Phoenix Rising
Whether through lack of imagination, or laziness, the same ideas come up again and again in my art. Without intensive investigation, I would say that about 75% of my songs are just better versions of songs I had already written in some form or another, and like a phoenix, arose from their own ashes into something better.
To speak of resurrected ideas and mythological creatures is an appropriate subject for Easter Sunday. A noteworthy aspect of the Easter story is that no one fails to recognize Jesus post-resurrection. Here, even in the grandest story humanity offers about resurrection, who you are is still inescapable, tattooed onto your soul in a way that transcends any of the changes you might have gone through. Even the Son of God is still who He always was in the eyes of others.
We think we change in larger ways than we actually do. Not because we are morons, but because internally we traverse tremendous distances, even when where we end up is terribly close to where we set out from. When it comes to even the smallest of changes, we have a way of taking the most roundabout way of getting there, waging a constant war full of victories and defeats, so when we do finally arrive, we’ve been at it a while. We see the distance it took to get there; others see the tangible results. We see the journey; they see the destination.
When I wrote the song “Lesser Tragedies” at the end of 2012, I wasn't thinking about resurrection, but it must have been buried in there somewhere. The song is centered on two performers playing the roles of Romeo and Juliet, and as they perform night after night, the spark of it all fades, dying in each other’s arms every night, only to return, unscathed, for the next performance: A tragedy, but a lesser one.
I am no different in my own reinventions. I once spoke to a friend of mine about my flippant desires of who I did and did not want to be, and how I constantly battled to arise a different, better version of some perfect ideal that I had in my head at a given time. I lamented my inconsistencies, and how I waver between bouts of self-confidence and self-loathing, constantly reassessing the parts of me I should continue carrying, and the parts I ought to discard. I spoke of how each time that I arise from one of those periods, it was tiring because I never really knew who I was supposed to be, who I wanted to be, or who I was.
My friend responded, “But I recognize you every time.”
Such a simple comment was able to acknowledge both the tremendous distance I travel internally, as well as the reality that I am not so far from the person I have always been. “Me” —that elusive creature who forever lurks just out of sight and reach, never allowing itself to be seen more than a glance before it vanishes into the fog— transcends. Its essence defined not by all the things I think it is defined by, but by some new entity that arises from all the brokenness, crushing defeats, self-doubt, and rehashed ideas blended together: A phoenix from the ashes.