Born south of the Erie Canal in Canton, Ohio, Matt Thiessen, wrote a tribute to his home state on Relient K‘s 8th studio album, Air for Free. Relient K started in Ohio, with three friends–Thiessen, guitarist Matt Hoopes, and bassist Brian Pittman. Relient K has seen many phases and had many member change ups; however, the glue of the band has been Thiessen and Hoopes, who are the only remaining members of the band and who are pictured on the cover of Air for Free. Released six years ago, Air for Free explores existential themes from an aging former teenage band. Then in his mid-thirties, Thiessen touches on themes of love, growing up, and faith. While the songs on Air for Free are mostly light-hearted (a notable exception is “Man“) and sometimes silly, the songs are certainly more mature than anything the band has done before. And while it might not be the rock out anthems of youth group church vans, it’s lyrically nostalgic of those days at times while pushing their listeners forward.
I GREW UP IN THE STICKS. Canton, Ohio has a population of about 71,000 people as of 2019. It seems to be cool to say you are from a small town. It’s part of the fame origin story. Look at me, a guy from Podunk, XX made it big, you can too. I, too, grew up in the sticks, but there were far more sticks than people, where I was born. When I tell my students I was born in New York, I have to show a slide show of my reality. I was born in Norwich, NY the city that was a 30 minute drive depending on the weather and the condition of the pot-holed dirt roads. The population of Norwich was about 7,000 as of 2020, though it was probably bigger when I grew up because people left with the decline of the rustbelt in the ’90s. The town I went to school in was Oxford. It has a population of about 4,000 people. But my address was McDonough with its 850 people living there. My family moved to Morganton, a bustling city in North Carolina with about 17,000 people living there. Part of me always wonders what would have happened if I stayed in New York. I’ve attempted writing a novel about it. I tended to idealize the scenes of my childhood landscape–the cool summers, the heavy snows in winter, the wood stoves and chilly mornings in the fall, the New York pizza and Italian food. But my family was right to move south to a better home, out of the moldy trailer that kept me sick every winter.
SUMMERTIME IS 45 MINUTES AWAY. Thiessen references Ohio’s amusement part Cedar Point, located on Lake Erie in Sandusky. In North Carolina we had Carowinds. Before we moved, we had the country fair in late August. Sure some people got to take a trip to Hershey Park in Pennsylvania, but my family didn’t spend money on that kind of thing until we moved to North Carolina. Carowinds used to be owned by Paramount, so they had themed rides for movies and television shows. Their flagship ride was Top Gun, a steel rollercoaster that was supposed to simulate flying in fighter jets as in the Tom Cruise movie. Later, they opened Borg Assimilator, a scary looking ride that had a prohibitively long line to board it. Luckily, that line prevented us from taking it because it later got stuck with the passengers upside down for 45 minutes. In 2006, Carowinds was purchased by Cedar Fair, which resulted in the renaming and rebranding of most of the rides. I was a young adult and Carowinds didn’t feel the same. It was an eerie feeling calling the rollercoasters by a different name.
In 2007, Falling Up released their third studio record, Captiva, returning to the production of Aaron Sprinkle. Unlike their debut album Crashings, also recorded with Sprinkle, on Captiva, Sprinkle plays the role as songwriter alongside lead singer Jessy Ribordy. Captiva also marked the end of four years of a daunting release schedule. Their debut album and follow-up Dawn Escapeswere released within just 20 months of each other. They then released their remix album, Exit Lights a year later. Captiva attempted to keep hype in the Christian Rock and pop market, releasing four singles, the first of which is today’s song, “Hotel Aquarium.”
ALL THE LONELINESS IS FILLED BY YOU INSIDE. In April, I wrote about the band’s first hit, “Broken Heart.” By the band’s third album, musicians started shuffling to other, more successful, more overtly Christian bands. Falling Up’s lyrics started mentioning Greek gods and space. Frankly, Ribordy’s lyrics sounded more like an acid trip and less like a church service. And while some bands have eased into the secular market and are beloved by CEO Brandon Ebel, Aaron Sprinkle, and their scene, Captiva shows a major decline in the band’s popularity. On their previous albums, they collaborated with many artists including Jon Micah Sumrall (Kutless), Ryan Clark (Demon Hunter), Solomon Olds (Family Force 5), Trevor McNevan (Thousand Foot Krutch), and even CCM singer Rachel Lampa; however, after Captiva, the band started working with Casey Crescenzo (The Dear Hunter) to produce low-key indie rock. I’ve always wondered what was the drastic switch? And more importantly, why is no one talking about Falling Up? Tooth & Nail and BEC have seemingly forgotten them and they have only been mentioned in passing on the Labeled podcast.
IS THIS ANOTHER COMPLICATION I FACE? I have a theory about this album. I can piece it together based on the Jesus Freak Hideout Interview from 2015 and statements made by Aaron Sprinkle I’ve heard on various podcasts including Labeled and the BadChristian Podcast. Sprinkle has said that he wouldn’t name the bands that he didn’t enjoy working with, but he said that he didn’t like working with bands who came to the studio unprepared. While Crashings is perhaps one of Sprinkle’s most underrated works, Captiva sounds more like a chore. Looking at the writing credits and how musicians had left the band, I wonder if Falling Up was one of the bands Sprinkle was talking about. Captiva isn’t an album that I go back to listen to and feel much nostalgia for. In 2007 there were much better releases on Tooth & Nail. And while other groups have ventured into fantasy lyrics (i.e. Copeland), fans and other bands in Falling Up’s scene started to distance themselves from the band. My guess is that something happened during the production and/or the album cycle of this record that alienated Falling Up from the Christian Rock and Christian Rock adjacent scene. According to Ribordy, BEC stopped communicating with the band after they recorded their fourth record Fangs!The record label never dropped them, but they were reluctant to fund their fifth record. And there wasn’t an offer for the band to join the much more secular-friendly Tooth & Nail side of the corporation. Ribordy also mentioned that he is working on a semi-autobiographical fictional novel in which he will talk about his experience with the music industry. However, he is yet to finish the novel. I only hope that whatever happened, someday Falling Up’s story can be told. It’s a shame that a band with 3 number one hits from their first album is almost completely forgotten by everyone except for Jesus Freak Hideout. But then again, there’s Jennifer Knapp and Ray Boltz.
Yellow Ostrich is another one of the bands I discovered on a NoiseTrade Sampler around the end of college. The band is currently the solo project of singer/songwriter Alex Schaaf. Formed in 2009, they released several albums and EPs before disbanding in 2014. However, in March of this year, Schaaf came back with a Yellow Ostrich album called Soft. Today’s song comes from the 2012 EP by the same name Ghost. While being a bit of a sleeper, the minimal instrumentation in the early part of the verse along with the slow drum beat makes the song a little creepy. By the verse we have some more piano, but by the bridge we get a noisy guitar solo. Lyrically, the song talks about a relationship that’s expired. He doesn’t remember the color of her eyes, but he sticks with her because he’s afraid of being alone.
MY FAVORITE GHOST, MY PRIDE, I STUMBLE ‘TIL I’M LOST. Like many very conservative Christians, Seventh-day Adventists traditionally teach their followers to avoid the supernatural outside of the Bible. It wasn’t unheard of to hear of Adventists not allowing their kids to watch any Disney movie. In fact there were several movies that we weren’t allowed to watch, although thanks to public school, cousins, and friends, I saw a few of the supernatural movies of the early ’90s. This stance against the supernatural made Shakespeare a controversial read, even in college. However, about the time I read Hamlet for my literary theory class, I started to think about the symbolism of ghosts in literature. I thought about Coldplay’s “42” which says: “Those who are dead are not dead; they’re just living in my head.” I thought about the beginning of Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! when the author talked about the metaphoric ghosts that haunted the South after the Civil War. In Korea, there was a display at the Daegu Art Museum about ghosts. The gallery included several artists’ paintings, photographs, videography, or multi-sensory depictions of hauntings. To me, ghosts started to be unprocessed parts of the past, both traumatic and enlightening. They are memories and words of people who have either died or are no longer accessible to us. I thought about how unhealthy repressing ghosts is for our mental health.
I’VE BEEN USING YOU FOR YEARS EVEN AS YOU DISAPPEAR FROM MY MIND. However, it’s not always healthy to hold on to the ghosts. For example, relationships that have expired are best put away in boxes, only opening to remember for insight. Ghosts can also be friends who haven’t seen in years. You drifted apart as your lives are now completely different. You’re in other time zones pursuing dreams that the other doesn’t understand. Land bridges are swallowed by the sea and there’s Facebook, but can you really relate the information digitally? Throughout my life, I’ve taken a page from my parents’ playbook, establishing and leaving. When my family moved from New York, they took us out of relative isolation and dropped us into a new social scene with new kids at church. Then there was high school in another town with new kids and a new scene. Then I went to college in another state where I knew no one. Then I came to Korea and moved cities. With every move you have the opportunity to reinvent yourself, becoming a more or less true version of yourself. The awesome thing about being in your thirties, is you start to care less, so you can start to be more authentically you.
Remy Zero is best known for their 2001 hit “Save Me,” which was the title card song for the 10-season WB/CW DC Superhero drama, Smallville, a Superman origin story set in a small Kanas town, following the young adulthood of Clark Kent. Forming in 1989 in Birmingham, Alabama, the band’s breakthrough was a tour with Radiohead. Their songs were featured on a number of early ’00s TV shows and movies, including Garden State, Fanboys, and She’s All That. “Save Me” wasn’t especially popular, peaking at #27 on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart. In 2003, the band called it quits after releasing three full length albums. In a Smallville actors’ commentary of a season 3 episode, John Glover and Alison Mack banter about the theme song. Mack says that she heard that they broke up. Glover asks, “Who got the house?”
I DON’T CARE HOW YOU DO IT. I’ve talked about my channel flipping through the Christian music video stations and MuchMusic (later Fuse). Remy Zero was the kind of new alternative music I loved. Wall of sound guitars, higher than usual vocals, the band sounded like a cooler U2 for a new generation. Of course they never got that popular. Around 2003, ABC Family started playing old episodes of Smallville. My family saw the previews and we all said it looked dumb. Maybe we all secretly wanted to give it a chance because I did. Anyway, one night it was on after some old show we were watching on ABC Family and we didn’t turn off the pilot. Then the theme song played, and I remembered the song from MuchMusic. There was also the Lifehouse song in that episode. In fact, it was the music that hooked everyone, except my mom who has a very low tolerance for supernatural dramas. Soon we were all hooked on the love triangles, the guest stars, twisting storylines, the villains, and of course the “freak of the week”–Smallville citizens who had been infected by kryptonite meteors that gave them superpowers that usually enhanced what started out as pure intentions but transformed the characters to a parable of the flawed human condition.
JUST STAY WITH ME…By season 6, music was no longer an integral part of Smallville’s production. The storyline started declining as the writers changed, but my sisters and I were committed. The best seasons were when Clark and his friends were in high school, when Lex was fighting to not become evil, when his father was listening to opera, plotting the world’s demise, when there was sexual tension between Clark, Lana, and Chloe before it got ridiculous. I found myself relating to Smallville on several levels. First, the characters were maybe a year older than me. Of course, like most shows, the actors were in their 20s and 30s. Second, the show was pretty moral but it had an edge to it. It was pretty relatable to a Christian school kid as the early episodes promoted waiting to have sex. And when characters acted promiscuous, there were often consequences for their actions. In later seasons, as the characters grew up, the writers scrapped this morality plot device, but even into season 4, it was like watching Christian school kids and their moral slip ups. One other thing I related to watching Smallville was Clark’s secret. The show time and time again showed that when people found out about Clark’s secret powers, they tried to exploit him. Thus, he always tries to keep his powers a secret. I had secrets too. I shuttered to think what would happen to me if anyone found out about them. But I usually down played those secrets. It only affected my private time, and the rest of the time I was just Tyler, the kid who tried so hard to be like everyone else. I thought if I drown my identity with music and church, the other identity wouldn’t be true. Funny, an extremely homoerotic show taught me about closeting myself. There was Lana and Chloe to make it seem okay, but really, a shirtless Tom Welling what it was all about.
The opening track to Troye Sivan’s Bloom, “Seventeen” tells the story of Sivan losing his virginity to an older man he met on Grindr. Sivan looks back on this first encounter fondly, despite the man knowing Sivan was underage. The age of consent is a pretty complicated issue, and the law varies from place to place. There are issues of sexism, homophobia, and maturity involved when people pass judgement on age gaps between partners, especially if one is below the age of 18. Sivan has talked about this song, saying, “I don’t ever want to come across as condoning [sex with someone underage] or anything like it. But. . . I felt a responsibility to tell the true story of the curious gay kid who puts himself in some kind of shady situation to fund a connection, like all of us crave.”
AGE IS JUST A NUMBER. Troye’s experience of losing his virginity at 17 is very different from mine. For one thing, when I was 17, there weren’t smartphones. Seventeen was the time I had keys to my first car, but I was a pretty good kid–home by 10, practicing guitar, doing homework, working odd jobs, going to church. But there was the hidden shame of pornography. I knew all the guys were looking at porn and trying not to. My shame was deeper than that. I remember my first encounter with pornography. It was just like everything mothers try to keep their sons away from–at a friend’s house, a stuffed away magazine at the age of 12. I remember not being aroused by it and thinking, what’s wrong with me? In my early teens, my friends started sharing porn, and they especially liked lesbian porn because there were no men in the scene. Scrolling through my friend’s computer after he finished, I exited a bunch of windows before seeing a threesome with two girls and a guy. The girls were off to the side kissing completely naked, and the guy was watching, masturbating. That was the first man I ever saw in porn. I was drawn to him. He wasn’t the most handsome man I had ever seen, but he stood there confident, naked, and hard. From an early age, men had dominated my sexual fantasies, but I thought of it as more of “mentorship” fantasies. In my mid-teenage years, these “mentorship” fantasies got more and more graphic.
IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, SAW THINGS I’D NEVER SEEN. By 15 I started looking at porn at home on dial-up. It was a matter of stumbling across the wrong file on Kazaa, an illegal file-sharing site. I’d stay up so late some nights waiting for files to come through, only to be disappointed or deeply ashamed. It was a shared computer, so I also had to learn to cover my tracks. However, one night at about 2 in the morning, I opened an image that burned into my memory forever. It was a picture of two men having anal sex. It wasn’t that the men had perfect, 20-something year old bodies, lean muscle, and hairless chests, which they did. It was the expressions on their faces. It was just as what the boys at school said: don’t let another guy do that to you. You’ll like it so much that you’ll never want to have sex with a girl. From the facial expressions, I could see why. The intimacy I saw on their faces was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. In that photo, they looked like they were offering each other their souls in two very different ways. The top had a quiet strength to him, yet something in his eye looked a little vulnerable. The look on the bottom’s face, though, was pure ecstasy as he lost himself to the man inside of him. I was probably sixteen when I saw that picture. Church made me feel so guilty about enjoying and ultimately wanting to experience something like that photo. So, I put it on the back burner. I would pray for forgiveness and believed that God would change my affections to more natural ones.
Advanced is a South Korean DJ and producer duo. The original song is sung by singer-songwriter Shaun, whose success referenced in this song, brought him to prominence in Korea and internationally. The English version is sung by Norwegian Singer Songwriter Julie Bergan. The track is remixed and the lyrics are not an exact translation. Shaun’s recording of the track is much better vocally and musically. It also has a richer lyrical content in the original Korean. This is not to say that the English version isn’t any good. “My Bad” is a kind of behind the music surrounding the rise of Shaun’s success, telling the story of a young musician honing his craft as a DJ.
I REMEMBER WHEN I CALLED YOU AND SAID I HAD A #1. In February, I talked about the rise and controversy related to Shaun’s breakout hit “Way Back Home.” Shaun built his career in the music industry as an electronic musician in rock, pop, and EDM. His high vocal range and ability to make music sound classic and new at the same time has helped him become a beloved artist. That is for the listeners who have dismissed the controversy surrounding “Way Back Home.” But as the young artist cuts his teeth as a DJ, “My Bad” tells the story of the girl who got left behind. Shaun is known for his album covers and music videos featuring Korean models. “My Bad,” however, includes a young male character in the music video. The scenes depict them stuck in a fish tank drowning, but later, we realize that they were only pretending. But the imagery, nonetheless, depicts what it might be like to date a starving artist. It might be an adventure at first, but the two being stuck in a tiny studio apartment where the queen-sized bed barely fits (the English version) and with 2 people a dog and three cats (the Korean version), tensions begin to rise.
BUT THE MONTHS WENT BY AND SUDDENLY OUR PLACE RAN OUT OF SPACE. I ENDED UP PUSHING YOU AWAY. I’ve felt several times that I’m waiting for my real life to start. You know, when you buy a house, have a cat, eat a salad every night. That life. I’m waiting for the right job to fall into my lap so that I can make it happen. Waiting for a partner to get into medical school so that we could finally move in together. I’m waiting for the day when my job doesn’t suck so much. I’m waiting for the day that my house is finally easier to clean. I’m waiting to be the person I want to become–a fitter, smarter, wealthier me. And it’s not just waiting, I do put in the work. Maybe not always enough. Some days I get lazy. Some days I get depressed and just give up. Most of the time I pick myself back up. But really, when is it going to happen? For years I used student loans as an excuse for not moving forward. Eight Hundred dollars is quite a chunk from the paycheck, and I’ve gotta have a little fun. In high school I was taught to “eat beans now so you can eat steak later.” When is the steak coming? Speaking of beans, I probably shouldn’t have spent so much money on coffee. I’m a little better at not thinking about living in tomorrow, when my life will actually start. It’s actually happening now. What choices can I make for a better future Tyler?
In 2003, Switchfoot reached their career high when they released their fourth album, The Beautiful Letdown. The band had been gaining popularity from their third album Learning to Breathe. Three songs from the album were featured in the movie A Walk to Remember. What happened next was the massive rock radio/Top 40/Christian Rock hit, “Meant to Live.” The Christian surf rock band never quite reached the same level of success on their subsequent releases, but they consistently had tracks show up on Mainstream Rock and Alternative charts for years to come. And the Christian market? They devoured Switchfoot albums.
SCREAMING WITHOUT LUNGS. Lead vocalist Jon Foreman set a distinct tone in Christian Rock. Arriving on the scene in 1997, Christian Rock was in the middle of a culture war. There were three big bands at the time: the Newsboys, dc talk, and Audio Adrenaline, and their message was “stand up for Christ no matter what you look like.” The lyrics of these bands were on the radical side for the time, essentially mirroring the televangelists who condemned their rock ‘n’ roll sound. Jerry Falwell had to be a bad guy if they kicked dc talk out of Liberty University, and yet, the lyrics of Christian Rock protested taking prayer out of public schools, teaching evolution, and promoted sexual abstinence until marriage–all core values of evangelicals and the moral majority. But then there was Switchfoot. Jon Foreman’s lyrics are much less about personal morality and much more about social justice. Some of the values were the same, but Foreman’s approach was much more positive toward the world and more critical of the church. “Lonely Nation” is an example of where Switchfoot starts to set themselves apart from where Christianity headed around 2016.
DON’T LEAVE ME HOLLOW. I’M TIRED OF FEELING LOW. In 2016’s “Looking for America,” featuring Christian rapper Lecrae, Switchfoot took their message even further–refusing to align with an evangelicalism that propitiated racism. Sadly, fellow Christian Rocker, Skillet‘s John Cooper, has denounced Critical Race Theory as being a divisive force in the Church. It’s Cooper’s downplaying of racism that shows that Christianity needs voices like Foreman’s to challenge the status quo. Foreman’s challenge in “Lonely Nation” is to stop letting corporations control us in a perpetual cycle of consumption. Of course, it’s nearly impossible to stop being a consumer, and I don’t think that’s the point. Foreman wants us to examine it and try to define our lives with something other than the things we buy. He reminds us that corporations don’t have our best interests at hand. I remember listening to this song on my iPod on the shores of the Pacific in Yap, thinking about what was next for me and my career. I thought about becoming a teacher who lives for others, rather than myself. Listening to Switchfoot does this. Foreman’s lyrics, played in the youth group van, challenge the kids who are really listening to be better than the evangelical status quo. “Looking for America” tells us, sorry Skillet, but you’re looking at this from a too simplistic worldview. If we follow your teaching, Mr. Cooper, what changes? Nothing. Same old formula. Same old broken system. If we follow your teaching, Mr. Foreman, what changes? Everything.
Though he only has 45 monthly listeners on Spotify, I can see Ian Mahan joining the ranks of folk artists like Denison Witmer, William Fitzsimmons, Matthew Perryman Jones, and all the other NoiseTrade artists I’ve been listening to. I added this song a few months ago when I was looking for Aaron Marsh collaborations. After taking a minor dive into his other works, I feel like this is one of the reasons I write about music: to discover something new, something obscure. From his mellow interpretation of “Eye of the Tiger” to his piano/guitar melodies intertwined with the small-town-America feel of a boy raised in a small Illinois town, but who has moved to Colorado out of a dream or out of necessity, I hope to get better acquainted with Mahan in the weeks to come.
THIS TOWN IS CLEARING OUT. “Art & Vida” tells the story about an older couple who have witnessed the decay of the small town after NAFTA took the jobs overseas. It’s implied that Art lost his job and was never able to buy the American dream for his bride, Vida. Yet, despite all of the hardship, Art is telling his bride that their love is in their memories and their memories keep the love alive. In the music video, we learn at the end that Vida has died. Not only has Vida died, all of Art’s friends “are in the ground.” The town is dying. The jobs are gone, but there are still bars. The kids and grandkids come to visit once in a while. We see a glimpse of death which started in the rustbelt, which spread to the Bible belt. It’s what I grew up with. It started with the factories closing, then the economy was based on stores and restaurants, but those eventually died off. Walmart came in and became the biggest employer in town. Then New York tax and big farming made the small farms go under. My dad became a truck driver and moved us to North Carolina where the furniture factories had closed down and moved overseas. In Western North Carolina there are a few factories around still, but so much of the economy is tourism for retirees who spend their money in nicer climate. And that’s no way to build an economy.
WE SKIPPED CHURCH BECAUSE THE KIDS WERE IN TOWN. When I was a kid, I wanted to move to the city. I was fascinated with the places and things that were so conveniently located. Of course, everything bigger than McDonough, New York could be considered a city. When we moved to Western North Carolina, it was a city of 16,000 people, more than double the population of the town I was born in. Some days my mind drifts away to meadows and forests. I used to believe that rich people lived in the city and poor people lived in the woods. But now I think it’s opposite. Though my family became more financially secure, moving into the city, or into civilization, made us less free and more entangled to arbitrary norms of society. The bigger the city, the less free you are to be yourself because you have to play nicely with others. Still, it’s nice in a city to be able to choose your tribe, whereas in the country the family ruled. And that was the reason why my family broke away from Central New York. And that’s the model that made me break away from my family and come to Korea. But is it true freedom?
Lancaster, Pennsylvania native Denison Witmer has an over 25 year career working as a singer-songwriter. Raised in the Mennonite church, Witmer recalls the rich sound of hymns sung in 4-part harmonies in the farming community church. Witmer’s early career was Christian music adjacent: signed to labels like the Christian-owned The Militia Group, Tooth & Nail Records, and Mono v. Stereo, an imprint of Toby Mac’s Gotee Records, before his current label, Sufjan Stevens’ and Lowell Brams’ Asthmatic Kitty Records, the former being a longtime collaborator with Witmer. Witmer has been included on several television soundtracks, has been acclaimed by publications like Pitchfork, and performed at festivals like SXSW, Wild Goose Festival, and Cornerstone. But unless you’re looking for slow, fingerpicking music in the vein of Cat Stevens, you’ve probably never heard of him. He’s both prolific and kind of obscure.
BY THE MIDDLE OF THE WEEK… HOW MUCH CAN I TAKE? Starting my song-a-day project two years ago has been a reminder of how much I need music. When I got the idea at the end of 2018, I was going through a bit of depression as I thought about my future. I’ve talked about the power of music that helped to pull me out of my 2011 student teaching depression. My episode in 2018 wasn’t as deep as that. In 2011 the question was if I could teach. Could I keep up with all of the expectations of keeping students passing the tests? In 2018, I believed I could do all of that, but the question was, is it enough? And furthermore, how is doing my job well benefiting my future? I was doing well now, but I’m just a principal change away from going from “the golden child” to the ostracized teacher. I saw that happen at work with the vice principal’s vendetta against the teachers I was working with. One teacher he said was too “strict and lazy.” However, over the years, he’s been unable to get rid of her. I was shocked by how badly he treated her. She had been teaching for 20 years, which was quite a bit of time on my career. Another teacher, he got rid of after six months because another, less qualified teacher had applied for the position. In 2018, I was questioning my career choices in Korea. Wasn’t it only a matter of time before I aged out of the “foreigner charm” and I too was labeled “strict and lazy.”
THEN A SONG COMES ON… I KNOW THAT I’LL MAKE IT. I failed in making the 2019 playlist. The 2020 playlist lasted until November in my GoodNotes, but there was a terrible back up incident. I’m hoping to finish the project this year. I’ve sacrificed time with my Korean studies, exercise time, and other things I could be/should be doing in the evening. But as imperfect as this blog is, writing about a song every day, allowing it to play as a soundtrack through my memories, makes me analyze my thoughts and beliefs. It opens me up to sharing my story, which is really the only possession I have. Writing about music makes me think that writing isn’t such an obstacle. When I heard “River of Music” today, I remembered all the times that music got me out of a hard time and how much it keeps me sane this year in one of the hardest years of teaching. While music makes me nostalgic for the past, it usually transcends the past and challenges me to be more like the times when I was younger and had more of an edge to me. Back when I thought there were fewer obstacles in the way. It makes me take new approaches to my problems. “We live in a difficult time/ Where are you going spend your love?” Music doesn’t give us these answers, but it helps us to make up our minds.
The falsetto sounds of vocalist Josh Ballard‘s voice may not be to everyone’s liking. But back in 2007 when Until June released their debut album, singing high was the way to make it in the indie scene. Until June’s self-titled debut is full of soaring melodies both on the guitar and in Ballard’s vocals. The band’s name makes me listen to them mostly in late spring to early fall. Though hailing from Arizona, this album makes me think of two early summer trips I took up to Michigan. One trip was before I had listened to this album, back in 2008 and the other was after I had listened to this album in 2010. The cool and breezy guitars remind me of the cool nights when walking around the lates and ponds in a northern early summer.
I KNOW IT FEELS LIKE SUMMER. I ended up driving over night from North Carolina to Michigan after my friend’s graduation to crash another friend’s graduation party. After getting practically drunk on espresso (5 shots, I think), I was in the mix to drive all night listening to the new Thousand Foot Krutch album. It was an eclectic mix of friends: my friend, her dad, my sister’s boyfriend who nobody liked, and the Michigan friend’s cousin who no of us knew. This was the time when gas was $4 a gallon, and we all chipped in for gas. We left on a Friday night and came back by Sunday evening. The driving was not bad when everyone was awake. We told jokes, listened to lots of rock music, and refueled on coffee. But when the sun was coming up in Ohio, and I was driving, everyone had fallen asleep. That was the hardest part of the trip. When we made it to the graduation party, we were all falling asleep on the lawn. The Michigan early summer was warm in the afternoon and cool in the evening. We under-packed for the journey, thinking about North Carolina late-May, but the Michiganders weren’t even cold. Lending us their windbreakers, we headed out for soft-serve custard. Early Michigan summer reminded me of growing up in New York, but there were far more lakes and ponds there.
SO I TRIED. Before going to Yap, I spend a few days in Berrien Springs, Michigan. I drove up to Michigan because it was cheaper than flying to O’hare, where we would fly out of to begin the long journey to Yap. I spent a few days with River, getting to know her family and seeing what Adventist life was in one of its capital cities. I got to see Andrews University and met a professor or two as I was thinking about their English master’s. I met River’s mom, an elementary school teacher who worked constantly, cutting out crafts and preparing lessons. Her father and her mother lived very separate lives. It was my first encounter with a Korean ajosshi. The story of how her parents met fascinated me, but what fascinated me more was how they were still together. It seemed that they were fiercely independent forces. They ate separate food–River’s mom cooking both Western and Korean food. They spent time in separate rooms, she in the kitchen and he in the living room. He watched Korean television and sat on the floor. Mr. Jung seemed distant from his wife and daughters. I told Mr. Jung that I was interested in going to Korea. “Oh yes, Korea is a great opportunity. As you can see my wife married the wrong man, but maybe you will meet the right person there.” I thought the conversation was odd, but it’s stuck in my head.
Mixtapemotions 