I Get Restless

  Era: road trip I wrote this yesterday in the bed of my truck.  I've been trying and trying to turn the little song fragments in my head into a whole work, and this was the first time I succeeded so far.   It's certainly not perfect.  It tries to say a lot, and I think that diminishes anything it doesn't say.  As with all my songs, the goal is to capture a feeling, a moment, or a perspective as truly as I can, but there are more sides to everything. The process of moving on is not an easy one, and not one that I want to take lightly.  I've had to be intentional in not allowing any bitterness to grow, in trying to be as accurate as possible in my recollections of the past, and to look at myself and my future in a way that's God-honoring and not melodramatic.  I knew that no matter what I did, I didn't want to move on improperly.  The wound needed to be cleaned and stitched in a straight line, not simply have a bandage slapped on it so I didn'...

  Era: post-LotN Of all the songs I'm posting tonight, this is the most imperfect.  It's overly long, has no chorus to speak of, and contradicts its own structure at least once.  But it also might be the most perfect representation of my feelings immediately following the breakup, and best sums up the story from beginning to end. I actually wrote the song the day after we broke up, not the day of like it says; still too soon for me to have developed the regret that showed itself in Why I Let Him Go, only a deep sadness and feeling of loss. Things turned quickly, and in One Month I tried to put into words all the things that were lost overnight.  I failed, unfortunately.   More was lost than I can explain in two and a half minutes.

  Era: post-LotN I wrote this song about a week after we broke up, and the only line that isn't true is in the second verse.  The chorus is one side of a multifaceted story, but largely accurate. If I had more time, I would probably rewrite the second verse a little bit, but I do really like the bridge.

  Era: pre-LotN Look, it's not the pain that keeps on drawing me away from what I love. There's things haunting all of us Whether from below or from above. I recorded those lines late one night, weeks before I ever thought of LotN as a possibility.  Shortly (very shortly) after he and I started talking, I sat down one day and turned it into what you hear up there.  Wolves is the only song I'm posting tonight that isn't strictly auto-biographical.  While some of the lines certainly describe how I've felt from time to time, the whole song describes someone much less inclined to settle down than I am.

  Era: post-Ferdinand Hypocrite was written at a time when I was still disgusted with myself, and I think that comes across pretty well.  More than that though, I was done.  I didn't trust myself with relationships anymore, so I had basically decided that I never needed to be in one again.  I changed my stance after I had some time to recover, which is funny considering what later happened with LotN. The relationships had very different outcomes, however.  LotN left me feeling imperfect, but capable of improvement and, eventually, a solid, happy relationship.  And I'd say that's a solid step forward. And yes, I realize that I have a hair hanging off of my pants in the video.  I didn't watch it until I had left the park.

 So, remember how I said there should be some different content on today if all goes according to plan?  Things did not go according to plan.   Therefore, that's postponed until tomorrow, and will look different than even I thought. Second thing is, I listed some songs yesterday, but left out one of the most important ones.   Running Just in Case - Miranda Lambert This was initially a post-Ferdinand era song, and defined that time in my life best.  Of all songs I've ever heard, this one best described how I felt then, in everything from the lyrics to the melody to the production.  Obviously, it doesn't have to be literal to sum up how I'm feeling (no one has a tattoo of my name, for example). There's a wandering there, a weariness, and the kind of strength that you don't realize you had until you've exhausted every other strength, and then you get to one that seems bottomless.   But listen to it, and see if you don't agree that there's a...

One year and three months ago, an eighty-five year old woman in my congregation, who we affectionately refer to as our church grandmother, drove to Kentucky to look at the Ark Encounter, and then kept on driving. Moppy has always been a free spirit, so while this was unexpected, it wasn't really shocking.  She kept in touch with her daughter, who is something of a mentor to me, so we knew she was okay.  As I understand it, she went out to California, meandered her way down the West Coast, and then got holed up in New Mexico or Arizona for about half a year when Covid hit.  She did most of her driving at night and slept during the day, usually in her car.  Sometimes she found friends, or friends of friends to stay with. We all wondered when she would be back, but she didn't seem to be in any kind of a hurry.  She got a smartphone and called her granddaughters sometimes, who of course missed her dreadfully, and stayed on the road. Well, a couple weeks ago, her dau...

  When I was little, I was outside all the time.  There were sixty acres to explore, complete with a field, a pond, and thirty-five acres of woods.  In the summers, I went out every day in my playclothes (usually boys' painter pants and a t-shirt) and, usually with my sisters, met up with the neighbor boy to play in mud, build shelters in the woods, and terrorize the local wildlife. I got in trouble on a regular basis, for many reasons.  To be succinct, I was a horrible child.  I smacked and bit my siblings (on purpose), broke things (by accident), and often forgot clear commands that my parents had given me.  Usually they spanked me, and I thank God they did.  It's why I'm mostly civilized now.  But sometimes they put me in my room and told me to stay, and usually, I didn't.  I'd climb out the window and run off into the night in my pajamas.  Now, I'm not claiming to be unique in any of this.  There are plenty of people out there w...