My buddy, Mark Hand, and a couple of his dudes came up with the idea for the project. Each month, the projectees are given lyrics and have to make a song from those lyrics. At the end of the month all of the songs are submitted and posted to the site so people can listen and rank each song.
The end result is awesome. Right now we have about 9 people who are involved so that means we have 9 totally different songs with the same lyrics. Brilliant idea. I also love how there's a rating system - it gives a little friendly competition and makes me become a little more creative.
If you're a musician or a lyricist/poem writer, you should try to get involved!
I had an interesting revelation tonight while riding with Kris. It was nothing groundbreaking or anything innovative but a rather common thing.
I was thinking about Moses when he was in the cave and God was telling him that he would go to Pharaoh to command God's people be freed. Of course Moses totally dodged it and thought God had the wrong guy because he stuttered when he spoke.
I've always identified myself with Moses and where I am now - leading worship. When I'm around people, I freeze up/shut down and pretend to be doing something the whole time to avoid conversation and talking in general. My freshman year of college, I think I said 4 words. So I find it weird that God chose me to get up and sing and lead in front of people. Moses went on to free God's people, write some books that ended up in the Bible and changed history - all because God called Moses to overcome his weakness. And I believe that throughout his life, Moses found strength in his weaknesses.
That's the way our God works - in a beautiful contrast. It's His thumbprint, His copyright, His design, His creation, His workmanship. He chose scrawny little David to defeat 9'11" Goliath. He chose Peter, who denied following Jesus 3 times in a row to be the "rock" of the church. He chose Abraham to be a "Father of many nations" when his wife was barren. He chose to save us by becoming us, humanizing Himself in ultimate vulnerability. And He did it with strength and valor. He rids darkness with light. This is His M.O.
God is an artist as much as he is a warrior. He is a forgiving God, but carries out His wrath and vengeance. He gives us strength in our weakness. He died so we could live. This is how I see God in my everyday life.
I've followed the band "Blindside" for a few years now. They're a hardcore Christian band from Sweden and they sing in English - their second language. I've also had the privilege of seeing them live a few times. It blows me away when I hear the singer's thick accent and his broken English as he's telling the crowd about hunger problems in Africa and sharing deep spiritual thoughts.
The biggest reason why I LOVE Blindside is their lyrics. As stated earlier, their second language is English and somehow they write the most beautifully deep and meaningful lyrics I've ever come across. A lot of their songs have taught me lessons that I still hold to today and I can point back to a Blindside song's lyrics.
Anyway, you take them having English as a second language, screaming wails, four passionate Swedes, skinny jeans before they were big and you get pure beauty.
As I recall with my stomach turning I was hiding away from myself, away from you Like nothing, though something was terribly wrong And I admit that I was only waiting for the right time Night time, the right moment for you to look away Though you never did, I pretended for a while So I could walk where I dont belong
And I remember every word you said Come back in time, come back And I remember I would soon be dead Now so pitiful, so pitiful
But I know, as I hammered those nails into your beautiful hands Your eyes still try to search for mine, but I look away Now your eyes are the only thing that can save me Im still so afraid of them piercing Youre breaking into my prison, Just pretended for a while My soul is dying I wont look away
Today kind of started out with a laugh. I met up with Christin to go to the 8:30am Easter celebration at church because we wanted to go together. While I was getting ready this morning by putting on my jeans and Napoleon Dynamite t-shirt, I packed clothes for our Easter get togethers happening later in the day. Then I found myself in an ironic situation:
I was going to church dressed in my yellow "holey" shoes/jeans/napoleon dynamite t-shirt and then upon leaving church was going to change into dress shoes/khakis/collared shirt.
I found it a bit ironic because usually you put on your "Sunday Best" for church, not after church. Regardless, it left me with a fun feeling the rest of the day knowing that I felt completely natural doing it (or something like that).
p.s. - That's what I'm going to look like on my wedding day. Holla atcha boi.
On an average Friday night growing up, you would find me in my basement with my brother making music. For a good 5 or 6 years, we basically locked ourselves in the basement jamming away, creating new songs every night and recording them on our Tascam 4-track cassette recorder. The end result was about 80 cassettes filled with jams, ideas and complete overdubbed songs. We would have friends over and begin with a bass line, or a guitar riff, or a drumbeat, or noise on the casio sampling keyboard, and then jam for about 5 hours straight. But time kind of changes things after a while. People grow up, and their time is called to other things. This past weekend, I experienced that old feeling of freedom in music.
Every Sunday at church, we have two services; one at 10am and one at 11:40pm. So after the 10am, there is about 40 minutes of down time. This past Sunday, I was going to head over to the main building because I didn't have breakfast yet but decided to hop on drums and bang a little bit. After a second, our bass player came up and started playing. Then, after another 30 seconds or so, my good buddy Mark came up on keyboard and vocals and we started jamming. We just started playing random stuff and fit it to each other. It probably lasted about 5 minutes. It was great. After we finished the "song", I got up and decided to go get food.
After taking about 2 steps into the hallway (and finding out that CC couldn't bring me food), I turned around to go back and jam some more. Our drummer had hopped on the drums so I just stepped over to the microphone. Mark started with a keyboard part, then the bass player did some weird sounds with his effects and the drummer filled in as well. I started doing repetitive "oh" chants and "ah" chants. The music would start small, get huge and loud, then back down. Mark would harmonize with me on chants and it was glorious. During the jam, I rediscovered that this is what moves me and how I truly worship God. I find music a beautiful creation from and toward God. For a while there, I had my eyes closed and was in a totally different world, beyond that room. Nope, no drugs were involved haha. But, I felt like I had once again discovered and experienced a beauty not too commonly seen by your average person - and it was because I took the time to look for it.
It was beauty. Music is a language I can understand. It may be something else for another person, but this is my soul's language.
a 1 year contract with fitworks. Worked out a deal with a family add-on and joined with dad and sister. First scheduled workout scheduled 7:30pm tonight.
