hands held, yours warm and smooth and mine, rough from wringing. A little clammy in late in the evening.
The only real lines I've drawn have been crooked and almost always circle back to me. Nothing real or permanent and no canvas to paint. I cannot paint if I do not leave, but still, I have several books to write and no more than several sentences. A world that celebrates potential is a world that stops and starts with the impetus of genius. That sentence is meaningless.

These geneses of genius.

And perhaps we too were fiction, don't go back and add commas. She lived a story written beautifully, perfect grammar and structure. There was no plot or capture, no story or support. She was endlessly edited, and I, all painted self and broad strokes, I'm overdrawn and indebted.

Oh God, with what great oneness you've designed us, that we would compass this globe in all of our errant ways and still, to find bits of you swimming like small magnets in all of our blood. And when, upon encounter with another, we feel drawn - some mad electric swell that tells us that we're made of the same stuff. No more digressions, and close your mouth when writing.

Now, look away from the screen.

Don't tell them anything, says the bad man. But my hands are clams, clodding away at some kind of computer and compulsion towards half-hearted alliteration. Sometimes, I just try to conjugate words and leave it to Mr. Macintosh to tell me what's what. That's how I discovered "didacticism." What a stupid word for a first year college kid. But it worked, didn't it? Getting A's was never hard for me, it's all about focus, but I had none. So, I would memorize big great words and ask important ancillary questions so the teacher would think I was really on to something.

And, indeed I was. I was wondering why the steel on the side of the chair felt so cold in such a warm classroom. And I was hot on the wild trail of speculation. See, the woman next to me was married and I heard her make mention of a few kids at home. But she leaned in real close to the guy next to her when they spoke. Now, there was nothing illicit, I understand that, but maybe things weren't great at home. Or maybe, she misses the attention of men, or maybe they were just in the long boring afternoon of their marriage.

So, to compensate, for thinking about everything in the classroom (everything but the lesson.) I memorized good words. Great words that I'm now embarrassed to know, and all of them I won't mention here. I've always cared more for the question than the answer. Sometimes writing is too honest, too base and too cold. I wish self-actualization had more tact.

That's how I maintained a decent GPA despite learning almost nothing.