Keeping Track of History Pt. 3: In the presence of the "Secular".

 

Put down... All your weapons.
Let me in through Your open wounds...
Finding God through secular Music.

"The road to the sacred leads through the secular."  

-- Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Son Lux

Secular music verse the none secular; could that really be a... thing? Is one bad for you and the other good? What makes music sacred and what makes it secular? Or better yet, why the fuck should you care?
Through out my years as a child I grew up under a christian roof, and no the roof wasn't on fire. The patriarch was a pastor and the matriarch was his guide, following quietly in the shadowed footsteps of God.  My father used to be drummer and my grandfather played the organ like a saint, but I was never captured by the evangelical argument that music was either secular or sacred. The halls of my household echoed scores of famous composers and 60's surf swag from the Beach Boys. I was surrounded by tapes and Cd's from all walks off life. My first two cassette tapes were the Top Gun soundtrack and the Mortal Kombat soundtrack. It was very much a "wax on -- wax off" method in my room. I took it to the danger zone with  Kenny Logins, and then once Take My Breath Away by Berlin started to play I switched tape. I did my usual cool down/post work-out by destroying Lego's with the classic Liu Kang bicycle kick. It was an art. (No need to argue about that.)
During the summer months with my cousin and I blasted Metallica, Godsmack and Incubus (post Fungus Amongus) while fantasizing about what it would be like to "do" Rouge from X-Men. At the dawn of my teenage years my parents gifted me the album 13 Ways to Bleed on Stage by Cold before my open heart surgery. Their hit song was "Just Got Wicked". I'm pretty sure B-rated wrestlers from the WWE made that their intro song... I don't know what my parents were thinking, but I'm pretty sure the only reason I got away with it was because there was a small percentile that I might die the next day. 
(Prayer quickly followed).

"I can taste your innocence 

Young and sweet like mother made you 

Everything froze in to ask

These motherfuckers just got wicked..."

I'm not here to argue that Cold is more or less sacred then bands like DC Talk but I am hinting that there could be the minuet possibility. There was a moment on my hospital bed when that nurse who looked like Mr. Cleans gay father took away my Walkman. (One of those "From my cold dead hands!" moments.) He told me to count to ten backwards as I laid there in my hospital gown, wondering if I'd ever wake up after this was done. The last song I had in my head was the butt-metal anthem, Send in the Clowns, and I didn't feel afraid. Divine or not, I was comforted. 
I still like that song.

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”

― Aldous Huxley, Music at Night and Other Essays

Angus & Julia Stone

I had a conversation with a dear friend of mine long ago. Let's just call her Miranda. The subject of personal failure arose, and like an ugly head it glared back at us as if it lived in the bathroom mirror. Like Miranda, I struggled daily with the thought that I have not been living up to my fullest potential. I tended to loath my self more than the actual instances that had occurred in my life that formed and shaped me into who I am today. Miranda saw this, and she could read me like a book. But this evening she she sat in my wicker chair on my front porch like a blank page, frizzled and smoking a single cigarette. She was like an Eels song, just a beautiful freak with a lo-fi smile. 
Earlier that week she was crippled by some "holier-than-thou" boy. He spoke over her words of affliction concerning her attire and constitution. Some, or rather those with a single original thought, would find her beautiful for things like her affectionate twitch and distinctive pitter-patter of trailing thoughts, but this boy did not understand -- thus was prejudice. Make matters worse, she actually like this prick.
  
Within our culture today, maybe even in particular for women, there is the problem of self-deprecation that is brought on by the trivia of others. These moments often lead to intrusive thoughts mostly about our relationship with others. We tell our selves that we are ashamed for feeling different, third wheeling relationships, not having the prettiest husband/wife or none at all. There is this constant sense that we need to prove our selves because we were born unworthy, born without reason. We struggle to make up our dreams, goals and/or our "calling" on the spot as if to sing karaoke in front of thousands. We claim it as our own. And if we don't have nail the song in front of them, then we are fucked. 
If there is anything I've noticed from being around the block, it is this: More kids, teenagers, and adults are finding their peace through "secular" music than a sacred workshop that teaches them to clap.

"Tell me anything you want to tell me.

I have nothing to say.I have nothing to say to you,

But you have everything to say to me.

You have everything to say to me."

Son Lux

As Miranda and I sat there in the humidity of the lowering Tennessee sun, I decided to put on some music. I guess that's my calling card, but hey, it works for me. I picked the self-titled album by Son Lux and set my laptop on the ground littered with cigarette ash. My favorite song, Break, came on and I explained to her what it was about, or at least... what I assumed it was about, which lead to me saying this to her:

(Journal entry from May of 2009) The war we fight is a war for uniqueness, made by television, magazines and sexual predators. But have we lost the war if we chose to even recognize the battle? A battle that has strung us like a marionette puppet. A temperamental brand of barbed chords hiding the snare that violently adulterates and perverts it's self like a parasite into our chest. Are we really who we are or even want to be?

 
Miranda asked me to repeat the song again, and again. And each time the song repeated she had something new to say. She would comment on the bizarre opening break down, relating it to opening moments of a car crash. As she talked about the song she painted the horrific image of standing in the middle of freeway while it rained both water and ash, "searching for your friend within the twisted metal" she said. "But there's always something beautiful waiting,"

She asked me how peaceful could death really be. 
"Would it be as smooth as the piano once the drums are done fighting?", she said. 
I don't remember my exact response, but looking back on it, I can only imagine that it would be that smooth. Pain dribbling off a window like water as we sleepily count backwards from ten.

Now that I look back on it I feel like I could have put on a number of records, but it was that one and it was devine. 
It's not the genre or the classification of music that makes it bad or good, secular or sacred, but it is what is at the core of the moment. 
So when does music really mean impact us?
I believe that music means the most when we don't do anything about it. It's an apocalyptic revelation, an occurrence that brews from the soul of your gut, and you never knew it was there. Music means the most when the story of your life collides with the sincerity of the present emotion. Miranda spilled her heart out that night, but I didn't catch her nor did I even dry her tears, the music did. 

Several smokes and bathroom breaks later we started to play "pass the laptop". Miranda would typically pick something like The Ataris or Sugarcult. She would reminded me about how she saw them live, or she'd tell me again about the guy she used to date who tried to swoon her by covering "Punk Rock Princess" by Something Corporate. My insides would hurt with laughter because her ex was no garage band king, more like a prepubescent Rob Lowe.

Miranda tied her untamed hair into a topknot, patted me on the arm (to sweaty to hug) and hopped into her Honda blasting The Authority Song by Jimmy Eat World, which was a vast improvement from when she pulled up two hours before to quiet drone of Damien Rice. 
When Miranda left my front porch, she stunk of off-brand smokes and smiles, 
but more importantly

"She was back." 
As she drove home that night,  I could feel her energy for five blocks. 


Jimmy Eat World.

Yes, we did have a meaningful "bro-down" but it was more than that, it was the moment of what was playing in our hearts. It was the music that carried us both home. We didn't find it in a hymnal or a Newsboys anthem, we found the sacred meaning of love and compassion in "secular" music. I think the true argument is this: are you listening to music that is keeping you together or tearing you apart? Are you listening to music that places you in a box or music that re frames the box? 

We are a generation that is hungry for the spiritual, not a church service, but a revelation of the soul and it's painfully obvious that we can find that through the music we choose to listen to. So next time you listen to a record, break out the lyrics, figure out the chords, or paint a picture and you may be surprise by what you see and feel.

Also, here's a small challenge. Make your self a mix. Give it a name and make it important.

Shaky Graves 


My name is Brady Effler and I am currently unemployed because I am going through chemo treatments. I was diagnosed with Multiple Meyloma at the end of July 2013, and fighting the good fight. If you liked what you read, please feel free to donate. I am currently trying to pay off my student loans and other bills (pills, hospital visits, etc...). Anything you give is awesome. Thanks again for reading. I'm not begging, or trying to pull the wool over anyone, just being honest.

Keeping Track of History pt. 2

Faith.

   

Let me tell you about my first kiss.
I was young and ready to start junior high. Like any other boy at that age I thrived off of three things: sneaking into rated R movies, loathing my parents and an acute chesticular fascination -- or otherwise known as: boobs!. Being a young boy is never easy, and once you hit puberty it only gets worse. Around the time I had hit puberty two important things happened. First, I fell in love; secondly, I moved from California to Tennessee. I was in love with the girl that I had grown up with, Sarah. Sarah had candy brown hair, blue sapphire eyes like the ocean in disney movies and cute freckles that lined the bridge of her nose all the way down to her cheeks. I knew I was moving across the country and I had kept that from her for the longest time. I still wanted to believe that there was a chance for us -- oh the foolish things boys do.

It was the month before my departure when she told me that she liked me. My worse fear had materialized right in front of me - mutual affection. Quickly I admitted that I've had a crush on her ever since I've seen her. I've liked her before I was even able to develop feelings, you know, the kind of feelings that make you sick to your stomach but don't you out of school. I had been dreading this moment for months, the moment when I was going to have to tell her that I was moving and I won't ever be back again. Surprisingly she took it well, even better than I did. We continued to hang out and see each other in the remaining days I had left, just like it had always been. But then the day came, the day before I moved. I had previously asked her to meet me at the park, just the two of us. What better place to say goodbye than the place where we became friends.
It was dusk when we started the climb to the top of the jungle gym.
I wanted to be romantic, so with the sun shinning on my face I took off a silver ring on my finger that my mother had given me years prior. She opened up her palm immediately as if she had read my mind and smiled. I shook like a tree in the wind when I painfully dropped it in her hand. She tucked the ring away on her ring finger and held it up the light, investigating the how it felt on her hand. Then without hesitation she took off her bracelet, the black and clear one that she had always wore and she slipped it around my skinny wrist.
That bracelet was her favorite one and I had never before seen her with out it.

I stared at that bracelet.

I stared at it forever.

I could feel my face contorting. It began to disfigure into one massive puddle of a smile. The back of my neck stiffened, my jaw locked up and there were no windshield whippers on the inside of my glasses. I wanted to tell her that I loved her, but before the words left my lips she silenced me with a kiss. My neck became numb and my hands, like a mussel reflex, grabbed her waist. My eyes then closed like ziplock bags full of water. A bomb could have gone off and I wouldn't have moved an inch.
I was frozen, like a stone.

As she released my lips I sat there stunned. My face was wet, but not from my tears but from hers, and my hands clung onto hers for life.
She was my girl.
The sun was no longer in my eyes but now shinning all around her like a burning shadow. It was beginning to get dark, I knew there were words left to finish but I was lost.

"I'll be back"

Yeah I said that, but who wouldn't have given the circumstances. I'd like to believe that we'd all say that. We climbed down the jungle gym, she went left towards the night while I went right towards the horizon. I watched her walk away into the warm Californian night as I walked back to an empty house. That night I laid wide awake, dreaming about her in a sleeping bag on the floor in a room full of boxes. I had wished that I had told her that I loved her, but I never did and I never saw Sarah again.

So you may be asking, "What's with the mix?". Well, this mix is a sonic representation of the events that had transpired that day. They do not follow in any type of chronological pattern nor do they even encompass all that was felt, but they are grafted in a mannor so the listener/reader can gather some semblance of being there. There is more to the legacy of Sarah V, like as to the reason we never saw each other, because I did go back for her, but for now... this is it.










The songs in order are:

.Moneen. - Are We Really Happy With Who We Are? 
The Thermals - I Might Need You to Kill
Swim Deep - Honey
The National - I Need My Girl
Noah and the Whale - The First Days of Spring
Night Beds - 22
New Found Glory - Hold My Hand

The ring had just one word inscribed on it -- Faith.