Music Day - Arise

 I've been playing this song a lot lately.

I was first introduced to Flyleaf in 2010 at 'Rock The River' in Edmonton. My best friend was a fan of theirs and continued feeding me a steady diet of their work. I bought most of their first two albums around that time. They enjoyed semi-regular rotation on my iTunes for a couple years... and then I forgot about them entirely.

Until my husband introduced me to Breaking Benjamin.

Both bands play similar levels of hard rock (or at least Flyleaf did at the time; I haven't heard a single note they've played since 2012's New Horizons). Breaking Benjamin led me back to Flyleaf, which now has a nostalgic shimmer, so of course now their appeal has increased in my books.

I didn't take much notice of this song when I first bought the CD, but I do remember thinking it was nice. Earlier this summer, I started craving this song. So, for most of the summer, I took it like a drug. I generally don't repeat songs, but I'd play this one three or four times in a row.

It's a song of sadness, but also hope. The vocals and the thick wall of guitars rise and fall together perfectly. The song feels a little bit like a prog rock song, though it clocks in under four and a half minutes. It kicks off with a muted bass, and immediately Lacey Sturm's vocals swoop in and brood right along with it with quiet determination.

Tell the swine

We will make it out alive

There's a note in the pages of the book

So sleep tonight

We'll sleep dreamlessly this time

When we awake, we'll know that everything's all right...

Then it crunches into the pre-chorus and chorus, spinning soaring guitars rising and falling above each other as Sturm cries out with a hope that perhaps she doesn't quite believe:

Hold on

To the world we all remember fighting for

There's still strength left in us yet...

Maybe it's the cultural context. We've now been in lockdown for most of the last year and a half. And the undiluted hatred I'm seeing among people I love and care for is so draining and everything feels so hopeless. I worry that we're past the point of no return, relationally. There are friendships and families and relationships that will be permanently damaged -- a LOT of them. And looking into the future and seeing those damaged relationships destroy the rest of my generation just sucks the wind out of my sails. Even if the virus was gone tomorrow; if all restrictions and all of the COVID-19 deaths stopped tonight, there would still be so much that will never be fixed. What hope is there? Everyone is so bitter and so angry.

Hold on

To the world we all remember dying for...

In March of 2020, we all shut down and wore masks for the greater good. To protect each other. Nobody questioned it. It all seems to utopian now. We sacrificed our lives, our jobs, our hobbies, our paycheques, to keep our loved ones safe. We died to our previous lives to keep each other safe, to preserve the world.

Fast-forward just over one year.

I have seen families literally torn apart because some have and some won't get the vaccine. A year ago, we protected strangers at all costs, and now we would rather cut contact with blood family and friends we've known for decades than get the one tiny shot that would actually protect them.

We died in March 2020 for a world that, it seems, will never, ever come back.

Sing to me about the end of the world

End of these hammers and needles for you

We'll cry tonight

But in the morning we are new

Stand in the sun

We'll dry your eyes...

Often it seems better and easier to hope for the end of the world than it is to hope for the restoration of this one. This one feels beyond repair, and there is nothing left but to wait for it to be over and remind each other that we have that hope, at least.

The song slows again -- Sturm crooning Sing... sing...

A breath.

And then the cry of courage -- arise!

The end is both sad and triumphant -- the world burns in the background, guitars thrashing along with the flames, and we have survived, yet we mourn what we have lost in the fire. The anthemic final chorus, repeating until that final a cappella, is a heart-wrenching cry.

Or maybe I like this song so much because I relate to it on a personal level -- the world always burning around me and the desperate fight to find hope and survive and rebuild myself, over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, mustering up strength from nothing within myself again and again because more often than not I've got no-one to draw from.

Title: Arise

Artist: Flyleaf

Album: Memento Mori

Year: 2009

iTunes here; YouTube here.

Hold on

To the world we all remember dying for

There's still hope left in it yet...

National Choreography Month - Day 2/3

Worked on Climb The Hill pretty much all day (I'm over half done now!). After midnight I decided to take a break and listen to the new Flyleaf album (which is really quite good for the most part). I just started back on more choreography.

So now I have Lacey in my head going 'Fire from the tongues of liars' and then Rick going 'Oh climb, climb the hill...'

And my brain is going, The heck...?

Ponderings -- Rock, Ministry, And Church Problems

The other night I was watching a video on YouTube about Petra's ministry.

From both a musical and ministry standpoint, these guys were a huge deal back in the '80s and early '90s. Many, many people came to know Christ through the work they did. You still see testimonies on Petra's Facebook page from people who got saved (or realised their existing commitment to Jesus had to be deeper) at a Petra concert in such-and-such a place during this tour in this year.

Today we have no equivalent in the Christian music industry. Today, pastors and youth leaders lament dwindling attendence and widespread lack of passion in those who do attend church. Why?

Perhaps a question to ask is what did Petra do differently? How was it that five guys on a stage led so many people to Christ, and today we have an entire Christian rock industry and the youth groups and churches are still shrinking? What was Petra doing then that we're missing today?

They presented the Gospel.

I personally have never had the privilege of attending a Petra concert (unless owning the cassette copy of Captured In Time & Space counts). However, it's widespread knowledge (among the fans at least) that they shared the Gospel, carefully and explicitly, at every concert. This goes back to the earliest days of the band, even before Greg X Volz came on board the first time (and that was a while ago).

However, I have been to concerts of today's 'Christian' rock bands. I've seen the Newsboys twice, plus Flyleaf, Starfield, downhere, and what is possibly one of the most recognisable bands in Christian rock today, Skillet.

Not once did I hear them explain the Gospel. In fact, by and large they toned down the 'Jesus factor' so much that their songs are more likely talking about a girlfriend than the Creator of the universe and Saviour of our corrupted souls. I could go into a long discourse right here on how Larry Norman (sort of accidentally) launched the 'Jesus rock' movement precisely so that more people would hear the Gospel and live in accordance to it.

The fact is, somehow we Christians, both inside and outside the arts, have forgotten somewhere that in order for people to be transformed by the Gospel, they need to hear the Gospel first. How shall they call on Him whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear... unless someone tells them?

Pre-Date Jitters

Tonight at midnight it starts.
I'll probably be exhausted out of my mind, but all the better. At least I won't overthink it. The first sentence always gets too much attention anyway.
Yes, sentence. As in words. (And you all thought finally some cute guy asked me out.)
Indeed, it starts tonight -- the rough draft of novel number six. Thirty (one) days to add another novel to my writing experience.
Four of my previous rough drafts were also written in thirty-one days or less. (The first one I started with intent to write it in thirty days but it failed miserably and instead took me a little more than three months. But I did finish it.)
However, this time around I'm more apprehensive than usual. For my previous three novels I nearly went mad waiting for midnight on the first so I could begin to write.
The reason for that being that for those three novels, I had solid plots. The last two especially had a lot of material I could milk for a few thousand more words here and there. However, for this novel I have almost nothing -- two VR chambers, a weapon (as of yet unspecified), and two characters, Lyle and Titus. I don't even have their last names. And half the world needs to die somehow.
'No pressure or anything' says my brain to me.
We'll see about that, brain...
I wonder if I'm under so much pressure from myself because last time I wrote a novel (November 2010) I blew myself away. I hit 50,000 on 20 November and kept going. By the 30th I had managed 247 pages, 74,834 words. On Day 29, I wrote 6,174 words -- a personal daily best.
Coming off a high like that, you put a crazy amount of pressure on yourself to improve at least some of those numbers the next time round when it's insanity to expect that. Even more disheartening is my abysmal showing in Script Frenzy in April -- I managed 103 pages (out of one hundred), but if I didn't love the plot idea I would scrap every one of them.
Then again, I just bought some music yesterday -- maybe that will help things. (Flyleaf's Memento Mori; Lecrae's Rebel; and Relient K's Forget And Not Slow Down, in case you're wondering.)

In case anyone's interested in also writing a 50,000-word (or more) rough draft, join the contest here. You write on your own computer/typewriter/spiral notebook, not the site, but it's always fun to check out how others are doing and they send out pep talks every week or so.
As for time, 50,000 words in one month averages out to 1,667 words per day (assuming a thirty-day month). If you hit a good stride and are a decent typist, this will take you between one and two hours, but I've been known to do it in forty-five minutes.

Music Day

Happy belated Music Day to you all!
This week we're going to the rock playlist. I discovered this band at a concert this summer and have become a bit obsessed with their music (especially the debut album). It's like Skillet without the annoyingly raspy voice. I'm quite disappointed with their latest EP though... hopefully the next album is a return to their hard rock roots.
Title: 'Sorrow'
Artist: Flyleaf
Album: Flyleaf
Year: 2005
iTunes
YouTube

Enjoy!