 "Jennifer Carole Ledger (born 8 December 1989) is an English drummer and co-vocalist for the American Christian rock and hard rock band Skillet, and a solo alternative rock project: Ledger." That's the breakdown from Wikipedia. Today we're looking at her new song "Iconic". Today will be different.
I often break down the lyrics stanza by stanza. Today I'm going to give you some things to look for, and then the lyrics. See what you notice. First things first, we need to look at the word icon, because she didn't name it "Iconic" for no reason. Here are the first two definitions from Google. - - - - - - - a painting of Jesus Christ or another holy figure, typically in a traditional style on wood, venerated and used as an aid to devotion in the Byzantine and other Eastern Churches. a person or thing regarded as a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration. - - - - - - - This song talks about the experience of being touched by charisma. I like charisma. I even have a top three favorite books on charisma: "Prophetic Charisma" by Len Oakes, "The Spellbinders" by Ann Willner, and "Charisma" by Charles Lindholm. In the song Jen also uses the word archetype. This word is similar to icon. Let's look at the first three definitions for archetype. - - - - - - - a very typical example of a certain person or thing. an original that has been imitated. a recurrent symbol or motif in literature, art, or mythology. - - - - - - - You can see how the two sets of definitions intertwine. Charismatic individuals are like this; they are symbols, and archetypes, and icons. They occur in religion, business, politics, and music. The powerful ones are rare. In this song Jen talks quite a lot about one specific part of the experience of being touched by a charismatic person, a change that occurs from within, simply by coming into contact with this unique charismatic person. Len Oakes phrases it as "charisma transforms people from within." Jen paints a picture around that feeling, around that experience. And references it directly with things like "metamorphosis." Here's the definition of metamorphosis. - - - - - - - a change of the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one, by natural or supernatural means. - - - - - - - - For this to happen you need both the charismatic leader and the follower. A follower that is in a certain state, a state ready and open to being changed by the leader. Ann Willner lays out the basic situation that is needed for a charismatic relationship to develop. - - - - - - - (1) a crisis situation, (2) potential followers in distress, and (3) an aspirant leader with (4) a doctrine promising deliverance. - - - - - - - This type of experience can be a powerful, potent, and positive thing. Charles Lindholm says it this way, "...charisma offers the strength and the imagination for achieving change." And, it goes further than that. - - - - - - - The problem of the modern era is not the charismatic experience per se: "charisma," after all, means a gift of grace. In essence it has no substantive content beyond being an immediate ecstatic experience, providing a visceral, transcendent moment that is outside of and opposed to the alienation and isolation of the mundane world - a memory upon wich ordinary life can be constructed. The paradigm established by Weber and Durkheim, and restated by psychological theory, claims, in fact, that society is based upon a deeply evocative communion of self and other, a communion that offers not reason, but lived vitality. - - - - - - - Who better than a rock star to talk about such things. As you read the lyrics notice that icon means symbol, notice archetype, notice metamorphosis, notice Jen talking about the feeling of changing from within by connecting with someone without. The official lyrics aren't online. I messaged Jen for them, but she didn't respond. You can't message Ledger on Facebook. So, I took the lyrics that someone wrote out under her Youtube video and made a few corrections. Here's the link to that: https://youtu.be/EcpAfOZlMnk I found this Twitter post by Jen Ledger, which helped. - - - - - - - Hahahaha.- i saw a few funny versions of this!! “You came in a flash of light, and my soul went weightless. You’re the perfect archetype, raptured and captivated.” - but I saw a funnier version that said “my soul went bye byes” which might have been better!!! - - - - - - - And, here are the lyrics to "Iconic". - - - - - - - You came in a flash of light And my soul went weightless You're the perfect archetype Raptured and captivated. Felt my heart begin to race You take me to the place That I've never known before I hear the thunder roar I hear the heavens call I could never want it more You are the spark, you set me on fire You're so iconic, everything I wanted You are my world, my legend, my star You're so iconic, everybody wants it You intoxicate me when you move Look at the mess you make me You are my world, my legend, my star You're so iconic, everybody wants it You came in a clash of bliss It seems that fate has chained us Embracing metamorphosis As I give into your love Oh, I hear you calling me I can't help falling deep Into your sweetness, your abyss My heart begins to race You take me to the place I want it all and more of it You are the spark, you set me on fire You're so iconic, everything I wanted You are my world, my legend, my star You're so iconic, everybody wants it You intoxicate me when you move Look at the mess you make me You are my world, my legend, my star You're so iconic, everybody wants it I hear the thunder roll I hear the heavens call I can never want it more You intoxicate me when you move Look at the mess you make me Look at the mess you make me So iconic, everybody wants it You are the spark, you set me on fire You're so iconic, everything I wanted You are my world, my legend, my star You're so iconic, everybody wants it You intoxicate me when you move Look at the mess you make me You are my world, my legend, my star You're so iconic, everybody wants it - - - - - - - Were you able to notice some things?
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When Bill sent me the song "Through It All" by Gandhi's Gun, the first thing that I thought of was "Through It All" by Spoken. I thought it was a bad sign because I would just be comparing it to a completely different song that I didn't think it would be able to stand up against, since I like Spoken. But, I was wrong. Luckily they are different enough that I won't compare the two, and I would say Gandhi's Gun is just as good.  There are two versions of this song that Gandhi's Gun has out: the original and the acoustic versions. I like the acoustic version myself. But, we'll get to that in a minute. Gandhi's Gun has the normal story about a band, and I will put that here, but the song "Through It All" has a more interesting story. Both of these came from their website: http://gandhisgun.com/ - - - - - - - With positive messaging and an aggressive edge, Gandhi’s Gun combines the best elements of rock from days past with the most modern textures of synths and electronic dance music. Fronted by two perfectly matched male and female voices, the San Antonio based group steps ahead of their time while remaining comfortably familiar. The most recent incarnation of the group formed in late 2015, has two full-length albums, has released their 2017 EP titled “The Changes We Face," and two new singles titled "Through It All" & "We Are The Stars." - - - - - - - And the story of "Through It All". - - - - - - - Before we set out for tour in July of 2018, we wrote, self produced, and recorded "Through It All" but, we didn't feel that the timing was right to release the song. On our way back home from that particular tour, we were in a severe collision outside of Arizona in our 13,000lb motorhome, almost killing our entire band. It was a very close call, and we are very fortunate to be able to continue touring. In the aftermath of the collision, this song became very special to us. We know that many people go through difficult situations in life, often. Originally, this song was to provide hope for others who were experiencing a tough time in hopes that they knew they weren't alone. Now, this song also provides hope for us. - - - - - - - Here is the Youtube acoustic version of "Through It All": https://youtu.be/AE5SzDXzCuI The band was nice enough to send me the lyrics. Here they are, then I'll dive into them. - - - - - - - I know you’re with me through it all This time I’m I’m desperate Your end Is all I’m left with So consume me Breathe through me Close my eyes till You’re all I can see I’m on my hands and my knees Crying out for relief I need a miracle Supernatural To come and rescue me from my enemies Don’t let me forget When I feel like givin’ in Got nothing to give I’m breaking within In my weakness you are strong This is my song to keep holding on I know you’re with me through it all When I’m right when I’m wrong when I’m perfect when I fall I know you’re with me I know you’re with me through it all So control me Console me Come be my one and only Overtake me Come and break me Mold me into what you made me to be I’m on my hands and my knees Crying out for relief I need a miracle Right now When I feel like givin’ in Got nothing to give I’m breaking within In my weakness you are strong This is my song to keep holding on I know you’re with me through it all When I’m right when I’m wrong when I’m perfect when I fall I know you’re with me When I feel like givin’ in Got nothing to give I’m breaking within In my weakness you are strong This is my song to keep holding on I know you’re with me through it all When I’m right when I’m wrong when I’m perfect when I fall I know you’re with me Through it all I know you’re with me through it all - - - - - - - "I know you’re with me through it all" The most obvious question from this first line is, who are they talking to? I assume that it is either a person or God, or both. Either way, it's a significant other. Humans are not designed to be alone, we can't handle it. That's why Tom Hanks in the movie Castaway makes the volleyball into his friend Wilson, he needed someone. It's why people in solitary confinement for long periods of time will become friends with spiders. Loneliness is one of the worst things that humans can experience. We need people. That's why ancient societies would exile people for punishments. (The term significant other was coined by the psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan. It's important through this whole song (and life).) "This time I’m I’m desperate Your end Is all I’m left with So consume me Breathe through me Close my eyes till You’re all I can see" Desperate people seek transformation. This transformation can come about from different things, but one of the most powerful ways is by interaction with a charismatic personality. That's what charisma is actually about, it's about transformation and reorienting yourself in the world. Len Oakes in his book "Prophetic Charisma" talks about how this works. But, this stanza describes it pretty well in itself. The follower gets the advantage of being transformed, hopefully in a positive way. The leader gets the advantage of having a follower that is acting basically out of blind faith towards an end chosen by the leader. That last line is a bit different though. This is about what we are aware of and what we aren't aware of. Everything that you're aware of is your phenomenal field. Some of those things are more prominent, those are called figures. Some things are in the background, those are called ground. Your phenomenal field determines all of your behavior. Personality transformation requires a change in the phenomenal field. By making one thing such a prominent figure and pushing everything else into the ground a person can completely change, essentially becoming a different person. Closing your eyes symbolizes this shutting out of the rest of the world so that one figure can come to dominate the phenomenal field. ("Individual Behavior" by Combs and Snygg is a great book on the phenomenal field.) "I’m on my hands and my knees Crying out for relief I need a miracle Supernatural To come and rescue me from my enemies Don’t let me forget" Being on your hands and knees can represent three things that I can think of: 1) being exhausted and possibly beaten. 2) submissiveness, subservience, worship, surrender. 3) being a child that hasn't learned how to stand on its own yet. In this stanza it seems like it might represent all three of these at the same time, but the first one is the most obvious because the person is crying out for relief. You can see how all of these work right with what we've started to explore about significant others and charismatic individuals. A desperate person is attracted to a charismatic individual in a state of surrender so that they can learn to transform themselves, so they can learn to stand on their own in a new way as a new person. Supernatural miracles are interesting. Supernatural essentially means something that we can't explain as part of nature, thus it is beyond nature, or super-natural. Miracles are essentially a knowledge gap. Something happened and we don't know how, it's a miracle. Miracles are the good things that are unexplained. And, if we're talking about personality transformation here, which it seems like we are, then it is a miracle because no one understands it fully. I could say some things about those last two lines, but honestly I'm not fully connecting them. That last line especially, I'm not really sure what that's about. Being rescued from enemies makes some sense. It makes a lot more sense if those enemies are within, and we need to be rescued from something like our resentment or doubt, for instance. Also, once we transform it's easy to forget the period before the transformation because it slides out of figure and into ground in the phenomenal field. Maybe it's something like that. "When I feel like givin’ in Got nothing to give I’m breaking within In my weakness you are strong This is my song to keep holding on I know you’re with me through it all When I’m right when I’m wrong when I’m perfect when I fall I know you’re with me I know you’re with me through it all" We all feel like giving up at times, or at least I have many times. That can often feel like something is breaking inside. What, what is breaking? There are a number of ways to come at this and I'm going to propose this, it's the breaking of the personality itself. In a stressful situation where we are both overwhelmed and confused part of the self can become dissociated. We're not sure which way to view the world, we're not sure what's important and what's not important, so instead of having one solid phenomenal field we have different possible phenomenal fields that we try to hold at one time. I've never heard anyone else propose this, so it's my own formulation. Essentially we get separate versions of personalities. Sometimes these will show up in dreams and other revery states. If we can reintegrate these parts then we become more unified and whole again. We probably need someone else to help us through that process because it's so difficult. You need someone that is strong while you are weak. There are a few more things here, but I'm going to move past them because that last paragraph was already a lot of challenging information for one stanza. "So control me Console me Come be my one and only Overtake me Come and break me Mold me into what you made me to be" This is a great description of the experience of being a follower of a charismatic individual. The last two lines are extremely interesting. The person is seeking to be broken. To transform the personality in a radical way then maybe it's necessary to challenge beliefs and perspectives to the point where the person is confused, and to do this under some pressure. That pressure can be internal, maybe it can only come from an internal place to be effective. Then, in this state, the person has made themselves malleable, and hopefully they've placed themselves in an environment that will help them be molded into the kind of person they desire to be. The last line in this stanza brings us back to the idea of the significant other. Humans need approval to survive. We can't survive alone, especially when we're young, and if we don't have approval then we will be alone. Social approval from significant others is necessary for life, that's why approval and disapproval are so powerful. Sullivan even proposes that most of the personality is formed from what is approved and disapproved by significant others. They literally mold and form the personality. And, this is as it should be. The psychologist Lev Vygotsky invented the idea of the zone of proximal development. It's what is beyond our ability to learn on our own, but we can learn it with the help of a more knowing other, and that's the only way we can learn so much and so quickly. Learning to be in the world requires this molding of the self from significant and more knowing others. (I could also take that last line of the stanza in a completely different direction theologically, but I won't for now.) "I’m on my hands and my knees Crying out for relief I need a miracle Right now" We have covered most of this. Notice that crying out is a social process. If it wasn't social then crying out would be completely pointless. The last line adds some feeling of urgency, which only makes sense when a desperate person that has been overwhelmed by a confusing world has broken pieces of their personality vying to dominate their phenomenal field. They know they need some big, good thing to happen, and to happen fast (a miracle). "When I feel like givin’ in Got nothing to give I’m breaking within In my weakness you are strong This is my song to keep holding on I know you’re with me through it all When I’m right when I’m wrong when I’m perfect when I fall I know you’re with me" Having nothing to give can refer to two things: 1) being so exhausted that you have no energy to do anything, this can be physical and/or emotional, essentially it's having nothing left to confront life with. 2) having nothing to give someone else. So, you need someone else and you need them to be generous. I think the line about "This is my song to keep holding on" is great. It's one of those things that I could talk about, but I don't think I'm quite up to really pulling apart how powerful it is. Essentially, it is a line that is beyond my ability to add anything of worth to at the moment. When I first heard perfection referred to in the song I was just a tiny bit confused. Perfection isn't achievable, we're told. But, that isn't really true. If we have an expectation about something, let's say it's about our own actions in the future. And then, we meet those expectations, we were perfect. And, I think most people have had that experience at some point, when everything seems to be just as it should be, that's the experience of perfection. Then, inevitably, we fall away from that impermanent state. "When I feel like givin’ in Got nothing to give I’m breaking within In my weakness you are strong This is my song to keep holding on I know you’re with me through it all When I’m right when I’m wrong when I’m perfect when I fall I know you’re with me Through it all" This need for the possibility of transformation and orientation through an interaction with a generalized, significant, and more knowing other is why the concept of God is so important and powerful, why it always has existed, and why it always will exist. "I know you’re with me through it all" I like that the song ends with the same line that it began with. In public speaking we call this bracketing, or at least I do. It seems to wrap the ideas contained within into a unit, into a package, a single piece that we can hold in our minds. Overall, I think it's a great song. And I love the fact that Gandhi's Gun wrote it to help other people and it ended up helping them in their own time of need. Serendipity at its finest.  Today we have a band that is quickly gaining popularity. Lucky for us they were helpful enough to give me some insight into their inspiration for a specific song.
Collision of Innocence was formed at the beginning of 2018. Bill from 88.9 Hey Radio messaged me and wanted me to take a look at their song "The Void". It's an excellent song, but I wasn't able to find the lyrics anywhere. So, I messaged the band on Facebook. Not only did they send me the lyrics, they also told me that the inspiration for the song had come from a message by Billy Graham. I have all of that for you, then I'll dive into the song myself and see what I pull out of it. You can listen to the song on Youtube here: https://youtu.be/QlRBXG5ZYwc And, here is their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/collisionofinnocence/ Ever wonder about the secrets of making connections like these? Here's how I do it, in a straightforward manner. No matter what happens there won't be complications this way because there aren't secrets or hidden agendas and then there can't be drama. Here's the message that I sent them: - - - - - - - I'm working on an article for 88.9 Hey Radio on your song "The Void". I haven't found the lyrics for it online. Could you send me the lyrics? - - - - - - - Most likely one of two things is going to happen here: 1) They're going to send you the lyrics. 2) They're never going to respond. Either way, there's nothing to fear in reaching out. They sent me the lyrics first, which I'll show in a minute, then they sent me this: - - - - - - - Thanks Brother! This song is about about the void of the human heart and how we try to fill that with a lot of things but God is the only thing that completes us. In a nutshell... there’s also an amazing article that ties it together by Billy Graham. I’ll try to find it - - - - - - - Well, a response doesn't get better than that. It does put some pressure on me though. Since I'll be going through and pulling my own personal meanings from the lyrics it will seem odd if I have a different perspective than the band that wrote the lyrics and Billy Graham who was the inspiration for the lyrics. I'm guessing that's going to happen though. Luckily I don't feel a strong need to agree with people or conform, and if I did I wouldn't do any writing or public speaking. It will be interesting to compare and contrast. (It reminds me a bit of the article that I wrote on Grandpa Loves Rhinos about their song "Aquaman" where I assumed it had something to do with Aquaman and I learned that I was completely wrong when I was messaging with the band after I wrote the article. It's like that, but in reverse.) Here's what they sent me from Billy Graham: - - - - - - - We all have a hunger in our hearts for God — an empty place in our souls that only He can fill. The Psalmist in the Bible put it this way: “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” (Psalm 42:2). The problem is that instead of turning to God and letting Him fill our souls, we turn to other things — pleasure, fame, money, sex, or drugs and alcohol. Some people even turn to false philosophies or religions, hoping these will lead them to the truth and fill the empty place in their lives. For a time, they may think they’ve found what they were looking for, but in the end, they’re just as empty as they ever were. Tragically, some will even discover that they’ve almost destroyed their lives. Only God can satisfy our inner hunger, and He will, as we turn to Him and by faith open our hearts and lives to Christ’s transforming power. God doesn’t want us to wander through life, constantly wondering who we are or why we’re here. Instead, Christ came into the world to bring us back to God, and He will, as we commit our lives to Him. Don’t be deceived by those who urge you to take a wrong road, no matter how glamorous or famous they seem to be. Instead, make Christ the center of your life. God’s Word is true: “Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?… Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live” (Isaiah 55:2-3). - - - - - - - Alright, now it's time for the lyrics. I think the lyrics are better than Billy Graham's quote. Here they are: - - - - - - - This emptiness Inside so cold my spirit seems dead I long to fill this hollow void This world can’t help it only destroys Escape into me And you’ll find the rest that you need Confide in me I’ll eclipse, surpass all of your dreams In this dark abyss Here I’ve found anything but bliss Offer me their medications For this ache they don’t know the remedy Escape into me And you’ll find the rest that you need Confide in me I’ll eclipse, surpass all of your dreams Behold I’m coming soon Knew you before the womb I’ll never leave you, never deceive you My arms are open wide I want you by my side Wipe away all your tears, diminish all your fears How long will you wait? How long, so long so long I’ve been waiting Escape into me And you’ll find the rest that you need Confide in me I’ll eclipse, surpass all of your dreams - - - - - - - (I feel like I should have done a bigger intro, maybe something like, "For the first time being presented to the public in written format on the internet, I bring to you, direct from the band, a JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com and 88.9 Hey Radio exclusive collaboration, the lyrics for Collision of Innocence's "The Void"! You have to read it in a boxing radio announcer's voice to really get the effect. Anyway...) I like the structure of this song. It's both obvious and subtle at the same time. I didn't realize this the first time I heard it, but I realized it as soon as I saw the written lyrics. There are two characters in this story, and they both speak from the first person perspective. Depending on which perspective you take in this song you could be one of those voices, or you could have a separate third person perspective of either a dialogue or duel monologues that are happening. What I'm talking about will become more clear as I go through it stanza by stanza. - - - - - - - This emptiness Inside so cold my spirit seems dead I long to fill this hollow void This world can’t help it only destroys - - - - - - - This stanza is from the perspective of a suffering person. The first three lines are the suffering, the feeling of suffering. This type of suffering is a lack, something is missing from the person's life and they have an urge to find it to feel less empty, less spiritually dead, and less hollow. Let's dive into this a bit more because that fourth line will be its own thing. This lack of meaning in life is common. In modern society it's even becoming pervasive. This is especially true for people that don't have to struggle to survive. You get time and energy to think about what your life is about and what your life is worth. Unfortunately, many people have a hard time finding answers to these questions. Philosophy and psychology have largely dropped the ball in this area, which is probably the most important area of life. Some people have confronted it and have useful insights, others are less useful. The philosopher Albert Camus proposed the idea that the most important question in philosophy is "Is life worth living?" In a series of articles titled "The Most Important Question in Philosophy" I proposed the idea that there is a better question, "What makes life worth living?" Albert Camus doesn't offer great answers, really they are quite disturbing. He founded the philosophy of Absurdism as a branch of Existentialism. The basic Absurdist take on this matter is that humans have an inherent yearning for meaning in life, but there is no meaning in life. This is an absurd situation, thus Absurdism. The best answer that Camus can give is that there is also a defiance in humans that allows us to press on in the face of this absurd situation in spite of it all. A much better discussion of this topic is handled by Viktor Frankl who founded the philosophy and psychology of Logotherapy. He's known for being a neurosurgeon and psychiatrist that survived the Nazi concentration camps. The three basic axioms of Logotherapy are: life is intrinsically meaningful (Unconditional Meaning of Life), we are capable of discovering opportunities for meaningful action (Freedom of Will), and we are motivated to want to make our lives meaningful and purposeful (Will to Meaning). There is so much that is good, useful, and relevant from Frankl here that it would be an entire article. I won't dive into all of that. Just to get a taste of some of the great insights he has you can check out the article I wrote titled "An Interesting Note of Suicide from Viktor Frankl" which is where this feeling of emptiness can lead when it's at its worst. Here's that article: http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2019/01/an-interesting-note-on-suicide-from.html Now, that fourth line brings up some interesting things, controversial and debatable things. "This world can’t help it only destroys". This is a world denying stance. The idea is that the world is corrupt, a wholly corrupt manifestation of a greater and purer spiritual plane of existence. This is one of the basic tenets of Gnosticism. The Gnostic movement was quite big in early Christianity and survived for several centuries before the Catholics were able to eventually kill them off. In some ways it will always survive and humans will always come back to it. The Apostle Paul was criticized right at the founding of Christianity of being too Gnostic. At that time there was quite a mix. There was no bible, the parts of the New Testament were still being written, many pieces of writing about the accounts of Jesus were in circulation with a bunch of different factions vying for control and sway over the beliefs of the public. It was a huge deal for the early Christians trying to figure out how Jewish they were and there was a lot of integration, disintegration, and debate about that. We would think of them as a bunch of denominations now. There were many, but it was fewer than the current 34,000 different Christian denominations. It's overly simplistic to say that there are two sides to this debate, but... to avoid this article turning into a series on the history of theology I'm going to say that there are two basic takes. One view is that the world is something to be overcome and let go of. This has some movement in modern Christianity, but it's overshadowed by the world affirming versions of Christianity. You see this same theme most clearly in the modern world in Buddhism, where the world denying factions are the major force and the world affirming versions of Buddhism are smaller. I think it might be the case that all religions have different versions of these two camps. The ideas about an ideal realm of forms is prominent in the philosopher Plato as well. (John Vervaeke is a psychologist from the University of Toronto that delves into many ancient and modern perspectives on these things in his online course "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis". It's worth a look if you want to delve deeply into it.) This idea of a duality is easy to comprehend and comes up again and again. Some versions of Christianity raise the power of Satan up to equal, or at least challenge, that of God. That's one type of dualism in religion. Zoroastrianism has a good god and an evil god. It's a fairly straightforward idea. The other major way for dualism to work is to have the idea of a material world and a spiritual world. We also see this type of dualism in the philosopher Descartes where the idea of the mind is separated from the body. The dualism that puts two opposing forces against each other in the world is still world affirming, they just acknowledge various corruptions from the opposing force. The dualism that posits a good plane of existence and a bad plane of existence is necessarily world denying, although there are a lot of details to those views that we aren't going to dive into here. (The Cathars in France and Italy had this type of dualistic good spiritual world and bad material world view too. The Catholics were eventually able to wipe them out in the 14th century. But, we see here that this dualistic view of a good world and bad world is something that comes back. I'm not sure about the specific religious views of Collision of Innocence, but I'm going to guess they're Protestant because they're from the United States and there aren't that many Catholics, Anglicans, or Eastern Orthodox here. Protestants are generally considered heretics by Catholics too, although there hasn't been a major war in awhile. Really, every group considers every other group heretical. Rarely is it noted that heretics are the saviors of religion from itself, or that Moses was a heretic, Jesus was a heretic, Luther was a heretic, etc.) Personally I try to be world affirming, but acknowledge the major limits of that view and see the perspective taken against it. I think all of these perspectives come down to different takes on modes of being that are developed in humans. The psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan calls these steps prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic. Sullivan founded Interpersonal Psychiatry, which is all about human interactions. In the first step things aren't perceived as separate. In this second step things are distinct from each other but in unclear ways. In the last step things are well defined. An adult human uses all of these modes of being to a greater or lesser extent. Limits on the personality are created by approval and disapproval of the person right from infancy. This forms two basic models of interaction, the good and the bad. This is the same basic concept we have been talking about, and this is why it exists in all people. You could also make a case that it's an archetype, as in biologically embedded in humans. That's the take from psychologist Carl Jung, but I like Sullivan's formulation more. Wow! That was a lot. Let's look at the second stanza. I'll speed this up a bit too. - - - - - - - Escape into me And you’ll find the rest that you need Confide in me I’ll eclipse, surpass all of your dreams - - - - - - - - This is not the same person talking. This is God talking to the person. That's the interesting structure that I was talking about before. These first four stanzas are a back and forth between this suffering person yearning for meaning and God. Here we see the same call to step away from the world, to escape this place of suffering. The second line is interesting. You need rest because you are exhausted from being in the world. What's the answer to being exhausted and worn out from this material world? To escape to and confide in God. (You could also take the perspective that this "rest" is talking about something that is lacking and there is a searching for the rest of it. I like that idea, but I won't develop it here.) The etymology of confide is revealing here. Etymology is the history of a word. The best place to look up etymologies is etymonline.com. Confide is like confidence, it comes from the Latin confidere. Con fidere literally means "with faith," or "with trust." (As a wedding officiant last year I noted this in the ceremony.) So, that line could be translated from English into English as "Trust in me" or "Have faith in me". What will you get if you do this? You'll have all of your dreams surpassed. We don't get a reference to what dreams this entails, but if we remember that God is talking to a person searching for meaning then we get some idea. Notice that it doesn't say you'll get all of your dreams. It says your dreams will be eclipsed and surpassed. To eclipse means to fail to appear. To surpass means to go beyond. So, to eclipse and surpass your dreams means that you definitely won't get your dreams, you're going to get something else. Wow! There is more here. I feel like I'm not even halfway done talking about this. I think I could write a series of essays on these first two stanzas, but let's look at the third to keep things moving. - - - - - - - In this dark abyss Here I’ve found anything but bliss Offer me their medications For this ache they don’t know the remedy - - - - - - - Darkness is a symbol of the lack of knowing. This is also good Gnostic symbology. In a very general way the Protestants propose that salvation is through faith. Others, namely the Catholics, propose that salvation is through works, sometimes faith and works. The Gnostics propose that salvation is through Gnosis, knowing, knowledge. I agree with that view. I just disagree as to what the knowledge is and its interaction and relation with faith and works. I lay out some of those basic ideas in my article "Theoconceptualist Theology" here: http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/2018/12/theoconceptualist-theology.html In the second line we see that what this person has been searching for is their bliss. The idea of following your bliss is associated with the mythologist Joseph Campbell. Here's a good quote from him about it: - - - - - - - If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are — if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time. - - - - - - - It's the idea that you are doing what you're supposed to be doing, what's important to do. This is about values. (I can't believe I haven't talked about values yet. Really though this entire article is about values, and the song is about values, and everything every living being does is about values. So, it's in there, just under the surface.) The idea of having an ache and seeking a remedy that's a medication works literally, but it also works great metaphorically. It works materially, where I have found the medical system to be horrible. But it also works mentally and spiritually, where many of the options we have are also a letdown. Questioning meaning and value in life is not a disease that can be fixed with drugs, it's part of being human and needs to be solved in a human way, a chemical way won't work. And other short term, simple, and quick solutions won't work either. You have to go down deep into the soul to deal with these things. (Here's something disturbing, in 2014 the best selling prescription drug in the United States was the antipsychotic Abilify. That's right, for psychotic people. It had 7.5 billion dollars in sales. Here's the thing, many or most of those sales were for people that weren't psychotic. Guess what happens when you aren't psychotic and you take antipsychotics designed to change your brain chemistry in major ways? You become psy____. Thanks big pharma, for preying on people in the throes of spiritual upheaval and offering a solution that makes the world a worse place, and makes people less healthy physically, mentally, and spiritually.) Other than drugs, many other solutions don't work either. If your life feels empty you need to find the values that will fill that inner void. These won't be things that we usually classify under the headings of power or pleasure, but that's what many people try, and many people try those things for their entire lives. If you do that then your emptiness will never go away. There are three major types of values: creative, experiential, and attitudinal. This song is talking about taking a certain perspective on life, a religious perspective guided by God. That attitude will lead to a different experience of life. That experience will lead you to do and create things differently than you would have otherwise. And it all starts with the attitudinal value. (The framework that I presented in this paragraph is right from Viktor Frankl.) Here's what I haven't covered yet. - - - - - - - Behold I’m coming soon Knew you before the womb I’ll never leave you, never deceive you My arms are open wide I want you by my side Wipe away all your tears, diminish all your fears How long will you wait? How long, so long so long I’ve been waiting - - - - - - - The thing is, I'm psychologically exhausted from writing this article. You've probably only been reading for a few minutes at this point, but I've been writing for hours. It takes a lot more time and effort to create something than it does to consume it. So, I'm going to skip the detailed analysis of this last section. I'll let you imagine what I would say about it. Or, message me, let me know what you think about it. I know the normal take on it, my take would not be the normal take, it never is. What can you see in it that might be a unique perspective? Well, that was a pretty wild ride of an article. I'm sure that Collision of Innocence wasn't expecting anything like that when they sent me those lyrics. If there's something that you liked in this article then message me and let me know. If there's something that you don't like then you can message me about that too, I get love and hate mail about everything I write. But, I suggest that you sleep on it one day before you respond if it's a disagreement. In the heat of the moment we are less articulate. I would like to thank all of my sponsors. (I'm just joking, I don't have any sponsors. Although, I've been thinking about setting up a donation page on my website so that people can support my work. I know there are some people place a high value on it, and with some financial support I could do more. Maybe, maybe...) Last thought. It's amazing how powerful and deep songs are. I don't usually comment on anything having to do with the music or the sound because I don't know much about those technical areas, but I wonder what this song would be like with two singers? One for the suffering person and one for God. It might be interesting.  As We Ascend is cool. They work with their fans to create their music. If you join their program as a label executive, which is closed right now, you can both participate in the process and see behind the scenes into the process of the songs being written and recorded. I like transparency, so it connects with me. As We Ascend was born just a couple of years ago, but the band is chock-full of experience. Here is the bio from their website: https://www.asweascend.com/ - - - - - - - As We Ascend is a rock band from the greater Nashville area. Members Justin Forshaw and Jake Jones (formerly of rock sensation We As Human) along with Robert Venable (acclaimed music producer) all have extensive professional careers in the music industry and are able to bring a variety of musical expertise to the table. The perfect blend of melodic and heavy guitars, edgy vocals, and drums combined with pouring out their hearts for the lost and broken in their lyrics, gives this band their own space in the music industry. With a unique approach, As We Ascend hands over creative control to their fans and listeners, essentially making them their record label. Their debut single "Wash Away" has quickly gained traction and drawn the attention of the ones who the song was written for, those questioning the end and fighting internal battles with themselves. Their self-produced, debut album, "Farewell to Midnight," hit stores 3/17/17 via distributing label partner Vital Records/New Day Christian Distributors. - - - - - - - This type of experience comes with a few good things, I'm going to point out two. One, because they've already gone through a lot of growing pains in their careers they are more consistent in the quality that they produce. People fluctuate more when they're learning something new. Two, because of their credibility and connections they are able to bring in featured singers like Zach Myers of Shinedown and Brad Arnold of 3 Doors Down for collaborations, which is awesome. Bill from Hey Radio sent me their song "Hatchett" to check out. Let's look at the lyrics and then I'll dive into them a bit. - - - - - - - You set my world on fire, it's time to run away Through the soil you torched to the horizon My hopes and dreams they died, but now I'm justified I won't drag your weight any longer Cut me loose I'm trying to let go of everything You've tied my noose But now your rope's unraveling It's hard to breathe with your hands around my neck Around my neck, you're killing me It's hard to know when you're behind me It's hard to bury this hatchet when it's in my back You left my spirit torn, tired, and all alone My heart is frozen, colder than frostbite I've gathered every stone that you have ever thrown Used them to build my road while you sink under Cut me loose I'm trying to let go of everything You've tied my noose But now your rope's unraveling It's hard to breathe with your hands around my neck Around my neck, you're killing me It's hard to know when you're behind me It's hard to bury this hatchet when it's in my back You raised your walls so you could hide your past Made them out of glass and they're shattering It's hard to bury this hatchet when it's in my back It's in my back, hatchet in my back Look me in the eyes The only one prepared to die The damage is already done You best get your hatchet This battle has just begun It's hard to breathe with your hands around my neck Around my neck, you're killing me It's hard to know when you're behind me It's hard to bury this hatchet when it's in my back It's hard to breathe With your hands around me, hand around me It's hard to know You're always behind me - - - - - - - - Well, well, well. There is a lot that we could dive into here. I'm going to go with stream of consciousness, starting with the title and working my way down. We'll see what comes up. "Hatchet" "Hatchet" could be referring to a tool or a weapon. Technically a weapon is a type of tool with the specific purpose of harming others. I assumed the song wasn't going to be about making kindling for a fire. It did briefly bring up the image of the novel "Hatchet" by Gary Paulsen about a boy surviving in the wilderness. I assumed it wasn't about that either. "You set my world on fire, it's time to run away" In the first line we know that this is going to be an intense song, and not a happy song. Maybe a song about overcoming. To overcome something there must be an obstacle or a challenge. There are certain things that certain people can do that can ruin your entire life. When that happens it makes sense to run away. When your world is on fire you're probably going to panic. The worst thing you can do is panic, you're probably going to panic anyway. Sometimes it's best to confront what is burning your life down, at other times it's best to just get away from it. What's really happening here is that you don't know where you are. If you plop an animal down in an area that it's never been to before the first thing it does is panic. It freezes, it tries to orient itself, then it slowly starts exploring. As it learns more about its new surroundings it calms down. By exploring and learning we reduce this underlying anxiety. But, when something goes wrong we no longer can rely on what we've previously learned. Maybe all of that is wrong, maybe everything we have been predicting and expecting is wrong, maybe everything we thought we knew was wrong. We've lost our present, future, and past. This is extremely disorienting. You basically can't not panic. What you can do is start slowly exploring your new surroundings and learning, as you learn your anxiety will go back down. "Through the soil you torched to the horizon" The song and I are on the same wavelength. The horizon stretches in all directions. When you're traveling there is a horizon that you came from and a horizon that you're going to. (You can't usually see this if you're from Michigan like me, but it's amazing to see when you drive across the Great Plains.) There's your past and there's your future. If someone really messes up your life you don't just question the present, you have to rethink everything about the future and the past. Did you ever really even know this person? That rabbit hole can be deep. "My hopes and dreams they died, but now I'm justified" Hopes and dreams are living things. They grow, they change, and they die. This is interesting, if you have shared hopes and dreams with someone else are you locked into them? At least somewhat, yes. That's why we sometimes consider it a betrayal when someone ruins our hopes and dreams. But, if it's the other person that ruins those hopes and dreams then we are free. We are free to let other hopes and dreams grow that wouldn't have been able to if we were still obligated to those other shared hopes and dreams. I've never really articulated that before. Very insightful. That's why there's value in this process of both experiencing a song and digging into a song. "I won't drag your weight any longer" Do we have an obligation to help someone that we have shared hopes and dreams with? Yes, I think we do. But, if they break our covenant, if they break our agreement, for instance by burning down our life, then we no longer have to carry that burden, we can let it drop. Now we are open to new hopes and dreams, and we no longer have to be dragging along someone else. "Cut me loose I'm trying to let go of everything" If you were tied to this person you are now cut free from them and everything that goes along with that. "You've tied my noose But now your rope's unraveling" When someone is ruining their own life and your life is closely tied to theirs then when they are hanging themselves they are hanging you too. That's why it's a good idea to get away. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. When the connections are tight, and if they were for a long time, then that's a strong rope. But, slowly, those connections will start to unravel and fall away. So, like before you might be able to make a clean cut. Or, it might be more like an unraveling to disconnect with someone. Either way progress is being made. You just want to make sure that you are able to unravel that noose in time. "It's hard to breathe with your hands around my neck Around my neck, you're killing me" I'm not sure about this part. It's obviously a powerful image, but it's more of a confrontational image. When your world is burning because of someone and you're trying to make a cut, or unravel, from them then at some point there is probably going to be the confrontation, or confrontations. There may be no higher skill in life than conflict resolution. Many people agree with this, that's why the Nobel Peace Prize used to be so highly valued. But, if someone else has you boxed in somehow, for instance if you have shared obligations as in business contracts or children, then you're stuck. There's no room for you to move. You're suffocating because of this other person. The most natural thing to do in that situation is to rage. It's the natural reaction against frustration and being held back or being held down. There's danger in not doing anything, you have to do something. There's also potential danger in what you could do. Your world's burning down, you're trying to get loose, but you're being pinned in. That's a hard situation. "It's hard to know when you're behind me It's hard to bury this hatchet when it's in my back" And now we get to where the title comes from. The crux of the song. Deception, secrets, and betrayal. That's what this is about. It's hard to know if someone has secrets, that's the point of having secrets. Somewhere along the way you have to trust someone. Really, you have to trust many people at many points. Paranoia and stalking are considered bad things for a reason. If you didn't trust anyone then you would have to be paranoid and stalk everyone. When you trust someone you take a risk. You take the risk that they are going to sneak up behind you and put a knife in your back, or in this case, a hatchet. To stick a knife in someone's back and to bury the hatchet are both idioms. Idioms are just phrases they mean something more and a little different than they would appear to say. To stick a knife in someone's back means to betray them. To bury the hatchet means to make peace. To stab someone in the back originally came from Germany, although this idea in the literal and figurative sense is as old as human history. It became popular in Germany after WW1 when the army felt betrayed by the government. It seems to come from Richard Wagner's opera Gotterdammerung, where the hero is murdered by being stabbed in the back with a spear. To bury the hatchet comes from a Native American tradition, specifically the Iroquois Confederacy, of burying weapons when they were at peace. It's hard to forgive someone. The more they've hurt you the harder it is to forgive. These bad emotions are there for a reason. You shouldn't let a person keep hurting you over and over again. When the wound is fresh it's hard to forgive. If the wound is still happening, the hatchet is still in your back, then it's basically impossible. First, you have to try to put the fire in your life out before you get burned up, you have to unravel your bonds with the person so you can get away from them for your own safety, then, after the hatchet has been taken out of your back, then maybe you can bury the hatchet and make peace with them. "You left my spirit torn, tired, and all alone" All of this takes a huge mental, emotional, and physical toll. What you thought was good is bad. You thought you were supported but you're not, and weren't. You thought you weren't alone, but you are, and were. It's a lot to try to process. "My heart is frozen, colder than frostbite" Your mind, body, and soul can only take so much pain. There is a limit. After that you can't feel it anymore. That's why we have the capacity for not caring. The fire in our engines has been used up and now it goes out. Frostbite kills. Betrayal severs a connection and kills our heart, our emotions, our sympathy, our empathy, and our trust. We need time to warm back up again and grow into those things. When something is overwhelming we tend to shut down to try to limit how much input we're getting. This is part of the natural process of confronting something that is too much to comprehend. Then, as we explore our anxiety will slowly reduce as we become more familiar with our new surroundings and situation. "I've gathered every stone that you have ever thrown Used them to build my road while you sink under" Throwing stones is another idiom for saying insults and criticisms. It's usually used as an insult itself. Here's the thing. If someone is giving you criticisms those criticisms might not be worth much, or they might be useful. If someone close to you has told you that you don't do something well, or you lack something that you need, then it might be a good idea to look into it. If you're able to become a better person because of that criticism then you'll build yourself up. You'll lay a solid foundation for your life. You will build a road that you can then travel down to better things. If you ignore those criticisms, and they were true, then you don't get better. You don't have a foundation, you don't have a solid road, and maybe because of those things you sink or get stuck. You can give the same criticism to two different people in good faith and one will find progress while the other will find something to resent. "Cut me loose I'm trying to let go of everything You've tied my noose But now your rope's unraveling It's hard to breathe with your hands around my neck Around my neck, you're killing me It's hard to know when you're behind me It's hard to bury this hatchet when it's in my back You raised your walls so you could hide your past Made them out of glass and they're shattering It's hard to bury this hatchet when it's in my back It's in my back, hatchet in my back" We encounter one new idea here, raising walls that shatter because they're made out of glass. This ties into throwing stones somewhat, because "you shouldn't throw stones if you live in a glass house" means you shouldn't criticize people if you can be criticized for the same thing. This is different though. Raising walls to hide your past is keeping secrets. The thing is, it's hard to keep secrets. They have a way of being noticed, even if it's just in a little way. When it's noticed, even just a little, it tends to get a little more noticed. That wall, or lie, that you used to try to hide your past turns out to not be that strong. When someone really questions it maybe the wall just falls down. That's part of why I prefer to be transparent about things. "Look me in the eyes" This is more confrontational again. We all know this works for trying to clear up lies. We know a lot of things that we don't know we know, we don't even know how we would know them. One of these things is micro-expressions. The psychologist Paul Ekman led the way in this research. Tiny little adjustments in muscle tension in the face reveals emotions. Even though we don't know that we are noticing these, we are. That's one reason that looking someone in the eyes can help to determine if they're lying. The other reason is that people are more reluctant to lie when you are looking in their eyes. I think this could be for a few reasons. There's the feeling of being closely observed. When people think they are being observed they act more moral. If there is a sign with eyes on it in a subway station people will litter less. Also, this is often how animal dominance is determined, by a stare. Locking eyes can be an intense moment, and it makes it harder to lie. "The only one prepared to die" If you have strong convictions then you're willing to stay with them. If, on the other hand, you're lying and deceiving then maybe you'll be more reluctant to sacrifice for your opinions. When it comes down to it deception takes your power away, unless you're a sociopath. It undermines your confidence, commitment, and conviction. Only someone with a serious conviction is willing to die for a principle. "The damage is already done" If the damage is already done then you need to try to orient yourself for the future. To a certain extent, you can leave that thing behind and move ahead. "You best get your hatchet This battle has just begun" This throws me off a little. It's very confrontational. Now, if you have tried to cut loose from someone but they won't let you, then maybe your only option is to confront the person. Maybe that means going into a legal battle, or maybe something else. Either way, it's not ideal. But, if it has to be done then it's best to go into it voluntarily. To confront something reluctantly and to confront something voluntarily are completely different. It sounds similar because either way you're confronting something, but it works completely differently in the mind. In your brain there are different circuits that fire if you are approaching something or if you are avoiding something. You don't want the avoid circuits firing while you have to be approaching something anyway. This is going to limit your own mental, emotional, and physical resources. So, if you have to confront something you better confront it voluntarily. "It's hard to breathe with your hands around my neck Around my neck, you're killing me It's hard to know when you're behind me It's hard to bury this hatchet when it's in my back It's hard to breathe" We've covered all of this so I'll keep going. "With your hands around me, hand around me It's hard to know You're always behind me" I think this is kind of an odd ending. I would have liked to see the hero story where we have a hardship that's overcome, or at least hope for overcoming in the future. Here there is a different perspective taken. This is more of an ongoing situation. This person might still be behind us, they always seem to be behind us. They might stab us again, betray us again. It's hard to know when or if this is going to happen because they are so deceptive. I feel like I'm being suffocated because of being trapped in this situation. It's definitely an intense way to end the song. And, I get it, As We Ascend describe themselves as talking to the lost and the broken. But, having been lost and broken, I would like to see the lost and the broken encouraged to be able to come out of that situation, to overcome it. That doesn't mean they're going to, but there is value in just the trying. As we try to transform the world we also transform ourselves. That's how I see it anyway. I've written psychology articles on suicide and philosophy articles about the meaning of life, so As We Ascend and I are exploring many of the same subjects. Overall, I think it's an excellent song. There is great imagery in this song, they are good at weaving together different idioms in unique ways. I've heard internet chatter that We As Human fell apart because of some sort of deception and lying scandal. It seems to me that this song might be at least partially inspired by that. It could have come from something else, but I'm guessing it still applies to that situation. I'm glad these three musicians were able to come together to form a solid rock band, and I'm glad they're doing so well. I expect big things in the future. As a little addon note about deception and lying: Notice that if there wasn't any lying or deception in television shows then there would be almost no television shows. Most of them are based around the problems caused by deception. They're all about secrets. Drama can almost wholly be eliminated by being transparent. The world offers enough challenges, I see no reason to add to them. This is hard to work out because there are white lies and black truths. But, the attempt at transparency is worth it. ________________________________________________ You can find more of what I'm doing at http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com  By Jeffrey Alexander Martin Tuesday, January 22, 2019 I have a treat for you today. This is the first time that I'm looking at a song that hasn't been released yet. Adelaide came together in 2014 when Laura, the lead singer, started the process of recording songs that she had written over the last 10 years. They released "The Bigger Picture" album in 2015, and are coming out with more new music now. This song is called "Deep Waters". When Bill emailed me this song I looked up Adelaide and couldn't find the song on their Youtube, their Facebook, or their website: https://www.adelaidemusic.com/ The song was good, so I wanted to review it. I messaged Adelaide, and I believe I chatted with Laura. I'm lucky that she was kind enough to send me the lyrics. This song will be released next week. So, this is a sneak preview. Exciting! - - - - - - - Violent waves crashing all around thundering and deafening sound threatening flashes moving in the water is rising up again I need your anchor steady me keep me grounded I won’t be swept away I’m not afraid of what is coming you’ll find me on my knees because in Deep Waters you won’t let me drown. I hear you calling us to be
Stirring ripples in this sea spreading out and going forth To every corner of the earth the rain may not stop falling down but you are my refuge I won’t be swept away I’m not afraid of what is coming you’ll find me on my knees because in Deep Waters you won’t let me drown. I’ll take your hand and walk on water because you are faithful although the storm is raging on you are faithful I won’t be swept away I’m not afraid of what is coming you’ll find me on my knees because in Deep Waters you won’t let me drown. - - - - - - - (I'm not sure if Adelaide intended that first line to have line breaks or not, but that's the way she sent it to me so I'm leaving it.) I've listened to this song a bunch of times now, and I still feel like I'm missing something. But, I am having a strong experience with it. The reaction gets stronger every time I listen to it. That's because this song is all images. It reminds me of active imagination from the psychologist Carl Jung. In this technique you take an image, often a dream image, and observe it. When you observe the image it will start to move and change. The mind is made to construct narratives and stories. And that's what it does. Eventually you seek to be able to consciously influence and act within this imagination process. In active imagination the key is physiological reactivity, how much you feel it in your body. The more you feel it the more beneficial the therapy will be. These images work on two levels. On one level they are personal. Each individual is influenced by their society, their experiences, and their thoughts and feelings. So, to some extent all of these images are personal. On another level these images are universal. They are images that are embedded in all humans, and that's why we can all connect with them. This is the idea of archetypes. That first line paints such an intense image that you can picture yourself in that place, at least I can, "Violent waves crashing all around thundering and deafening sound threatening flashes moving in". This is a bad situation, an overwhelming situation. I think the next line is interesting. "the water is rising up again" means that the water was higher before at some point. And, maybe that's part of why this song works so well when you listen to it over and over again. It has cycles built right into it, as does all of life, and all of existence. This song has a lot of things that we could dive into, but we are going to be limited in how much we can really do. We can only go so deep. This song is meant to be experienced. I'm willing to bet that this song was written in an intuitive way. It was felt when it was written and can only really be connected with on that level. Instead of piecing out the part about needing an anchor in life when the waves of chaos are crashing against you, the part where being on your knees evokes the image of praying and how this submissive faith in a higher power relates to Job, the call to ministry, the water version of the butterfly effect, the relation to Peter walking on water, and how being overwhelmed by the potentially infinite complexity of the world is like drowning, I'll explain why the song will always be more powerful than any explanation of the song. Knowledge occurs at different levels. The first level is the enactive level. This is where we do things. When we are acting there is more information contained within that action than can ever be communicated. But, communication is extremely important. Communication is primarily how we learn. We learn a lot more than we think. We learn what to do, how to do it, what to say, when to say it, what to desire, what to fear, etc. Most of this learning comes from someone that knows more than us. They present us with a little bit more than we know. So, if we have to communicate to learn all of this, how do we communicate it when we can't communicate it all? It's hard, that's the answer. One of the best ways is through iconic knowledge. Iconic knowledge is one level up from enactive knowledge. You lose some of the information from the specific situation, but you seek to keep the important things, the essence. That's what this song is. It presents icons, these images that we can connect to and experience. The next higher level is symbolic knowledge. This level loses some of the information that is contained within the iconic level of knowledge. This is where we give statements and propositions. Let's look at the first four lines to see how much would be lost here. Here are the first four lines as Adelaide sings them, this is iconic knowledge. - - - - - - - Violent waves crashing all around thundering and deafening sound threatening flashes moving in the water is rising up again I need your anchor steady me keep me grounded - - - - - - - Now, let me translate this into the symbolic level of knowledge and see how you feel about it. - - - - - - - When a situation if your life so presents itself in such a way as to appear threatening and overwhelming in the near future and you knowing that this type of thing has occurred to you in the past It is important that you are able to connect to a higher power to garner strength and help keep you emotionally stable and thus better able to stay aligned with your conscious principles in life - - - - - - - Now, I'm sure that some people are just moved to tears over these amazingly emotional lines that I have written. Yeah, I'm joking. It's pretty boring. But, it's presenting the same ideas, just in a way that doesn't move you. Remember in the beginning how I said that the emotional connection and physiological reactivity are so important? Well, what does music do? It combines these iconic images that move you emotionally with sounds that go right through your mental filters and straight to your heart. It's designed to move you. This means that music has the power to change you at the deepest level. I think you'll find that when you listen to this song, and then come back and read this again, you'll really be able to see how the song is working on you at different levels, and how powerful those different levels are. In this weird case you'll have to wait until the song comes out next week, but I'm sure Adelaide will let us know on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/heyadelaide/ (Thanks to the psychologists Carl Jung, Jerome Bruner, and Lev Vygotsky for the insights. Thanks to Adelaide for the lyrics. Thanks to Bill for the song suggestion.)  By Jeffrey Alexander Martin Monday, December 31, 2018
Yes, that's the real name of the band, Grandpa Loves Rhinos. Alright, without further ado, let's dive into the article. The first thing you probably think when you hear about the band Grandpa Loves Rhinos is, "What's up with that name?" I know that's the first thing I thought. Well, it's a literal statement. The band is two brothers, and their grandpa really did love rhinos. He even had a room full of collectible rhinos. There are some other interesting things about this band. One, they decided that the title of their first album would be a bit of advice, "Better Eat Your Wheaties". Is that advice or is that a threat? Good question, but I'm not going to go there. Next is what I find most interesting. Here is a blurb from their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/grandpalovesrhinos/ - - - - - - - Grandpa Loves Rhinos hails from the state of Idaho and is comprised of Paul and Seth Hyde, brothers who are geographically separated due to their killer jobs in the US Air Force. Seth, a fighter pilot, and Paul, a satellite controller, write and record music together over the internet. - - - - - - - I think it's pretty awesome that they seem to be making good progress as a band that isn't even in the same location. This is becoming common in companies, they're called distributed companies. I teach English online and one of the companies I work for is completely distributed, meaning that there is no office location at all. Maybe more bands will start doing this since the technology is available. But, it might be hard if you don't have the strong personal connection developed as brothers. Time will tell. It seems to be working for Grandpa Loves Rhinos because they signed with Indie Vision Music in 2018 and released this album. Today we shall take a look at their song "Aquaman". I pulled the lyrics off of https://grandpalovesrhinos.bandcamp.com/. They aren't is the greatest format, but we can work with it. - - - - - - - you dragged him down into a wishing well, i guess it’s your wish to hide him under the water, it refracts your face and contracts a space, some distance aside from all others, I won’t follow in and I won’t throw money, my 2 cents won’t help you here, plus the water’s lookin' chili and I don’t wanna mess up my hair, could it be that what i need is just a little nudge along? cuz i could use a “3,2,1”, so guess i'll dive in slow with risk of drowning underneath, aquaman, if i find you, you better help me breath, no scuba gear and 2000 years, king the 7 seas and creatures of the deep, you're so misunderstood, they setup a zoo, submariner zombies and ghouls, let's find Atlantis before the robots do, you need to help me breath, when you drank his blood did you, did you become like aquaman, or did you turn into another underwater vampire? - - - - - - - Now, obviously we're talking about the DC Universe superhero Aquaman. And, the Aquaman movie with Jason Momoa did just come out this year. I saw it, I liked it. But, this isn't referring to the plot of that movie. I'm guessing I would have to look into the comic books to be able to explain some of the lines of this song, but I'm not going to go through all of the lyrics. Instead, we're going to take a bit of a different look at this one. You can tell that there is a bit of a plot here, but it is a very loose plot. Basically, someone needs help going into the unknown, doesn't get it, slowly goes in anyway, hopes that Aquaman will find and help him, but fears that bad things will happen. This is a pretty straightforward hero journey. But, it doesn't fill in all of the details like in a novel or a movie. One of the reasons it doesn't do that is because a song is short, but you could fill out a story a lot more than this in a song if you wanted to. So, the story being like this is on purpose. Why? Good question. I think there are two reasons. One, this works well with comic books. In comic books a story is told with pictures and a few words. In between those pictures there's a little bit of space. Your mind fills in that gap to create a story. In the book "Understanding Comics" Scott McCloud calls this filling in process closure. It's an amazing thing that the mind can do. In a movie you don't need to do very much because there are a lot of frames, with a lot of detail, moving very fast. In a comic there are a few frames, with less detail, not moving. It's a different experience. As an aside, I think the pop punk sound that Grandpa Loves Rhinos has goes well with some comic books. Next, fictional stories can be viewed in two useful ways, either as simulations or dreams. A simulation is usually detailed and orderly. This would be like reading an Aquaman novel. A dream on the other hand can be crazy. They can skip around. They can seem to not make sense, but really your dream is trying to solve a problem in a way you just can't understand yet. This song is more like the dream and less like the simulation. We jump around a bit and get the general idea of a story based on these odd little pieces that just barely fit together. It's fun, I like it. The research in this area is amazing, and if you're interested I suggest you start with "Why Fiction May be Twice as True as Fact" by Keith Oatley. I could talk about literary theory all day, but hopefully I've already given you something to think about. Listen to the song. Watch the music video. See what you think about it and feel free to let me know. Jeff Martin JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com  Are you ready for the next installment of my series for 88.9 Hey Radio? Today I think we will go with dark emotion.
I had never heard of Zahna. You probably haven't either. That's because Zahna didn't exist before 2017. Here's how she introduces herself on her website: Zahna is a female Christian Hard Rock solo artist based out of San Antonio, TX, and is also known as Suzy Martinez, the former front-woman of national touring band "ILIA". After separation with ILIA in 2016, Martinez debuted as Zahna in Mid 2017. Fusing gritty, industrial guitar riffs with technical drum elements, the San Antonio-based vocalist shines her aggressive vocal style, giving birth to the powerful active rock she now claims as her own. She was also married in late 2018, which means that she now has another name. Zahna is a woman of many names. Her first album was released in 2018 with Rockfest Records, "Red for War". There is one song of hers that has really been climbing the charts and I want to take a look at the lyrics to see what I can see. Here is "Drown". (Why?) It was a frail dream now A beautiful disease Live or die, right by each other’s sides Until you brought your gun up to my knife Here we start the process to divide Words and music become real life The broken family, victims of pride (So just go) Go ahead find somebody new Go and look for the love that you blew (So just go) Go find whatever you’re looking for Go ahead and leave me here on the floor (So just go) Go take that step you say that you need Go ahead let the world finally bleed (So just go) Go break and let it fall to the ground Go ahead and just leave me to drown You know that you’re a Runaway I know you run from your problems When you can’t find another way You’re lost and you can’t resolve them In your mind you’re satisfied Exchanging truth for lies and biding time But I will always be the one to take the blame for this, so remember what I said (So just go) Go ahead find somebody new Go and look for the love that you blew (So just go) Go find whatever you’re looking for Go ahead and leave me here on the floor (So just go) Go take that step you say that you need Go ahead let the world finally bleed (So just go) Go break and let it fall to the ground Go ahead and just leave me to drown Runaway, Runaway, cut your words carefully Justify, Justify, ‘cause it’s just like you It’s so like you It’s so like you It’s so like you (justify, justify, you run away) (Liar!) It’s so like you (you justify, justify, you run away) (Liar!) It’s so like you (justify, justify, you run away) Justify everything (So just go) Go ahead find somebody new Go and look for the love that you blew (So just go) Go find whatever you’re looking for Go ahead and leave me here on the floor (So just go) Go take that step you say that you need Go ahead let the world finally bleed (So just go) Go ahead and just leave me to drown! - - - - - - - Well, an emotionally intense and dark song, possibly a bit depressing. In general I get a feeling of working to accept closure and moving on from a broken relationship. I'm not going to dig too deeply here, but I think there is something more here. Those first four lines set a beautiful picture, a beautiful scene. "(Why?) It was a frail dream now. A beautiful disease. Live or die, right by each other’s sides." I get it. I've been there. Living in a dream relationship that's more of a fantasy than a reality. When it's all falling apart you really are screaming why. I think most people with a bit of life experience probably can see this scene in their memories. What happens next is a bit different. "Until you brought your gun up to my knife. Here we start the process to divide. Words and music become real life. The broken family, victims of pride." I don't fully get the gun and knife thing. Maybe it's a reference to bringing a knife to a gun fight. I guess it probably is. Those odd little phrases, called idioms, can be quite powerful, and this one is too. Or, it could be a more personal and more literal line. I'm not sure which. I guess we can probably assume it's metaphorical. But, the scene that pops into my mind when I listen to it is of a real gun and real knife. It's an intense moment. These first eight lines really set the stage for the whole song, this is the substance. She paints this scene and she paints it well. The rest of the song is fallout from that scene. Why is this connecting so strongly with people? I think it's because the scene is easy to picture, the scene is emotionally intense, a lot of people can relate to this emotionally intense scene, and they like the music too. There's also something else here, possibly, maybe. It's hidden in the song. It isn't really stated. When you're telling someone to leave you're also telling them you don't need them. There is a secret strength hidden in the song saying "I will recover and be fine on my own. (After I get done temporarily drowning is my sadness)." Do you see the same things as me? Do you like the song? Let me know. https://www.zahnaofficial.com/ Jeff Martin JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com  By Jeffrey Alexander Martin Tuesday, December 04, 2018
This will probably be an intellectually intense article. The exploration of depth in lyrics. I am going to predict right now that Amongst the Giants becomes one of the leading Christian rock bands in the United States in the next 5 years. They have the talent, skill, connections, know-how, and (as we will see here) depth. They have a great name, they have a great logo (I saw a picture of someone that already has it as a tattoo), they have excellent merchandise packages on their website, and they have all of their lyrics on their website (which I love) at https://www.amongstthegiants.com/ Amongst the Giants is a metalcore band from South Florida. Metalcore is a mix between heavy metal and hardcore punk, so it's pretty heavy rock. They released their first album, "Obscene", in 2018 with Rockfest Records. My two favorite songs are "Too Late" and "Lost in Translation". Today we will be looking at "Lost in Translation". Here are the lyrics. Then I will have a lot to say about them. - - - - - - - (Intro) Confidence in the dissonance and all my words get lost in the translation -- translation (Verse) Stop throwing your false accusations When you’re unsure of what’s fact or fiction Let the truth speak for itself Listen up and stop dwelling on empty lies, empty lies When you see the motivation You’d be inspired in the blink of an eye All of the things that you’ve said Would be forgotten if you gave us a chance to speak (Chorus) Tonight this ends, I've done all I can do To prove the weight behind these words But they're wasted on you You say that I'm fake and that's alright I can't make you see inside When you pretend to know who I am (Verse) To all the ones who are capped at zero To all the young who are silenced now To all the scared who are ready to speak your minds Now is the time to rise Set apart from all the lies Breaking through to shaded eyes Comforted amongst the truth Bring it in, let freedom come Free to speak your mind Free to speak Oh no there’s another offense line don’t tell me now, is it what I implied? There’s always gonna be another opinion But now I see the verdict’s centered on crooked judgement And maybe we’re just another example of faulty scapegoats Did you ever stop to recognize the truth I speak, it resonates in your hearts But at the end of the day there will always be a price on my head (Chorus) Tonight this ends, I've done all I can do To prove the weight behind these words But they're wasted on you You say that I'm fake and that's alright I can't make you see inside When you pretend to know who I am (Bridge) Just hear me out, not all of us are hypocrites Just hear me out, we’re not all the same Prove to me I’m a liar Prove to me I’m what you say From cycle to cycle I’ve been at my best and my worst Clenching on to everything I hold dear to my heart And you come with open mouth and closed mind Judging abundantly and denied Ever saying you were the one who scoffed Who’s the hypocrite now (Chorus) Tonight this ends, I've done all I can do To prove the weight behind these words But they're wasted on you You say that I'm fake and that's alright I can't make you see inside When you pretend to know who I am (Outro) So go and waste away in your shallow thoughts I won't waste my time on people like you - - - - - - - The intro starts off talking about confidence in the dissonance and things lost in translation, which is what the title of the song is referring to. What does all of this mean? Confidence comes from the Latin con fidere and means "with faith". Confidence essentially means not questioning. What is this thing we're not questioning? The dissonance. Dissonance means inconsistency, contradiction, or lack of harmony. Cognitive dissonance is when you realize a contradiction in yourself, usually a contradiction in your beliefs. We can often ignore these, but sometimes we can't. The same thing happens between people, when we're in communication with another. The meaning of translation here is revealed over the whole song. This is true of all narratives. You have to watch all of the scenes of a movie, or read all of the parts of a book, to understand the meaning of the story in the end. You can only understand the story if you've been through all of the parts, but you can only understand the meaning of the whole thing in the end. This is true in stories and in life. Life is a story, a fully embodied narrative. Anyway, translation here isn't about changing something from one language to another literally. It's about communication in a more general way. The process of communication starts in an individual when they sense and perceive something. Imagine that as a corner of a triangle. The next point of the triangle is the mental picture, image, or concept that they form of that perception. The last point of the triangle is when the person tries to transmit that concept through speaking, writing, or drawing. Notice that there are three points where communication can go wrong before we even add another person into the equation. The idea of this triangle is called the Semantic Triangle. When we are in communication we do this process in reverse. Ideally the two triangles come together and reflect each other. I call this squaring the triangle and it forms the Semantic Square. Here's how it works. A person hears a word, or sees a word, or sees a picture. This is the first point of their triangle. This brings up an image, idea, concept, in their mind. This is the second point of the triangle. The last point is when and if they can then compare that concept back to a perception through their senses. As you can see, even this basic idea of communication is no simple matter. Well, there's the intro. Let's take a look at the first verse. The first verse starts off talking about false accusations from someone that doesn't know what's fact or fiction. I think this is really pointing to a major social problem that humans have been dealing with for a couple thousand years. We haven't figured out how to solve it and this problem just keeps getting worse. Here's the problem, humans do well at cooperating and interacting when we live in individualized groups where we actually know the people we're interacting with. But, we don't do so great when we're in anonymous communities where we don't know the people we're interacting with. Add to that the idea of Dunbar's Number, which is that we can only really maintain stable relationships with about 150 people (obviously this fluctuates from person to person, but that doesn't matter so much because the basic problem of a low limit still remains). This means that in public we are dealing with people we don't know that don't know us and this causes problems, especially in communication and understanding. The truth speaking for itself is promoting the idea of not misrepresenting something, which is so easy to do in these anonymous communities that we live in. Lies are empty when there is nothing to back them up. They are problems, but full lies are bigger problems. True dialogue can only happen when we are willing to be genuine and are seeking depth in truth. Now, when we start talking about seeing someone's motivation and judging them upon it we are getting onto some interesting ground in ethics. This is about intentions versus consequences. Should we judge people based upon their intentions or the consequences? Here the song lyrics are pointing us towards the intentions, the motivations. The basic idea here is that interactions are iterative, they happen over and over. Life is lived across time, not in a moment. We must factor all of these future moments into our judgments. By having good intentions we give ourselves the chance to correct our errors and get better and better over time. That's why we should judge people based upon their intentions. Most people agree with this and act like this, in individualized groups at least. We are on to the chorus. Tonight this ends is talking about breaking interaction with someone after having tried all that you can try. This only makes sense. We essentially have three possible ways we can interact; we can cooperate, compete, or disengage. If we can't cooperate it's often best to disengage. There is a danger here of closing yourself off from all that you don't understand. Engaging with challenge in all its forms is important to growth, but conflict isn't usually a good thing to seek either. Weight is interesting here because it means both truth and importance. People cannot look into each other. We can try, we can work to understand each other, and to a large extent we are made to do that. But, you definitely can't make someone else put forth the effort to do that. Experience is singular, it's experienced as an individual. We have autonomy, but not over others. We have to allow for them to use their autonomy to engage in cooperative communication with us. We have a locus of control, and the depths of another person's mind should not be something that you can control. The second verse contains quite a lot. Being capped at zero is very bad. It's very hard to go from zero to one. It's much easier to get more if you already have some. Peter Thiel talks about this in the context of business in his book "Zero to One" where he's talking about inventing new technology. This is the whole point of the Matthew Effect, which works with money, fame, status, and so much more. Jesus talks about it in the Parable of Talents, "For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away." "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer." These ideas are sometimes called virtuous circles and vicious cycles. In economics it's called accumulative advantage. In math there are a number of power laws dealing with this like the Pareto distribution (the 80/20 law), Zipf's law, and Price's square root law. The basic idea is that you don't want to be at zero. These are the dispossessed that exist in all societies in all of history. It's good to address the young, because they own the future. They have the most potential. It's also important that the not young lead the way, but it's good to address the young when you want changes in the future. You can be silenced for two reasons: 1 - you are not allowed to speak, 2 - you don't allow yourself to speak. This silencing of the young is addressed in the next line where it talks about being scared. If you're scared to speak it can be a legitimate fear of reprisals. That's a hard position. Or, it can be a false fear that you should face. The best way to beat fear is exposure. Exposure that is at the right pace so you can adjust to it. The fear won't necessarily go down, but you will develop more courage in the face of fear and gain the ability and capacity to act. Now is the time is usually a good idea, because even if it isn't a great time for something there is a larger danger of falling into procrastination. Which, I don't know about you, but for me it's far too easy to stay there when I fall in. Seeing the truth is often associated with the metaphor of being exposed to light. The idea of Plato's Cave is about this where a man steps out of the dark cave and can't see anything for a moment while his eyes adjust. I'm not sure about being comforted by the truth. Sometimes the truth is comforting, sometimes it is the opposite. So, I think that's contextual. There are two very interesting lines here where the song states "Free to speak your mind" followed by "Free to speak". This is important. Thought occurs in words. They are like the software of our minds, or better, one of the software languages that our minds use to think. We develop the ability to speak socially. Lev Vygotsky developed this idea of the social development of the mind. It's about being around a "more knowing other" who exposes you to the right amount of information so that you can learn, this is called the "zone of proximal development." Adults do this with children naturally, we speak to children just above their current level of understanding, that way their skill and ability grows. Jerome Bruner expanded on this idea and called it "scaffolding" in education. If we limit freedom of association, interaction, and speech we not only limit these things, we literally limit the ability to think and the ability to develop the capacity for thought. This is huge! The freedom to speak is the freedom to speak your mind is the freedom to think. The very next line talks about being offensive in a funny way. Then we jump into the idea of things being implied versus explicit. This is legitimate, it does happen and it does happen often. Eric Berne, the founder of Transactional Analysis in psychology, talks about conversations happening on two levels. It's often the problem that foreign language speakers have in the new language. They understand what's being said but not what's not being said, especially through things like half-spoken idioms (weird phrases) where everyone knows what you mean, except the people who don't. The legitimate idea of implied communication can be used in a disingenuous way where you just say that whenever people say something you don't like you tell them that they are implying something else. It's a dangerous version of communication for both sides. It's difficult to correctly balance these scales, especially when you add in the diversity of perspective, experience, and value. "There's always going to be another opinion" is just a truth. There are so many in today's world, and even yesterday's world, that one of the most important skills in life is the ability to ignore things, to filter your own intake. A verdict is only legitimate if the judge isn't crooked. If the judge is corrupt or bias then the verdict cannot be the legitimate authority. So, if someone is doing these things in their communication with you then their opinion isn't founded on solid ground anyway. Rene Girard has written quite a lot about scapegoats. It's a complex phenomenon, and it's also very human. They feature prominently in his theory of society called mimetic theory. A scapegoat is someone that is falsely accused of something and sacrificed. Girard lays this social mechanism as the very foundation of society itself, and the Bible as revealing this process for what it is and denouncing it. The fact that the song says "faulty scapegoats" is interesting, but I'll let us both continue to think about that one in silence. Recognizing truth is not a simple thing. Knowledge is emergent over time. Endel Tulving talks about the three levels of knowledge and how it develops. First there is procedural knowledge. We can act things out before we can communicate them, or represent them, or think about them. The action comes first. This even applies to complex things. Jaak Panksepp has shown that even rats have a sense of fairness built into their interactions when they play and wrestle. We act out very complex truths. Next is episodic knowledge. We have a memory of a scene, or there is a picture, or a painting, or an image. We remember how the action worked and we can represent this. Finally there is semantic knowledge. This is where we abstract things into words. Now we can speak about them. But there is a danger here. The base of the knowledge in procedure and episode, in action and image, can't be lost or we will end up talking about untrue things. (As an aside, notice how narrative stories use semantic knowledge through words to convey episodic knowledge in scenes of procedural knowledge in the behavior patterns across the story. Amazing! That's why I love stories.) Truth resonating in the heart is great symbology. I see it as words penetrating the person and having a direct effect on their heart. We need this, and we are built for this. When Adam Smith made his proposal for capitalism most people don't realize that he was a moral philosopher before that. He said that a free society can only work if the people have sympathy (now we would more use the word empathy) for one another. We need this to cooperate. We need ideas, beliefs, and values that we can empathize with in each other. We have something in our brains called mirror neurons. The purpose of these is so that we can feel what another person is feeling. Empathy is built right into us. "But at the end of the day there will always be a price on my head". I'm still trying to unpack that line. It's right next to scapegoating, so it's obviously talking about that. I will leave this, but I will point this out before I do. Jesus had a price on his head. Jesus was a local scapegoat for Jews and Romans. Jesus was also a scapegoat in a much larger sense. We will jump over the chorus and end up on the bridge. It's almost a pleading to be heard, to show that they aren't a hypocrite. This is such a desire to be understood. For someone to understand the structure of their thoughts and beliefs and how they align with their actions. It also points out that the group they identify with aren't all the same. Even when people are part of a group they are still individuals. Groups are groups of something, the individual is the right level of analysis for beliefs, thoughts, ideas, and values when we can do it. Just because someone is involved with a group doesn't mean the group is homogenous. That would be quite a rare circumstance. "Prove to me I'm a liar", "Prove to me I'm what you say". These are interesting lines back to back. They are asking to be shown their own contradictions, and if you can't show these then you can't show the propositions to be false. And, when the other person proposes something they are asking for proof. These need to be read together otherwise they could be taken as contradictory themselves. What we're talking about here is who has the burden of proof and how you find out if something is wrong. Karl Popper is the greatest philosopher of science in history. His primary idea is that we don't prove and verify a theory, we disprove and refute theories. If we can't refute it, that adds to its force as a theory to work with in the future. Just something to think about. Life can be seen as a cycle, or even a cycle of cycles. At one point we may be our best selves and at another our worst. This is true of an individual and a society. The Old Testament can be read as the story of the cyclical rise and fall of the state of Israel. We do clench onto the things we hold dear. This is all about value hierarchies. We all operate off of value hierarchies all of the time, without this it would be completely impossible to act. At the very top of the value hierarchy are the things we love, indeed, this can be seen as a definition of love itself. Open mouths and closed minds is a bad state to be in. It leads to error. It's not fun to be on the other side either. These errors are themselves cycles. There is a great paper that is starting an in-depth exploration of what many of these error cycles really mean at the biggest level called "Toward a General Theory of Error Cycles" by Jorg Guido Hulsmann. The people that have these open mouths and closed minds are great at judging, but bad at finding the truth, and thus they are often denied in many ways. I'm not sure I'm understanding the scoffed at part quite right. It seems to me that these same people often claim that they are scoffed at, but because of their closed minds they tend to do a lot of scoffing of other people, which is quite hypocritical. To take another look at the chorus, to waste words on someone has a cost to it. Not just the potential cost of lost energy and the build up of emotional frustration, but also the lost opportunities. The other things that you could have been effective and useful at. In economics this is called opportunity cost and it applies to everything in life. At some point you just have to walk away. If someone is pretending to know who you are but they won't actually engage with you, then you're probably at that point. Now, it's important to realize that we all live in a world that is too complex for us. Ries and Trout talk about the business implications of this in "Positioning". We have to simplify. One of the ways to simplify is to take the group identity of someone and assume that as their whole identity. This is obviously wrong, but to manage the complexity of the world we have to reduce it down. And, it works, somewhat. It's not entirely wrong, it's just not as right as it could be if you engage with someone on a personal level to understand them. To a large extent that's what this whole song is about. The outro also talks about this idea of wasting time, this opportunity cost. "Shallow thoughts" is interesting because to a large extent depth in thought comes from questioning things. This questioning of ideas, this doubt, is the opposite of confidence, which is where we started in the intro. I really like how they brought that back around. In public speaking I usually refer to this as bracketing, coming back around to your opening statement in your last statement. "Shallow thoughts" can also refer to thoughts that aren't important, thoughts that don't focus on things of value. In this case depth in thought would be something like focusing on the maximal challenge that you can confront and be competent at that has the most value. This is where meaning is found. This meaning orientation is a major part of being human. Psychologists from Viktor Frankl to Jordan Peterson emphasize how important this is. And really, both of these ideas about depth, depth in understanding and meaning, are important. Wow! Ok, that was a lot of stuff. I think more could be gained from this, but I'm not sure how much more I could really pull from it and articulate well. I think this clearly shows how much depth there can be in lyrics though. I think a lot of people see hard rock, especially this type where there is a lot of screaming and such, as a rather shallow and non-intellectual activity. It can be, but it doesn't have to be, and Amongst the Giants really shows that here in these lyrics. I would love to hear their take on this crazy breakdown I've given, so if you know them or get a chance - shoot them this article and tell them to get back to me. I'm curious what they would say. Jeff Martin JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com -  By Jeffrey Alexander Martin Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Welcome to the second edition of my articles for 88.9 Hey Radio. I'm going to focus on a narrative this week, we shall see how that goes. Last time I inset the article itself, and then inset the lyrics inside of that. I'm going to do that again. - - - - - - - Set For The Fall is from North Carolina and you can hear that hard southern rock sound in their music. They released their first album in 2016, and it looks like they do quite a lot of touring, at least their schedule over the next few months is packed. The music is a nice mix of rock sounds, but I'm going to take a look at one song in particular. 3 Nails is from that original 2016 release and the music video has their most views on Youtube. The song has some narrative to it, but the music video has a lot of narrative to it. I like stories, and this is a good one, that's why I like it. Here are the lyrics. Then, I will probably have a few things to say about the story. - - - - - - - I cut my teeth on the lies that I built And I nearly choked to death on my own guilt Now I said some hurtful things I can't relieve the pain I need forgiveness for mistakes I've made Hide from yourself Cause you can't hide From those scales And when you lie The hurt is felt As your body lies broken By your own three nails He broke the chains that have held my wrist He gave me strength when I had nothing left And He rights the wrongs I made Another chance for me With every breath I take His name I'll proclaim Hide from yourself Cause you can't hide From those scales And when you lie The hurt is felt As your body lies broken By your own three nails Broken Broken Hide from yourself Cause you can't hide From those scales And when you lie The hurt is felt As your body lies broken By your own three nails Hide from yourself Cause you can't hide From those scales And when you lie The hurt is felt As your body lies broken By your own three nails Broken Broken I cut my teeth on the lies that I built And I nearly choked to death on my own guilt Now I said some hurtful things I can't relieve the pain I need forgiveness for mistakes I've made Hide from yourself Cause you can't hide From those scales And when you lie The hurt is felt As your body lies broken By your own three nails He broke the chains that have held my wrist He gave me strength when I had nothing left And He rights the wrongs I made Another chance for me With every breath I take His name I'll proclaim Hide from yourself Cause you can't hide From those scales And when you lie The hurt is felt As your body lies broken By your own three nails Broken Broken Hide from yourself Cause you can't hide From those scales And when you lie The hurt is felt As your body lies broken By your own three nails Hide from yourself Cause you can't hide From those scales And when you lie The hurt is felt As your body lies broken By your own three nails Broken Broken As your body lies broken - - - - - - - This is extremely interesting, because, if you watch the video it's obvious that they are doing a modern interpretation of the crucifixion and resurrection. But, that's significantly less obvious in just the lyrics. I have to make an aside here and address the 3 nails part of 3 Nails. The Romans crucified lots and lots of people, but there is still a lot of debate about how exactly they did it. 3 Nails, if we are looking at the crucifixion story, is talking about a nail in each hand and one nail through both feet from the front. It has been depicted like that, but I'm pretty sure the evidence from human remains that have been found show that it's more likely that it was either 2 nails or 4 nails. Either, the arms were only tied to the crossbeam and both heels were nailed on either side of the upright beam, or there were two nails for the hands or wrists, probably while also being tied, and also one for each heel. Alas, that is less important than you think. Lies, guilt, hurt, pain, breaking, and forgiveness. That's what the song is about. In the song the 3 nails represent things we have done to ourselves, lies we have told, things we have to feel guilty about, and things we want to hide from. These are the things that break us, the things that we bring upon ourselves. Not only do they have the capacity to break our material selves, but more importantly they have the ability to break our spiritual selves. But, redemption is possible. Now, we are diving into some deep issues here, meaning of life level stuff. Maybe that's too far for song lyrics, maybe songs are just to be enjoyed and then we move on, but I don't think it's too far, I don't think it's possible to go too far. The song tells us that you can hide from yourself, but not from the scales. These scales are obviously the scales of justice, but not the scales of justice from the court system, these are the holy scales of justice. And, the song tells us that you can find strength even when you have nothing left. This immediately brings to my mind two psychologists. The first is Jordan Peterson who firmly believes and states that no bad deed goes unpunished. He uses examples like the wedding of Jacob and Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. He's talking about these same scales of justice. I'll let you explore that further if you like. (Peterson also talks about the value of taking up your cross and bearing it. That part is skipped in this songs narrative, which I think is a powerful piece. Although, I do believe that some historians believe that crucifixion victims usually only carried the crossbeam and the vertical beams were usually left in place. Which could be viewed as diminishing the symbol, but I think we could view it as an enhancement as well. You bear your piece of the cross to the other piece of the cross that is waiting for you to complete it.) The second is Viktor Frankl. He talks about how there is meaning in all circumstances, how meaning is unconditional. But, when you've had everything taken away and you don't have any hope of fixing it, what meaning is there? The meaning is within you, in your ability to change, not your outside circumstances, but your ability to change what's inside of you. You can be materially broken and spiritually redeemed and fulfilled at the same time. I like songs where there are layers of meaning to them, and this song is one of those. Check out SetForTheFall.com, listen to their songs, and let me know what you think. Jeff Martin  By Jeffrey Alexander Martin Tuesday, November 13, 2018 88.9 Hey Radio is a Christian rock station that broadcasts from North Muskegon, Michigan. I often listen to them. They are a volunteer organization. Last month I reached out to them to see if there is something I can help with. Bill and I worked something out, I am going to work on writing articles about new bands and songs, and such. I've been pondering how to approach this for the last few days. I'm still not sure how I am coming at this, but nevertheless it is getting approached today. The band this week is Tetelestai, so let's dive in and see how it goes. - - - - - - - What is Tetelestai? One, it's a five person metal band from Buffalo, NY. Two, it's the last word spoken by Jesus on the cross meaning, "it is finished." There can be so much contained in a name. Tetelestai, the band, describes its mission like this, "With so much hate and despair in the world today, Tetelestai aims to bring the message of hope and love through their music." They released a 6 track EP in 2017 called "Out of This Alive". You can see the videos on their website https://www.tete lestaiband.com/. Let's take a look at the lyrics of the title track, "Out of This Alive". - - - - - - - Run Away Run Away Try To Stay Alive Run Away Run Away Just To Survive This Isn't A Game This Is Your Life Stop Living A Lie You're Running Out Of Time Chorus: You Can Fight But How Will You Survive You're Still Blind It's Killing Killing Killing You Inside You Can Hide Salvation Waiting On The Other Side Hear His Voice It's The Only Way Out Of This Alive Run Away Run Away Get Out Of Sight Run Away Run Away Head Towards The Light. You've Heard The Truth. Take That Advice If You Want This To Change It's Time To Make A Choice Chorus: Chorus: - - - - - - - You can see that despair, like they say in their mission statement, definitely plays a role. I would probably call it desperation. A being pushed to your only choice, rather than a being drawn towards something. If you are desperate you can move away from that which is making you desperate, you can move away from that which is causing your despair, and there is only one direction to go. That's what I'm pulling from these lyrics. That's not all that it contains, but I think that's the most obvious message. Let's take a look at the other music video that they have on their website, "Never Alone". - - - - - - - Go! Another Day Goes By I Try To Make It On My Own Seems Nothing Will Go Right I Get Back Up To Fall The Walls Are Closing In The World Is Crumbling Beneath The Air Is Growing Thin With You Were Strong Enough To Stand The Armor Defenders Your Power To Save Us We Fight This War Never Alone You're By Our Side You're By Our Side We Fight This War Never Alone The Darkness Taking Over (Covers Me) Struggling For The Answer (One Last Breath) My Hands Out To Your Light (Reaching Up) I'm Forgiven In The End We Fight This War Never Alone You're By Our Side You're By Our Side We Fight This War Never Alone The Armor Defenders Your Power To Save Us (Soft) Soft: We Fight This War Never Alone You're By Our Side You're By Our Side We Fight This War Never Alone We Fight This War Never Alone You're By Our Side You're By Our Side We Fight This War Never Alone - - - - - - - You can hear how the song starts in that same despair and desperation, in this case I would call it frustration, but then pretty quickly the song starts to focus more on that message of hope. Telestai's bassist Marci tore her achilles tendon in November 2018, so I would guess that they are going to be taking it easy for a couple of months while that heals. It's a perfect time to listen to them, see what you think, and let me know. Jeff Martin - - - - - - - We'll see what Bill thinks of that. It doesn't go into depth, but it isn't a short blurb either. I gave it a more personal feel, without making it just about my opinions. Since I'm not a musician I didn't delve into the style of the music other than mentioning that they are a metal band, and I think that's reasonable because many people like talking about riffs, but just as many, and maybe more, like talking about lyrics. The lyrics give a nice intro to the band, and the little personal note about Marci lets people connect with an individual a little more deeply. I'm not sure how Bill is going to want to end it. I ended it by encouraging comments and putting my name like a letter, but it might be better to do that differently depending on where this is going. I'm not sure if this will end up being a longterm engagement with 88.9 Hey Radio or not, but it certainly is an interesting experience either way. ________________________________________________ |
AuthorJeffrey Alexander Martin Archives
August 2019
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