Monty's Inside Voice

Did you guys know that I’ve always kind of wanted to be a rapper? Like legit. I mean, my main goal has always been film making, but my brain has always cried out for more avenues of self expression than that. Actually, before I go any further than this, let me clarify a bit.

It’s not so much that I want to be a rapper in the sense of I’m super passionate about it, it’s more like that I’m a story teller by nature, and outside of the avenues of film making, writing, and my interest in stand up comedy, I’ve always had a slight interest in pursuing music as another means for applying myself creatively. But, while I’m not terrible, I’m really not much of a singer, so I always figured that if I were to pursue music as a medium of artistic communication, rap was probably the best way to go.

I’ve dabbled with writing rhymes before. I’m not... awful. Actually, some of the stuff I’ve written isn’t necessarily half bad. To be fair, a lot of the rhymes I’ve written were intended as jokes, whether it was the “Black and Yellow” parody I wrote about The Joker after Dark Knight came out (playfully titled “Green and Purple”) or the comedy braggadocio rap I wrote about being the best baker in the business that I called “Cake Boss,” they were fairly decent raps. I think the fact that I wasn’t taking the issue seriously allowed me to stop over thinking it, which is what allowed the creative juices to really flow. The point is, I’m not a half bad song writer when I’m able to step outside of my own head long enough to just get the shit done.

Where I run into problems is that, for as much as it seems like I’m bragging a little bit here, I’m my own worst critic. See, I’m one of those people who is super aware that I’m capable of being way above average, so I hold myself to a high standard. It’s easy to confuse this with cockiness, but in reality, it’s not. It’s actually really self defeating. Because I know how smart I am, because I know how good of a writer I am, it’s never good enough for me to just write a “decent” song. I need my shit layered with subtext. I need monster metaphors. I need linguistic gymnastics that will have you feeling spastic, foaming at the mouth at how far above average I spit these verses out with these verbal acrobatics that’ll send your head spinning because I’m too fast for you to grasp it. I listen to artists like Childish Gambino (who is a fucking GENIUS), Lupe Fiasco (who, regardless of your feelings on his politics, is a fucking GENIUS), Eminem (who, while many still try to deny it, is a fucking GENIUS), and the list goes on, but I listen to these rappers who are verbal geniuses, and that’s the caliber I see myself as. That’s the level I want to be at. I seriously am not trying to brag, but I honestly do see myself as someone who, if I honed my skills, could be the kind of rapper where you’d have to replay my lines 3 or 4 times before you finally grasped all the layers of subtext and metaphors I was laying into each rhyme. That’s how I perceive myself. Where I run into trouble is, just like with all of my goals and aspirations, I haven’t applied myself enough to have earned that yet.

I’m sure people are familiar with the adage “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice.” While all of the rappers I mentioned above (and all of the ones I didn’t) each had a latent talent for verbal creativity, none of them started out where they are now. If you go back and listen to The Slim Shady LP, Eminem isn’t half as refined there as he is now. If you were to track down Donald Glover’s (Childish Gambino) college mixtapes, you would still notice his clever wordplay, but you wouldn’t imagine based on those songs that he would ever be at the level he is now. The point I’m making is that skills have to be honed. No one comes out the gate as a master craftsman. The latent talent may be there, there may be a natural predisposition toward genius, but that raw, natural talent still needs to be refined into skill.

So when I start trying to write rhymes, and the stuff I jot down isn’t up to the standard I’m aiming for, I get discouraged. On an intellectual, logical level, I know I need to keep practicing to train my brain to think in terms of rhymes and metaphors and layered subtext and all that, but because I know I was capable of just doing that in the past, I get discouraged when I can’t just do it now because I’ve been out of practice for so long (I really don’t write anything as often as I should). I’m from the instant gratification generation. I’m not conditioned for waiting. If I don’t get what I’m looking for instantly, I lose my patience, and I give in to the frustration. I quit before I even start.

Then there’s the issue of finding my voice. Like, what the fuck do I even talk about? Most rap and hip hop is steeped in urban culture, and while I’ve experienced that to a degree, I was always on the outskirts and fringes of it. I don’t really know what I would rap about. I mean, I guess logistically, you just rap your truth. Talk about the things you know, share your experiences. That’s the whole point of art, right, self expression? Sharing your perception of things? But are people gonna relate to that? Are enough people even gonna care about my songs that I could be successful at this? And then, if I am, what if I don’t just want to rap anymore? I mean, I know some rappers have proven that you can dabble in a bit of singing here and there, even if you don’t have the greatest voice. But what if I also want to do a bit of rock and roll? If I got to the point where I built up a following in rap, and I suddenly came on stage with a guitar and started playing some Coldplay style shit, would my fans accept that transition?

In an almost unanimous 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled today that sharing your memories of a song, movie, television show, or video game infringes upon the copyright claim of the intellectual property holder. The act of describing a scene from a movie, TV show or game, or reciting lyrics from a song, is now considered an illegal reproduction of copyrighted material.

“This is a major victory for the entertainment industry,” asserted Francis Goldblatt, an attorney for the Recording Industry Association of America. “Much in the same way that purchasing a CD or DVD doesn’t authorize you to transfer and store the intellectual property therein so contained to another media platform, i.e. your computer or MP3 player, watching a movie or listening to a song doesn’t authorize you to transfer and store said intellectual property to your brain.”

In a rare direct comment explaining the decision, Chief Justice John Roberts claimed “We had to give Scalia SOMETHING. After the ruling on the Affordable Care Act and equal marriage rights, we were worried he was going to have a stroke.”

Feb. 14, 2015

According to a Pew Research Poll conducted today, data tracking on popular dating apps like OKCupid, Tinder, Plenty Of Fish and Zoosk have shown a tremendous increase in positive responses to what appeared to be regularly ignored profiles in the form of "likes" and reciprocated messages. Some users have even gone so far as to initiate first contact with users they had previously shown a disinterest in, the research suggested.

"People don't want to be the only ones in their peer groups to be single on Valentine's Day," suggested Winona Hearst, a User Experience Researcher at Match.Com, one of the many popular sites polled. "There's a lot of social pressure to have a date today, even if it's only just the once."

In my previous essay, I summed up the issues I had with people who make a big fuss about using "proper grammar" and such in language. In this follow up, I'll expand on that by discussing people who complain about "slang" words, better known as colloquial language. Don't worry, since I touched on most of the issues I have with language conservatives in my last post, this one should be a bit shorter.

Did you know that there are over one million words in the English language? I'm harping on the English language, because that seems to be the one people are making a big deal out of. Anyway, there are over a million words in the English language. 1700 of them were invented by Shakespeare. That means that before Shakespeare, those 1700 words never existed. We didn't use them in our speech to convey ideas, as language is meant to do. Then Shakespeare came along, threw out those words, we liked them, they crossed into the cultural lexicon and now they're a part of our language. We use them all the time, probably without even knowing that at one time, they didn't exist. And in fact, that's pretty much all language. That's how all language works. We see something, we assign a vocalization to describe it, and from then on, we all describe the thing with that particular vocalization.

At one point in our collective history, there were no words. Zero words existed. Therefore, there was no language. There was no way to warn a fellow human to stay away from a snake, because "stay" "away" "from" "that" "snake" all did not exist. 

Now, let's explore a hypothetical. Maybe one day, two "cavemen" are out to gather food. One of the cavemen gets bitten by a snake, and his companion sees it. Shortly after, the caveman who got bit dies, and his companion makes the connection in his mind that "getting bit by that long creature equals death." So a week later, that caveman is gathering food with a new companion, and he sees a snake by a berry bush. His companion has never encountered a snake before, and therefore thinks nothing of approaching the bush and possibly disturbing the snake. So the first caveman grabs his companion, shakes his head, and says "ung!" Then he points to the snake and says "hurf," followed by making a chomping gesture with his mouth and saying "flas," and finally mimicking dying and saying "pevd."

I know, those words sound like gibberish, but in this particular instance, language has just been invented. The other caveman relates the vocalizations to the gestures and now understands that "ung" means no, "hurf" is a snake, "flas" means bite, and "pevd" means death. And each time these cavemen encounter a new object or experience, they assign new vocalizations to them, and share this knowledge with their tribe, and eventually they all have a fluent language they can use to express ideas to each other.

Then, somewhere down the line, this tribe encounters another tribe that all have their own assigned vocalizations. And whether by force or simple intermingling, one tribe's vocalizations bleed into the other. And now, instead of "pevd," they all say "glarb" to mean death. Or maybe the first tribe said "pevd", the second said "glarb", and then they combined the two and made "plarbd" the new word for death. They can both still choose to say their "proper" native words, or the new colloquial "plarbd." Either way, it's understood amongst everyone that if you hear the words "pevd," "glarb," or "plarbd," someone just died, or is about to die.

The thing is, once you have an established word within a language, it becomes redundant to use any other word in place of it. So, wherein the English language we have the word "very" to enhance a verb or a noun (i.e. "He was very tall" or "It was this very tree I feel from as a child"), we also have the urban colloquialism "mad." Now, "mad" already has a purpose within the English language - it's a synonym for anger. However, we also use it as a colloquial adverb in place of "very," as in "He was mad tall," or "I was mad angry the other day." That last one seems particularly redundant, as we've established that "mad" traditionally means "angry," so to say "I was mad angry" is almost like saying "I was angry angry." Anyway, the point being that the first person to use "mad" in place of "very" probably sounded like a buffoon to everyone else, until other people started doing it, and it took hold in the cultural lexicon and now it's so commonplace that most people don't care anymore.

That's how all slang works. Someone uses a colloquialism, and either by novelty or by genuine interest, other people start using it too. Sooner or later it gains enough momentum in common usage that it just becomes a part of every day speech that no one seems to notice or care that it once wasn't commonplace. There was a time when money wasn't referred to colloquially as "bread," and now it is, and no one cares.

Now, I've done my fair share of complaining about the stupidity of certain colloquialisms. When I first heard the word "guap" (money), I thought it was the dumbest, most nonsensical word ever, and I got angry when people used it. I lamented what the commonplace usage of the word guap meat for our collective intelligence, figuring that it signaled the oncoming breakdown of society into what the movie Idiocracy was predicting. And then, eventually, I just stopped caring. Because nobody else did. I could yell to the heavens that guap was a stupid word, and everyone who used it was stupid, and we're all going to devolve back into tribalistic nomads because of it. But it wouldn't have changed anybody's mind. The people who were going to use it were going to use it, no matter what I said. And in another 50 years or so (maybe less) I'll be dead, and the word guap might still be here, and if it is, no one will give a shit that I once thought it was a dumb word. Just like in 50+ years, when our generation has passed, the next few generations will continue to not care what some of us may have thought about the words "selfie," "bae," or "fleek." Or whatever other seemingly nonsensical colloquialisms spring up between now and when our hearts stop beating.

So yeah, people are going to continue to come up with words that may sound dumb to you. And they and their friends will start to say it a lot, and thanks to the internet, it will spread like wildfire. And you'll pull out your phone or tablet and go on Facebook or Twitter or whatever new social media platform comes out in the future, and you'll rage mash your keyboard in all caps to symbolize you screaming "SLENSNA IS A STUPID FUCKING WORD! STOP SAYING SLENSNA! SAYING SLENSNA MAKES YOU SOUND LIKE AN IDIOT!" And all the people saying "slensna" (which I'm assuming will be some kind of new colloquial for male ejaculate, like "I wanna slensna all up in you, gurl" or "He just slensnad in her face, bro!") will continue to say "slensna," because they really don't care about your opinion on their choice of vocabulary, because, honestly, who the hell are you? No, seriously, who put you in charge of what words reflect intellect and which words are "stupid"? When did we all get together and vote you in as "Dictionary Dictator"? Because I missed that election.

I want to begin this essay by clarifying that I am not a linguistics expert. I have not studied language in depth. I have read a few interesting books and such about the development of language, so I have a little more than a rudimentary understanding of how language develops over time, but I am by no means a virtuoso in the field of linguistics.

That being said, the above paragraph and the title of this essay are pretentious as hell. Sure, using a lot of "college words" made me sound as if I have a high intelligence, but that's not necessarily true. And while I am by no means "stupid," I certainly don't think I'm smarter than anyone because I know a few "big" words and can string a sentence together using a bunch of arbitrary rules some stodgy old dudes collectively agreed upon more than 100 years before I was even born.

Here's the thing - language is a tool. That's all it is. Whether verbal or non-verbal, language is a tool we use to convey ideas. We use language to express and communicate the thoughts that are in our heads to each other for better understanding and cooperation within our social groups. Since none of us are telepathic, and we're incapable of beaming our thoughts directly to each other via brainwaves, over the millennia we've been obliged to use vocalizations and bodily expressions to express our ideas outwardly. We've assigned specific vocalizations to specific things and called those vocalizations words. And that was our tool to express our ideas to each other.

Now, much like any other tool, the only improper way to use it is to not use it for its desired intent. Take a hammer for instance. A hammer is intended to bash things. Whether to bash a nail into a wall, or bash something open or apart, that's what a hammer does - it bashes. You wouldn't use a hammer to, say, spread butter on bread. That would be an incorrect use of a hammer. But so long as you're using a hammer to bash things, you're using it correctly. Well, it's much the same with language. Language is designed to express ideas. So long as ideas are being expressed, you're using language correctly. The only way to use language incorrectly is to not convey or express ideas.

The trouble is really when we get to written language. See, somewhere along the line in our history, we began to realize that maybe we need to convey ideas to people who were not in our immediate vicinity. And sure, I could pass the message on to one person, and then have them pass it on to another and so on and so forth, like a game of telephone, until it reaches the intended recipient of the message. There are two problems with that - one, as proven in the aforementioned "telephone" game, people forget parts of the message, or it gets mixed up along the way until it isn't the same message you originally intended, and two, maybe you don't want a bunch of different people knowing what your message was. So, to solve this issue, we invented written language. We scratched out a bunch of symbols, assigned those symbols a value in relation to our vocalizations, and used that to record our thoughts and ideas to be presented to someone far away.

But we also started applying "rules" to these symbols, in order to make sure that they best reflected and represented the vocalizations of the ideas we were trying to express. Now, this is not altogether a "bad" thing - these rules helped provide context, which is the absolute most important part of language. Not grammar, not syntax, but context. See, putting the written words in the right context is what's going to make the difference between the idea being understood, and the idea not being understood. For example:

"Coffee make you like good I it."

That is a terrible sentence. There is no context to it. Anyone reading that would have no idea what the person who wrote it was trying to say. However, if we rearrange it a bit:

"You make good coffee I like it."

Now it has context. Now it's coherent. Now it has done its job of expressing an idea. The problem for most people, it seems to be, is that that sentence doesn't stringently adhere to the "proper rules of grammar." According to those rules, it needs a comma. It needs to read:

"You make good coffee, I like it."

To separate the idea of "liking the coffee" from the idea of "you make good coffee." The point I posit to all of you have have stuck with me so far is: what fucking difference does it make? What difference does it make whether you separate those two ideas or not? Did you understand the point of the sentence any less the first time around because there was no comma in it? Or how about internet/text shorthand?

"R u okay? I hrd u hurt ur ankle."

Technically, under "proper English rules," that sentence should read:

"Are you okay? I have heard that you have hurt your ankle."

But, knowing the sound values assigned to each of the letters and words in the first sentence, your able to decipher the context of the sentence despite it not using "proper English." Just like you were able to decipher that I meant "you are able" in that previous sentence despite my using the possessive form "your" rather than the proper contraction "you're," which, by the way, at one point in history itself would have been considered poor grammar because you should be writing out the full form "you are." Using the contraction "you're" would have been considered lazy and poor form, and would have signified a lack of education on your part and marked you as having low standing in social rankings. In other words, at one point in history, just the simple act of writing "you're" would have made you look just as stupid as you claim the people who don't know the difference between "your" and "you're" are. Meanwhile, for efficiency's sake, we could all just start writing "ur" and have people figure out which form we meant in context, and things would be much simpler.

The thing is, language is always changing, always evolving. If you look at old English compared to middle English compared to modern English, you would swear that they were three entirely different languages. As time goes on, we realize that it's easier and more efficient to drop certain letters from words, or combine two words together, and so on and so forth, in order to express ideas more quickly, save money on ink, and maybe not have to strain our wrists writing so much. Because just like a hammer can be used to put a nail in the wall, it's far more efficient to just use a drill to put a screw in the wall. We develop new, more efficient tools, or ways of using tools, all the time. Why should it be any different for language? Why should we be obligated to adhere to some arbitrary rule of usage just because "That's the way it's always been done"? The other day, I saw a video of a guy spearing a drill into an apple and using the drill to rotate the apple as he pressed a vegetable peeler to it to remove the skin more quickly. Would you accuse that man of being dumb because that's not how you would traditionally use a drill? If not, then why would you accuse someone of idiocy because they didn't use language the way it's traditionally been used. Hell, have you ever read Shakespeare? He used improper grammar all the damn time, and most academics are unanimous in their contention that Shakespeare is a genius and a master of linguistics. 

Her mouth stood agape as the figure emerged from the shadows, creeping ever closer. She hastily backed away toward the hearth, using her arms to drag herself as her legs had given in to fear. This was not what she expected. This was not what was supposed to be. She knew the rule - whatever you do comes back three fold on you. But she had prepared for that. She had taken precautions. She had not done enough.

Perhaps the light of the fire would save her. Wraiths, as it is known, are creatures of the shadows, and they avoid light at all costs. Yes, she would be safe in the warm glow of the hearth fire. She would be sa...

She would be doomed. Doomed if she didn't pull herself from the floor and run. The Wraith would have her, and claim her for its master, with whom she had broken her bargain. She had to flee. But where?

She pulled herself from the cold, dirt floor and ran for the door. She knew what fate awaited her outside. Night had fallen. The sky had given way to darkness, and darkness was the home of the Wraith. Darkness was its power. She was no safer outside of the cabin as she was within. But her fate in here was certain. Out in the woods, she at least had a chance. 

She lit a torch and tossed it before the creature, a last ditch effort to keep it at bay. It reared back into the shadows with a hiss. She lit another torch and bolted through the door into the wild. If she could make it back to the village, she would be free. She would be safe. She would survive.

The sounds of nature around her shielded her. Life kept death at bay, after all. She knew this. She counted on this. The light of the moon and the stars, the call of God's creatures, all of these things were talismans she relied on to guard her as she made her way back to the village, back to him. Her plan to rid herself of him had been thwarted, and she detested the thought of going back, but a life with him was a far more acceptable fate then what lay behind her in that cabin.

It was not meant to happen this way. She had planned, meticulously, for months. Years, even. Studied every codex, memorized every spell, collected every talisman. She rehearsed every detail ten fold before the actual Summon, ensuring that every detail was just right to get exactly what she wanted, and nothing more. She didn't understand where she went wrong. She did it exactly as she had practiced a hundred times, a thousand times, a million times before. She missed not one beat, skipped not one line, nor missed one rune or glyph. It had been done as it had been meant to be done. So how did it all go wrong? Why had The Beast turned on her? Why was her husband not the one being hunted by a Wraith?

All at once, the song of the forest died. Not one bird to be heard chirping, nor one frog croaking. Darkness enveloped her, drowning her like an ocean of death. Only the light of her torch survived the tide.

She saw naught before her. In every direction she turned, not one shape made itself distinct. No trees, no clouds, no moon or stars. Even the length of her torch disappeared into the mouth of the darkness. Only its light remained. She felt the soft ground fade from beneath her feet. She floated in darkness. And then, a voice floated with her.

"My dear, did you really think you could outwit me?" the voice chided. "Me, who has seen both eternity and oblivion? Who knows not time? Who can be everywhere and nowhere at once? Did you really think you could break a bargain with me?"

She struck at desperation. "You broke the bargain first. You were meant to take that foul oaf of a man to whom I was forced to wed, to share a bed with. You were meant to free me of him. Those were the terms. You didn't hold your end, so I didn't hold mine."

Suddenly, a face emerged from the depth of the darkness. The face of her vile husband, but... different. Ghoulish. Not human. The face of The Beast.

"My dear, you've not figured it out, have you? You've not figured out your error. Yes, you asked to be freed from the man whose bed you were made to share, but you never specified how you were to be freed. You only asked that you no longer have to spend another day with him."

Her breath caught as she realized what The Beast was preparing to say.

"I'm doing exactly what you asked of me. I'm holding to my end of the bargain."

And with that, the long, spindly fingers of his pet Wraith reached out, somehow even darker than darkness itself, and poised itself over the light of the torch. The Beast's face merged back into the black.

"And now, if you would be so obliging, it is time that you honor yours."

The hand of the Wraith swallowed the light of the torch. 

The truth is that there's no such thing as "one great love." The human heart, spirit, soul, whatever you want to call it, is too big to be encapsulated or contained by just one love. We'll all meet hundreds of people in our lives, and we have the capacity to love them all equally.

Yes, we'll love some more than others. No our ability to love doesn't diminish each time we give love to someone. If I were to love you, it wouldn't lessen my ability to love one or even one million other people. And the same for you loving me. So no, there's no such thing as "one great love," because the truth is that all love is great.

And there's also no such thing as that "one perfect person." There's no magical set of personality traits, quirks or characteristics that makes a person "perfect" for you. Love isn't about finding your perfect partner. It's about finding someone whose imperfections you can overlook, because that person is worth the price of a few peccadilloes. 

So no, I'm not perfect for you. And I'm not the only person who will ever love you, nor am I the only person you could ever love. And I can't say that no one will ever love you more than I do. I can't say that no one will ever appreciate your beauty as I do, or that they'll never fight for you as hard as I will or love you with as much passion as I have for you. I can't promise you all of that. All I can say with any certainty is that no one will ever love you the way I do. That's all I can bring to the table - that I will love you in my own way from now until that isn't enough for either of us.

She isn't a force of nature.

   She is nature.

All of its beauty, its splendor, its majesty, meant for you to marvel at.

All of its spirit, wild and carefree, chaotic in it's order, meant not for you to hold.

    You cannot possess her.

    Only observe her.

    She is not yours.

You are hers. You belong to her whims. That is the only way she loves.

I've heard that there is nothing on earth left to be explored, that everything that could be discovered has been. There is no longer such thing as virgin territory. And that very well may be, but something discovered still has room to be explored for those who've never experienced it themselves.

To that end, I want to explore you. I want to discover your hills and plains, swim in your seas, run through your forests. I want to get lost in your splendor so I can find myself a home in it. I've not come to plant a flag upon you and claim you as my own, no, but rather have you claim me. I want to live inside you, live on you, live with you. I want to travel your curves, climb your mountains and descend into your caves. I want to discover every part of you, so that I become a part too.

I want to feel your warmth, your smooth, your rough, jagged edges. I want to become entangled in your jungles, taste your salt, your sweet, drink of your waters and bathe in them. I want to explore you, explore myself in you, discover myself in you, awaken myself in you, lose myself in you, find myself in you and release myself in you. I want to give myself to you, and take you into myself.

There are a great many exceptions I take with the issue of religion and belief. However, for the sake of brevity, I'll do my best to remain focused on the one specific topic I'm bringing up in this post, and will save some of the others for their own discussion at a later time.

Not too long ago, I was having a conversation with my cousin about depression. We both suffer from it, but at the time we were both seemingly in a good headspace where we could discuss the topic honestly without triggering an episode by highlighting the issue. Anyway, for a little backstory, this particular cousin of mine, while in high school, began pushing himself to lose weight and dropped over 100 pounds. But more than that, against all statistical odds, he's kept that weight off for over 10 years. Then, in his early to mid twenties, he developed a drug habit. For the sake of anonymity, I'm not going to go into to many details, but if you're reading this and you know me and you know my family, you've probably deduced by now who I'm referring to. Anyway, he eventually kicked the drug addiction as well, and hasn't gone back since. That's 2 major accomplishments where statistically the odds were against him, but he overcame those odds and is doing fairly well now (except for the occasional bouts of depression, bringing us back to the discussion he and I were having).

As we were talking about our depression, I highlighted these accomplishments for him. I told him that when he's feeling down and out, as difficult as it may be to do when you're in that headspace, he should try and remind himself of these accomplishments, and that he has plenty to be happy about. Don't worry, we're coming around full circle to the topic of this post right about now.

Later that night, after returning home, I saw he posted a Facebook post about our conversation. He mentioned how I reminded him of his accomplishments, how he lost and kept off 100 pounds and "by the Grace of God, overcame a drug addiction before it killed him." It was there, right at that sentence, that I had to restrain myself from jumping all over his status and marring it with a comment about my own personal hang ups with religion. I chose at that time to respect his post, but this is my blog and I'll make whatever points I want here. Anyway, his status reminded me of a quote from John Bradford:

"There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford."

The story is that upon walking past the gallows one day, John Bradford saw a criminal being led to execution, and knowing that the same evil feelings that led that man to his fate also rested deep within his own heart, the John Bradford expressed his appreciation for the grace of God keeping him from the same fate.

Only it wasn't the grace of God that kept John Bradford from the gallows, any more than it was the grace of God that got my cousin over his addiction. It was their own grace.

Even with the "temptation of sin" in his heart, John Bradford chose to ignore those temptations and led a moral and law abiding life. It was that choice that kept him away from the gallows. Just as my cousin worked HARD to overcome his addiction. He had to resist the urge to take his drug of choice until all of its chemicals were out of his system long enough for his brain to overcome its chemical dependency on it, and then fight the urge to go back every time he felt depressed. It was my cousin's own willpower that got him over his drug addiction. Not God.

And the same goes for all the other accomplishments (or failures) we achieve in life. You didn't graduate college because of God. You graduated because you worked your ass off for four years, got good grades, and earned your degree. God didn't drop that 50 pounds for you - that was the countless hours you pushed yourself to get on the treadmill and chose to eat healthy foods over delicious, delicious crap. And all of these accomplishments stem from your own willpower. Your own strength of mind, body and character. You achieved these things because you made yourself do it.

The problem seems to be that people who adhere to religion seem to err on the side of not giving themselves credit, because that would be pride and pride is a sin. Except it isn't - when Evagrius Ponticus listed the 8 evil thoughts that would later become the 7 deadly sins, he wrote one of them down as hubris. Hubris, not pride. It's a very important distinction to make, because hubris is an extreme. It's a sense of pride, self-confidence and accomplishment that reflects a break from reality. It's not pride, it's arrogance, kind of like how Kanye West feels he would be a major character in the Bible if it were written today. It's a delusional grandiose sense of self, a feeling that your accomplishments have greater value than they actually do. There's nothing wrong with feeling proud of your achievements, but when you get to that point where you begin to feel that your achievements are so awesome that you liken yourself to the focal point of the universe, then that's hubris. No one is that important.

I have dealt with depression for as long as I can remember. I'm talking early childhood here - I remember feeling out of place and disconnected from everyone since I was in grade school. Always feeling like I didn't fit in, didn't belong, like I would never really be happy. I had my first suicidal thoughts before I hit puberty. That's not something I've ever really shared with anyone. To be sure, I've never hidden the fact that I've had suicidal thoughts at some point in my life from anyone. I've just never really admitted until now that they started as early as 9 or 10 years old. And mind you, these weren't feelings like "I hate myself, I hate my life, I wanna die." It was more the "How great would it be to just be dead and free of these feelings forever?" variety. You can't be forced to deal with depression if you're not alive to feel anything at all.

It's a difficult thing to be dealing with at an age where your brain is already wired to making you feel like no one understands you. Adolescents already have the burden of dealing with insecurity and the uncertainty of who they are. Couple that with feelings of thinking that nobody cares nor will they ever, and it's no wonder that it seems like the highest rates of suicides are amongst teenagers (I am in no way claiming that to be statistically accurate, I am just saying that it seems that way). So it was a pretty spiritual experience to me when I first heard "Adam's Song".

On the surface, the song seems like the perfect song to pop on in order to convince yourself to go through with killing yourself. In fact, there was a bit of controversy when the song was released, because one of the survivors of Columbine, Greg Barnes, did have the song on repeat when he hung himself in the garage of his home. A tragedy to be sure, and my heart goes out to his family, but it speaks as a perfect example of what I mean when I say that on the song's surface, it almost seems to be a suicide anthem. It is not, however, and if you listen to the whole song carefully, you can see how it saved me from giving into those thoughts more times than I can count, and how it can do the same for you if you just really let the message of the song sink in.

The song has a very melancholy, slow-tempo beat and melody. It just plain sounds sad from the very first notes. And its lyrics perfectly embody the thoughts and emotions depressed people struggle with. From it's opening verse:

I never thought I'd die alone. I laughed the loudest, who'd have known?

What a perfect explanation of a depressed individual's mind. "I laughed the loudest, who'd have known?" This speaks to how easy it is to not even recognize that someone you know is suffering from what can be a severely debilitating mental illness. "He/she always seemed so happy. I mean, yeah, they were sad sometimes, but who isn't? I don't understand." But that's how it is with depression. Sometimes, we who suffer through it can be happy. Many times though, it's a facade. We appear happy, but in the back of our minds a little voice is telling us that we're not, and that we're not meant to be. Skipping ahead a few lyrics:

I'm too depressed to go on. You'll be sorry when I'm gone.

I've often heard people say suicide is a sign of weakness. There isn't a volume loud enough at which I can scream "Fuck you!" that would thoroughly satisfy my feelings of rage at that statement. It's easy to talk about strength and weakness of mind when you aren't being bombarded with thoughts of loneliness and worthlessness all the goddamn time. I've been fortunate enough to be able to power through those thoughts myself, but it has never been easy. And it doesn't symbolize a strength on my part, nor does giving in to those thoughts symbolize a weakness on the part of those who do. If there is one thing I cannot stand, it is a person who has clearly never had to deal with depression calling someone who has weak for giving into it, nor making claims of "all you have to do is ignore those feelings." Fuck you. If you don't know what it's like to suffer through something, don't condescend to me on how I should deal with it. Sorry, I'm digressing quite a bit, but that gets me so incredibly angry. Anyway, the song then proceeds into the chorus:

I never conquered, rarely came/16 just held such better days. Days when I could still feel alive, we couldn't wait to get outside. The world was wide, too late to try/The tour was over, we'd survived. I couldn't wait, til I got home/To pass the time in my room alone.

Notice how the chorus is written in the past tense? I never conquered. 16 just held such better days. I could still feel alive. Too late to try. All phrased in a way to represent resignation to death. This person has given up on hope - the happiest times of their life are over, and now all they have is the memory of that, and the feelings of depression. The second verse was the most powerful to me:

I never thought I'd die alone, another 6 months I'll be unknown. Give all my things to all my friends, you'll never step foot in my room again. You'll close it off, board it up, remember the time that I spilled the cup/Of apple juice in the hall. Please tell mom this is not her fault.

Another 6 months I'll be unknown. No other lyric in this song, or any other I've heard, better represents the feelings of loneliness and worthlessness that people who suffer with depression feel. The notion that they're so unloved and unimportant that after the initial shock of their death begins to wear off, they'll be completely forgotten. No one will care anymore. It will be as if they never existed. That is often how I, and others who suffer depression like me, feel all the time. Like we don't even exist. Or that we're so insignificant that we might as well not exist. This is where suicide comes from - either feeling so unimportant and unloved that we might as well not even be alive anymore, or that we're so unimportant and worthless that we might as well stop making ourselves a burden to everyone and take our own lives. Before I spin this memoir completely around and explain how "Adam's Song", despite the aforementioned depressing lyrics, is actually a song meant to inspire feelings of positivity, I want to harp on that point, so that you understand it. People struggling with depression don't "just feel sad". We feel, most of the time, completely and utterly hopeless, like there is no chance of ever feeling even the remotest sense of joy or happiness in our lives. That nothing will ever get better. That nothing about us will ever be good or right. Those are the thoughts and feelings we struggle with on a near constant basis. And while there are times of clarity when those thoughts fade away, and we can truly enjoy ourselves and kick the world's ass, and we are grateful for that, for the most part, we struggle. And it is not easy by any stretch of the imagination.

Anyway, the second chorus repeats much the same as the first, then there is an instrumental, and then we finally get around to the third and final chorus, and this is where we see that positive message:

I never conquered, rarely came. Tomorrow holds such better days. Days when I can still feel alive, when I can't wait to get outside. The world is wide, the time goes by, the tour is over, I've survived. I can't wait, til I get home, to pass the time in my room alone.

Notice now how the words change from the past to the present and future tenses? Tomorrow holds such better days. I can still feel alive. I can't wait to get outside. The world is wide. It speaks to the possibility of better things to come. What better message for coping with depression and thoughts of suicide is there? The bulk of the song, the first two-thirds, is all about how life sucks and the narrator wants to kill himself. But if you can just hold on, if you can just make it through those feelings of depression, you get to the final chorus and the feelings of hope. Things can get better. You can feel like there's a reason to live again. If you can just power through those dark thoughts, eventually they will fade away. Will they come back again? Absolutely. But if you can just try and remind yourself how you made it through last time, that if you just power through, it will get good again. That's how this song saved my life. It became my reminder that as bad as those feelings get, they will go away. And when I'm feeling really low, I'll throw on "Adam's Song" and I'll let Blink 182 save my life all over again.