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.

I Should Live in Salt

Trouble Will Find Me // The National pt. 1

I Should Live in Salt // The National

23 The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar.24 Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;25 And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.26 But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

So the swell begins.
Like an old phaser breathing heavy, the first track of the National's new album kicks off, or rather -- gently lets go of the dock and drifts out to sea. The technicality of the music is much like of Boxer, swerving around time signatures like drunk bees; deep simba beats likend to "Lemonworld" off of High Violet and a sincerity of "Mr. November" from Alligator (minus the screaming). The National are truly evolving and bringing the best parts of them along. Matt Berninger, the front man, never ceases to amaze me with his writing and this is just the beginning.
"I Should Live in Salt" immediately captured my attention, lyrically drawing parallels from the biblical story of Lot's wife. Berninger hums, in his soft baritone voice, as a doxology to his memories; lamenting in glory to what has passed.

"I should live in salt for leaving you behind.
Behind"

I have been a National fan ever since I've heard the opening of Boxer - Fake Empire, and I feel like I have gotten to know Berninger fairly well since then, so for him to chant that we should know him better than that, births a sinking feeling. A feeling that I and most people should be familiar with: Don't you know me yet? He croaks about large visualizations, such as the term, "writing it on the wall" but there is not enough room, or turning the television down because there is to much "crying". It creates an atmosphere that the end is near and there is nothing that can be done about it, a finale or a judgement that is about to occur. And in recent events, such as the tornados in Oklahoma, school shootings or even the war overseas, it's freakishly fitting.

Much like Lot must have felt, when he begged to stay or escape to the closest city, I imagine he was trying to communicate to the angels, you know me better than this. A common place feeling of abandonment, we've all wished to be the pillar of salt rather than the one we loved.  But the angels didn't give up on him and ushered him to safety.

So will the rest of the album usher us to safety or will it be a continuing biopic of "Lots" remorse? How far down the rabbit hole will we go, and what will Berninger show us? I'm excited.

The next piece will be on my two favorite songs: Fireproof & I Need My Girl.