Where Angels Fall

"Wish I may, wish I might
Find my way through the night, Northern Light
With the hope, with the faith
Lead me all the way to where you are
Constant and true,
My North Star is you."

--Greg Simpson, EFY 1997: "Joy in the Journey"



Only Hope--Switchfoot/Mandy Moore

There's a song that's inside of my soul
It's the one that I've tried to write over and over again
I'm awake in the infinite cold,
But you sing to me over and over and over again.

So I lay my head back down,
And I lift my hands and pray to be only yours
I pray to be only yours
I know know: you're my only hope.

Sing to me the song of the stars,
Of your galaxy dancing and laughing, and laughing again
When I feel like my dreams are so far,
Sing to me of the plans that you have for me over again.

And I lay my head back down, and I lift my hands and
Pray to be only yours, I pray to be only yours
I know now, you're my only hope.

I give you my destiny,
I'm giving you all of me,
I want your symphony singing in all that I am
At the top of my lungs, [I'm giving it all]
I'm giving it back...

So I lay my head back down,
And I lift my hands
And pray to be only yours
I pray to be only yours,
I pray to be only yours
I know now you're my only hope.

"Falls On Me"

"Falls on Me"—Fuel, from Natural Selection (2003)

I've seen you hanging round
This darkness where I'm bound
And this black hole I've dug for me
And silently within, with hands touching skin,
The shock breaks my disease
And I can breathe

And all of your weight, all you dream,
Falls on me, it falls on me
And your beautiful sky, the light you bring
Falls on me, it falls on me

Your faith, like the pain, draws me in again
She washes all my wounds for me
The darkness in my veins I never could explain
And I wonder if you ever see, will you still believe?

Am I that strong to carry on?
I might change your life, I might save my love
Could you save me?

[And all of your ways, all you dream,
Falls on me, it falls on me
And your beautiful sky, the light you bring
Falls on me, it falls on me

Am I not strong enough to carry on?
I might change your life, I might save your world
Could you save me?]

In Your Honor

This song was inspired by the dramatic, heart-wrenching ending to the Mickey-Mouse-meets-Final Fantasy mix, Kingdom Hearts. If Blogger would let me, I'd find a way to post the video clip, but I can't. So for those interested in seeing the ending, email me at matthew_aj@turbowave.com, because otherwise the song doesn't make too much sense. And don't worry: if you don't plan on playing it, go ahead and spoil it for yourself. Because for the next five months, or at least until Kingdom Hearts II comes out in March, I will be making frequent references, and it might be nice to know what the heck I'm talking about. Thank you.

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"In Your Honor"



After all I had become, this rundown face finally cried
But it was only one last time: It's okay, I know you tried
And as we drifted worlds apart, all I had to get me through
Were your stars and memories, and my heart's honor for you
You are all I want right now...

Chorus:
If I fall down from the sky, with meteors I will fly
And shower you—oh, don't you cry
I will float in with the tide on that beach where we said goodbye
I will find you, oh please don't cry.

Will we turn back the time, and be back where last night began?
Then I'd take us both away—I would love you, 'cause now I can
So as we drifted worlds apart, can you recall I promised you
That in your honor I'd try my best and fight my way back home to you
And you are all I need right now...

Repeat Chorus

After all that time, looking for the light
It was you

I'll fall to you, I'll fall to you
I'll fall to you, I'll fall to you (x4)

[Kairi! Remember what you said to me before? I'm always with you, too. I'll come back to you—I promise!]

I will float in from the sunrise
Or maybe fall down from the skies

[I know you will...]

Watch for me.

Commentary on "A Hole in My Jacket"

When I did this for my last Share Around, my teacher noted on my paper saying,"I am so very impressed with this first draft!" Later when I talked with her, she continued by saying, "I couldn't believe that it was only your first draft. It was very good." In all my time of knowing her, that's the best compliment I've ever gotten from her on something I've written.

Last year, I began developing a character for a project I had entitled "Finding Kevin", a story about an insecure teenager named Kevin Sanders. My friend Ben Hansen gave me permission to use his dark, childhood past in Canada for Kevin’s background, and he was very willing to be a model so to speak for Kevin. (In fact, in pure coincidence, we both separately came up with the name “Kevin”.) I only knew as far as the actual story would go that Kevin’s insecurity would be founded on Ben’s isolated childhood, that Kevin would find meaningful friendships, and then some kind of conflict would come around and threaten those new friends, possibly in the manner of a school shooting or gassing (I know about those dangers because they were threats to the school from people I knew when I went to Canyon View, Jr. High). After a while, I gave up on "Finding Kevin" because it sounded too cliché.

Two months ago, I read an autobiographical book called The Burn Journals by Brent Reynolds, which gave an account of the author’s attempt to commit suicide by lighting himself on fire, and his mental, physical, and social recovery. What struck me about this book was that it was an extremely vivid story of a teenage boy “on the emotional edge”, which made for powerful reading. Around that time, I was also toying with a concept that I got from something I was learning in my psychology class: the idea that perhaps I could create a character who was so insecure and unstable that he had gotten to a point where mentally he could only act on his impulses and rely on his first sensory details to make choices, and how he would deal with this sort of mental illness. And I knew that if I did write such a story, I wanted it to be as refreshing and as sharp as The Burn Journals.

And so when I was listening to “A Rush of Blood to the Head” by Coldplay one day, I slowly started seeing a story forming in my head of a teenage boy who has the “impulse illness”, and in a sudden rage that sparks when his girlfriend cheats on him, and he begins going on a rampage that includes threatening the school with a Columbine incident. I wanted to make it real, and the only thing I could come up with for the girlfriend situation was once again use Ben’s real life experiences…which inevitably led me back to Kevin Sanders, who by this time seemed to have developed and grown while I was away.

For the story to be as cutting edge as The Burn Journals, I wanted first person, present tense narration from Kevin, but later in the story as the police begin to investigate I would have a third person narration about a physiatrist on the scene. I also wanted to show only through Kevin’s actions just how insecure and unstable he is. So I decided to start the story with Kevin examining a hole in his jacket and relating it to his messed up life (one day while contemplating where to begin, it was as if I could keep hear Kevin begin his own story by saying “There is a hole in my jacket”), reflecting on his acute self-awareness—just like Ben. In some ways, Kevin is Ben. But then Kevin wouldn’t be as real to me, and therefore I could never work with him. So I started digging around, and slowly I began to see that the most important things about Kevin were from my own personality. So I guess you could say that Kevin has Ben’s life, but as if I was living in it.

"A Hole in My Jacket", from A Rush of Blood to the Head

There is a hole in my jacket.

Funny thing, holes. If you stop to think about it, you realize that you’ve got no clue where half the holes you get in your clothes come from. You look at it kinda strange, seeing the floor through a skylight in your favorite shirt or your best jacket, and you say to yourself, “Where the heck did this stupid thing come from?” It’s a little detail that’s on you, in plain sight, but people don’t see it when they take their first look-see at you. And you’re afraid to point out the hole because you feel like people will look at it and go, “What is wrong with you?”

Ward must notice that I’m not paying attention to him again, because he breaks in the middle of his Anglo-Saxons to say, “Sanders! Pull out a paper and at least act like you are taking notes.”

I look up to meet Ward’s face. The room lights are glaring off of his glasses. I swear he got those glasses cut out straight from a thick, dusty window. His look is so hard that he could be right in front of my desk, pushing me further and further back into my chair with his own withered and pruned-up hands. Ward is completely covered in wrinkles. He doesn’t act as old as he looks. I don’t think that he’s a day over fifty, but he looks old enough to have taught budding amoebas in the primordial pool how to be dinosaurs just like him. I don’t think that there is a surgical miracle in existence that can take out his wrinkles. Maybe someone should try to iron him.

I only nod to him as I open up my yellow notebook and take a pen out of my pocket. Ward then continues on with his lecture to the class—“class” meaning anyone who hasn’t been numbed out of their darn minds. Much as a vulture looks over an African savannah, he looks over the class with his neck slowly stretching out like he’s a turtle.

I make sure that my entranced gaze is towards him, but my mind goes down different roads than the blue and black lines on the map Ward is frantically tracing on the board. My thumb and index finger find the hole in my jacket. I stick my finger through the hole, then pull it back out. In, then out. In, then out. I trace around the hole.

Why does there have to be a hole in my jacket? It seems terribly unfair. I didn’t ask for a hole. In all my sixteen years of living I have never cared for holes. And I am pretty sure that they don’t care much for me, because I don’t think I remember ever having one.

I hear Shawn talking again behind me. He always talks to Mike. They don’t get caught very often in this class, but they do in all the others that they have together. So they talk in first period, world history, with Mr. Ward. They are always laughing at each other. Always laughing at something the other said. It drives me up a wall every time. It makes me want to turn around and demand to know just what on earth could possibly be so funny about world history.

Everybody else has a friend that they are always with. Someone they are always together with. It’s like they are twins that were separated at birth and they want to spend the rest of high school catching up on each other’s lives.

I wish I had someone like that for me. But I don’t. I’ve decided that some people are just born with friends and some people aren’t. I’m one of those people who aren’t. Sometimes I don’t mind that I sit outside on the lawn at lunch with my brown paper bag all by myself, and it feels like I’m miles away from civilization. But sometimes I get up and leave in the middle of class and go to the bathroom and try to choke myself with my belt because I’m so sick of being all by myself with my brown bag at lunch. Sometimes I wish so hard that I had friends up the wah-freakin’-zoo because nobody gives a fudge about Kevin Sanders.

But it’s just another thing I go without. Heck knows I don’t deserve friends anyway. They are just another thing that I am missing. Something else that’s wrong with me. A little detail that people don’t notice when they first take a look-see at me. Just like the hole in my jacket.

My whole life is a lot like that, actually.

Red Bullets of Courage

Verse I:
This one goes to war tonight
This one comes to join the fight
This one makes the bad things wrong
And all good things right
And they are watching us tonight
It’s a brave and haunting sight
If I can just get past this pain
Then I’ll be your light.
Some men fight for love of blood
And some men fight for love of war
But men that fight for loving you
Are worth a whole lot more.

Chorus:
I don’t know where I’m from and I’ve gotta find a drum
‘Cause I’m marching, until I’m through
All these bullets flying to me, I pray they are never gonna catch me
‘Cause I’m marching, and I march for you
I am afraid of losing again but I will press on
Refusing to burn out, to burn out.

Verse II:
This one dies in war tonight
This one lives for just one fight
This one makes the bad things wrong
And all good things right
Call the boys to watch tonight
It’s a red, courageous sight
Sound the bugle for me now
I’ll give all my might
‘Cause this flame is burning now
And I’ll get it right somehow
‘Cause I know it’s not when I fall out
But when I stand up despite my doubt.

Repeat Chorus

Bridge:
Courage isn’t about how many fights you win
It’s the times you get beat but you get back in
You are afraid of losing again but you press on
Refusing to burn out, holding your dog-eared dog tag
You are battle-scarred, you are wounded
But you are refusing to burn out, to burn out

There are veterans for peace, and veterans for love
Men who died for love are enough
And maybe,
Someday we will finally be
Veterans and heroes to someone
Maybe.

This one goes to war tonight
This one comes to join the fight
This one grows to be a man
And becomes a light.