30 December 2016

Music Day - Father Explains

Originally written 9 July 2016, 12.21am.

Been playing this song a lot lately. The gritty vocal, desperate lyrics, and raging guitars resonate with me right now.

This is one of the few DA albums that flies under the radar even among fans. Admittedly, it was well-nigh impossible to top their previous album (Darn Floor - Big Bite), plus there had been a hiatus of five years in between the two (mostly dedicated to the creation and perpetuation of the Swirling Eddies).

I've been listening to this song mostly because I identify with the line 'The boy thinks God may be over on the devil's side...' I've asked the same question myself in the past few months. After all, how else do you explain some of the things that keep happening to me? Literally the cycle is this: I hate my life for two years. I finally wake up one morning in a happy frame of mind and am finally enjoying just being alive, and all that comes with it. And before the sun sets, something very catastrophic happens -- divorce, death, all the usual crap.

The bombs came down like steel rain...

And it's another two years before I'm okay again for even a couple of hours. I don't even get a full day. I don't even get twenty-four hours. Seriously, God, how hard is this? If the joy of the Lord is my strength and I have no joy and I have no strength, then where is God? Is He deliberately planning these things just because for some reason I'm the cosmic punching bag?

I'll stop now. (Believe me, that's only a very tiny fraction of the rant. I went for an hour and a half on this the other night.)

This is a song clearly born in the Cold War era. Perhaps it's a little melodramatic to compare my spiritual life (such as it is) to something as horrific as war. But a lot of days, this song is the only thing angry enough to be capable of sympathising with me.

Title: Father Explains
Artist: Daniel Amos
Album: Kalhoun
Year: 1991
iTunes here; YouTube here.

And God only knows how much blood it will take
Before someone makes right all the wrong...

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