songs i like series, post 1

what kind of music do you like? is a question i've been getting often recently. i want to answer with something that is representative of what i enjoy, but also who i am. in the end, my mind always fixates on a few songs that i really love. while i like a lot of music for the way it sounds, in the end the songs i love are for what they have to say.

so i thought i'd post periodically about songs that i love and why.

samson - by regina spektor

lyrics:

You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first, I loved you first
Beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth
I have to go, I have to go
Your hair was long when we first met

Samson went back to bed
Not much hair left on his head
He ate a slice of wonder bread and went right back to bed
And history books forgot about us and the bible didn't mention us
And the bible didn't mention us, not even once

You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first, I loved you first
Beneath the stars came fallin' on our heads
But they're just old light, they're just old light
Your hair was long when we first met

Samson came to my bed
Told me that my hair was red
Told me I was beautiful and came into my bed
Oh I cut his hair myself one night
A pair of dull scissors in the yellow light
And he told me that I'd done alright
And kissed me 'til the morning light, the mornin' light
And he kissed me 'til the morning light

Samson went back to bed
Not much hair left on his head
Ate a slice of wonderbread and went right back to bed
Oh, we couldn't bring the columns down
Yeah we couldn't destroy a single one
And history books forgot about us
And the bible didn't mention us, not even once

to me the song imagines that samson's and delilah's love, while broken was still true in its own way- the way he loved her, despite her lies, flaws and betrayal. even after she had cut his hair, "he told me that i'd done alright, and kissed me til the morning light."

while the higher call was for samson to leave delilah and return to God, what if he hadn't? what if he had just continued to love her? maybe he wouldn't have brought the philistine temple columns down, maybe he wouldn't have made any dent in history, biblical or otherwise. would it have been okay to simply ask to be human, rather than great?

again, to me this song is about acknowledgement. acknowledging that maybe sometimes the things that we give up to follow God or "do the right thing," are not inherently bad. While the "right" choice may be clear, it is not always easy; and certainly not always black and white.

what the what?

just finished reading What is the What by Dave Eggers,

its the fictionalized biography of Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese refugee who was a kid when the civil war in Sudan broke out. In the preface, he writes that while "I was very young when some of the events in the book took place, and as a result we simply had to pronounce What is the What a novel. ... However it should be noted that all of the major events in the book are true." who knows how much is real and how much isn't, but certainly the heart of the story is centered in very true events.

It's taken me a few months to read with a slow draw in, but once I hit a point, I was pretty hooked. Last week I hit one passage in the book that made me fall in love with it. For these two pages, I could declare among my favorite books. Certainly its only in the context of the other 600 pages, that these pages matter. After experiencing one personal devastation after another, he speaks about trying to find trying to find comfort in God and prayer. "These authors, for whom I have great respect, still do not seem to know the doubts that one might have in the angriest corners of one's soul. Too often the tell me to answer my doubts with prayer, which seems very much like addressing one's hunger by thinking of food." There is something about the acknowledgement that as much as we try and hope to believe in God's greater good and purpose, to be comforted by wise words about the hope of resurrection after death - it is not always enough, sometimes not even close. i think it is the acknowledgement of the depth of the struggle, that speaks to the true depth of the faith.

He ends this section with this line, which I just spoke of incredible inner strength. "Achor Achor has been worried about me, but he has seen me improve. He knows I have been here before, that I have approached the precipice of self-termination and have walked away."

our nature

definitions -

the basic constitution of a person, who we are at the core

one's natural instincts

your default response, what you do before you think about it.

just something i've been thinking about. what are our true natures? how much control do we have over who we are and who we become? i supposed i maintain the idea that it is the choices that we make shape our future selves. each choice, each action changes you a little.

and lastly - where is the balance between accepting/loving who you are and hoping for a better version of yourself.