Friday, November 27, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Imagine There Is No Heaven
This is an essay written by Salman Rushdie, I've recently (thanks to dredg, Religulous, and a few other sites and word of mouth conversations) been interesed in some of his work. His opinions don't reflect my feelings 100%, but just about share a similar understanding. Make of it what you will, I will not discuss this with anyone. I'm simply sharing.
Dear little Six Billionth Living Person: As one of the newest members of a notoriously inquisitive species, it probably won't be too long before you start asking the two $64,000 questions with which the other 5,999,999,999 of us have been wrestling for some time:
How did we get here? And, now that we are here, how shall we live?
Oddly - as if six billion of us weren't enough to be going on with - it will almost certainly be suggested to you that the answer to the question of origins requires you to believe in the existence of a further, invisible, ineffable Being "somewhere up there", an omnipotent creator whom we poor limited creatures are unable even to perceive, much less to understand. That is, you will be strongly encouraged to imagine a heaven, with at least one god in residence.
This sky god, it's said, made the universe by churning its matter in a giant pot. Or, he danced. Or, he vomited Creation out of himself. Or, he simply called it into being, and lo, it Was. In some of the more interesting creation stories, the single mighty sky god is subdivided into many lesser forces - junior deities, avatars, gigantic metamorphic "ancestors" whose adventures create the landscape, or the whimsical, wanton, meddling, cruel pantheons of the great polytheisms, whose wild doings will convince you that the real engine of creation was lust: for infinite power, for too easily broken human bodies, for clouds of glory. But it's only fair to add that there are also stories which offer the message that the primary creative impulse was, and is, love.
Many of these stories will strike you as extremely beautiful, and therefore seductive. Unfortunately, however, you will not be required to make a purely literary response to them. Only the stories of dead religions can be appreciated for their beauty. Living religions require much more of you. So you will be told that belief in "your" stories, and adherence to the rituals of worship that have grown up around them, must become a vital part of your life in the crowded world. They will be called the heart of your culture, even of your individual identity.
It is possible that they may at some point come to feel inescapable, not in the way that the truth is inescapable, but in the way that a jail is. They may at some point cease to feel like the texts in which human beings have tried to solve a great mystery, and feel, instead, like the pretexts for other properly anointed human beings to order you around. And it's true that human history is full of the public oppression wrought by the charioteers of the gods. In the opinion of religious people, however, the private comfort that religion brings more than compensates for the evil done in its name.
As human knowledge has grown, it has also become plain that every religious story ever told about how we got here is quite simply wrong. This, finally, is what all religions have in common. They didn't get it right. There was no celestial churning, no maker's dance, no vomiting of galaxies, no snake or kangaroo ancestors, no Valhalla, no Olympus, no six-day conjuring trick followed by a day of rest. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
But here's something genuinely odd. The wrongness of the sacred tales hasn't lessened the zeal of the devout in the least. If anything, the sheer out-of-step zaniness of religion leads the religious to insist ever more stridently on the importance of blind faith.
As a result of this faith, by the way, it has proved impossible, in many parts of the world, to prevent the human race's numbers from swelling alarmingly. Blame the overcrowded planet at least partly on the misguidedness of the race's spiritual guides. In your own lifetime, you may well witness the arrival of the nine billionth world citizen.
(If too many people are being born as a result, in part, of religious strictures against birth control, then too many people are also dying because religious culture, by refusing to face the facts of human sexuality, also refuses to fight against the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.)
There are those who say that the great wars of the new century will once again be wars of religion, jihads and crusades, as they were in the middle ages. I don't believe them, or not in the way they mean it. Take a took at the Muslim world, or rather the Islamist world, to use the word coined to describe Islam's present-day "political arm". The divisions between its great powers (Afghanistan vs lran vs Iraq vs Saudi Arabia vs Syria vs Egypt) are what strike you most forcefully. There's very little resembling a common purpose. Even after the non-Islamic Nato fought a war for the Muslim Kosovan Albanians, the Muslim world was slow in coming forward with much-needed humanitarian aid.
The real wars of religion are the wars religions unleash against ordinary citizens within their "sphere of influence". They are wars of the godly against the largely defenceless - American fundamentalists against pro-choice doctors, Iranian mullahs against their country's Jewish minority, Hindu fundamentalists in Bombay against that city's increasingly fearful Muslims.
The victors in that war must not be the closed-minded, marching into battle with, as ever, God on their side. To choose unbelief is to choose mind over dogma, to trust in our humanity instead of all these dangerous divinities. So, how did we get here? Don't look for the answer in storybooks. Imperfect human knowledge may be a bumpy, pot-holed street, but it's the only road to wisdom worth taking. Virgil, who believed that the apiarist Aristaeus could spon taneously generate new bees from the rotting carcass of a cow, was closer to a truth about origins than all the revered old books.
The ancient wisdoms are modern nonsenses. Live in your own time, use what we know, and as you grow up, perhaps the human race will finally grow up with you, and put aside childish things.
As the song says, "It's easy if you try."
As for mortality, the second great question - how to live? What is right action, and what wrong? - it comes down to your willingness to think for yourself. Only you can decide if you want to be handed down the law by priests, and accept that good and evil are somehow external to ourselves. To my mind religion, even at its most sophisticated, essentially infantilises our ethical selves by setting infallible moral Arbiters and irredeemably immoral Tempters above us: the eternal parents, good and bad, light and dark, of the supernatural realm.
How, then, are we to make ethical choices without a divine rulebook or judge? Is unbelief just the first step on the long slide into the brain death of cultural relativism, according to which many unbearable things - female circumcision, to name just one - can be excused on culturally specific grounds, and the universality of human rights, too, can be ignored? (This last piece of moral unmaking finds supporters in some of the world's most authoritarian regimes, and also, unnervingly, on the editorial page of the Daily Telegraph.)
Well, no, it isn't, but the reasons for saying so aren't clear-cut. Only hard-line ideology is clear-cut. Freedom, which is the word I use for the secular-ethical position, is inevitably fuzzier. Yes, freedom is that space in which contradiction can reign, it is a never-ending debate. It is not in itself the answer to the question of morals, but the conversation about that question. And it is much more than mere relativism, because it is not merely a never-ending talk show, but a place in which choices are made, values defined and defended. Intellectual freedom, in European history, has mostly meant freedom from the restraints of the Church, not the state.
This is the battle Voltaire was fighting, and it's also what all six billion of us could do for ourselves, the revolution in which each of us could play our small, six-billionth part: once and for all we could refuse to allow priests, and the fictions on whose behalf they claim to speak, to be the policemen of our liberties and behaviour. Once and for all we could put the stories back into the books, put the books back on the shelves, and see the world undogmatised and plain.
Imagine there's no heaven, my dear Six Billionth, and at once the sky's the limit.
Dear little Six Billionth Living Person: As one of the newest members of a notoriously inquisitive species, it probably won't be too long before you start asking the two $64,000 questions with which the other 5,999,999,999 of us have been wrestling for some time:
How did we get here? And, now that we are here, how shall we live?
Oddly - as if six billion of us weren't enough to be going on with - it will almost certainly be suggested to you that the answer to the question of origins requires you to believe in the existence of a further, invisible, ineffable Being "somewhere up there", an omnipotent creator whom we poor limited creatures are unable even to perceive, much less to understand. That is, you will be strongly encouraged to imagine a heaven, with at least one god in residence.
This sky god, it's said, made the universe by churning its matter in a giant pot. Or, he danced. Or, he vomited Creation out of himself. Or, he simply called it into being, and lo, it Was. In some of the more interesting creation stories, the single mighty sky god is subdivided into many lesser forces - junior deities, avatars, gigantic metamorphic "ancestors" whose adventures create the landscape, or the whimsical, wanton, meddling, cruel pantheons of the great polytheisms, whose wild doings will convince you that the real engine of creation was lust: for infinite power, for too easily broken human bodies, for clouds of glory. But it's only fair to add that there are also stories which offer the message that the primary creative impulse was, and is, love.
Many of these stories will strike you as extremely beautiful, and therefore seductive. Unfortunately, however, you will not be required to make a purely literary response to them. Only the stories of dead religions can be appreciated for their beauty. Living religions require much more of you. So you will be told that belief in "your" stories, and adherence to the rituals of worship that have grown up around them, must become a vital part of your life in the crowded world. They will be called the heart of your culture, even of your individual identity.
It is possible that they may at some point come to feel inescapable, not in the way that the truth is inescapable, but in the way that a jail is. They may at some point cease to feel like the texts in which human beings have tried to solve a great mystery, and feel, instead, like the pretexts for other properly anointed human beings to order you around. And it's true that human history is full of the public oppression wrought by the charioteers of the gods. In the opinion of religious people, however, the private comfort that religion brings more than compensates for the evil done in its name.
As human knowledge has grown, it has also become plain that every religious story ever told about how we got here is quite simply wrong. This, finally, is what all religions have in common. They didn't get it right. There was no celestial churning, no maker's dance, no vomiting of galaxies, no snake or kangaroo ancestors, no Valhalla, no Olympus, no six-day conjuring trick followed by a day of rest. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
But here's something genuinely odd. The wrongness of the sacred tales hasn't lessened the zeal of the devout in the least. If anything, the sheer out-of-step zaniness of religion leads the religious to insist ever more stridently on the importance of blind faith.
As a result of this faith, by the way, it has proved impossible, in many parts of the world, to prevent the human race's numbers from swelling alarmingly. Blame the overcrowded planet at least partly on the misguidedness of the race's spiritual guides. In your own lifetime, you may well witness the arrival of the nine billionth world citizen.
(If too many people are being born as a result, in part, of religious strictures against birth control, then too many people are also dying because religious culture, by refusing to face the facts of human sexuality, also refuses to fight against the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.)
There are those who say that the great wars of the new century will once again be wars of religion, jihads and crusades, as they were in the middle ages. I don't believe them, or not in the way they mean it. Take a took at the Muslim world, or rather the Islamist world, to use the word coined to describe Islam's present-day "political arm". The divisions between its great powers (Afghanistan vs lran vs Iraq vs Saudi Arabia vs Syria vs Egypt) are what strike you most forcefully. There's very little resembling a common purpose. Even after the non-Islamic Nato fought a war for the Muslim Kosovan Albanians, the Muslim world was slow in coming forward with much-needed humanitarian aid.
The real wars of religion are the wars religions unleash against ordinary citizens within their "sphere of influence". They are wars of the godly against the largely defenceless - American fundamentalists against pro-choice doctors, Iranian mullahs against their country's Jewish minority, Hindu fundamentalists in Bombay against that city's increasingly fearful Muslims.
The victors in that war must not be the closed-minded, marching into battle with, as ever, God on their side. To choose unbelief is to choose mind over dogma, to trust in our humanity instead of all these dangerous divinities. So, how did we get here? Don't look for the answer in storybooks. Imperfect human knowledge may be a bumpy, pot-holed street, but it's the only road to wisdom worth taking. Virgil, who believed that the apiarist Aristaeus could spon taneously generate new bees from the rotting carcass of a cow, was closer to a truth about origins than all the revered old books.
The ancient wisdoms are modern nonsenses. Live in your own time, use what we know, and as you grow up, perhaps the human race will finally grow up with you, and put aside childish things.
As the song says, "It's easy if you try."
As for mortality, the second great question - how to live? What is right action, and what wrong? - it comes down to your willingness to think for yourself. Only you can decide if you want to be handed down the law by priests, and accept that good and evil are somehow external to ourselves. To my mind religion, even at its most sophisticated, essentially infantilises our ethical selves by setting infallible moral Arbiters and irredeemably immoral Tempters above us: the eternal parents, good and bad, light and dark, of the supernatural realm.
How, then, are we to make ethical choices without a divine rulebook or judge? Is unbelief just the first step on the long slide into the brain death of cultural relativism, according to which many unbearable things - female circumcision, to name just one - can be excused on culturally specific grounds, and the universality of human rights, too, can be ignored? (This last piece of moral unmaking finds supporters in some of the world's most authoritarian regimes, and also, unnervingly, on the editorial page of the Daily Telegraph.)
Well, no, it isn't, but the reasons for saying so aren't clear-cut. Only hard-line ideology is clear-cut. Freedom, which is the word I use for the secular-ethical position, is inevitably fuzzier. Yes, freedom is that space in which contradiction can reign, it is a never-ending debate. It is not in itself the answer to the question of morals, but the conversation about that question. And it is much more than mere relativism, because it is not merely a never-ending talk show, but a place in which choices are made, values defined and defended. Intellectual freedom, in European history, has mostly meant freedom from the restraints of the Church, not the state.
This is the battle Voltaire was fighting, and it's also what all six billion of us could do for ourselves, the revolution in which each of us could play our small, six-billionth part: once and for all we could refuse to allow priests, and the fictions on whose behalf they claim to speak, to be the policemen of our liberties and behaviour. Once and for all we could put the stories back into the books, put the books back on the shelves, and see the world undogmatised and plain.
Imagine there's no heaven, my dear Six Billionth, and at once the sky's the limit.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Why this over MySpace and Facebook..
I've always been one to jot down my ideas and emotions down on paper, or blog about it, or whatever. I don't really like or even enjoy the glamor and hype that is MySpace and Facebook. When MySpace first launched, I was intrigued, but what sold me was the music aspect and the blogging. But nowadays everyone has a music page or no one gives two shits about blogs anyway.
When Facebook became the new toy everyone was ecstatic. I always felt that I didn't belong in the whole "social networking" hype, I mean, I listen to music, I enjoy talking to people, but that isn't my life.
Or maybe I'm just trying to hard to be the rebel, to fight against the norm.
Which can't be the case, 'cause I blog.
So why is it really that I don't reside on Facebook and have abandoned MySpace? I log on to check messages but that's what eMail was for, and yes I still do that lower case "e" juxtaposed to "Mail." I'm from the 90's (which isn't saying much), 56K was the tone of the birth of this new digital age. That sound still brings warm fuzzy feelings of signing on late at night, customizing my first website at the age of 12 (Maxpages?) given half of the content was Pokémon related (Pikachu and I go back.. Mine was named Piko, he liked to write with crayons). I'M OFF TOPIC!
I just don't feel comfortable. I will not lie, a good chunk of time is spent on the computer, but I'm not hitting the refresh button (Ctrl+R, F5, the 'Home' link) every 5 minutes on my MySpace page. The only time I did that was 'cause I was anxious for a response from this dude in Hicksville to wanted to be my band's bassist, he turned me down in case you were wondering.
Here, it's kind of fun.
Still some red tape, but I do what I want, and it's simple, which is why I liked Xanga until it became another MySpace doppelgänger.
I will stay here until I start working on my website, which will be my final move around the Internet for a permanent residence.
I guess we all just want our little corner so people can stop by, have a cup of coffee and chat.
When Facebook became the new toy everyone was ecstatic. I always felt that I didn't belong in the whole "social networking" hype, I mean, I listen to music, I enjoy talking to people, but that isn't my life.
Or maybe I'm just trying to hard to be the rebel, to fight against the norm.
Which can't be the case, 'cause I blog.
So why is it really that I don't reside on Facebook and have abandoned MySpace? I log on to check messages but that's what eMail was for, and yes I still do that lower case "e" juxtaposed to "Mail." I'm from the 90's (which isn't saying much), 56K was the tone of the birth of this new digital age. That sound still brings warm fuzzy feelings of signing on late at night, customizing my first website at the age of 12 (Maxpages?) given half of the content was Pokémon related (Pikachu and I go back.. Mine was named Piko, he liked to write with crayons). I'M OFF TOPIC!
I just don't feel comfortable. I will not lie, a good chunk of time is spent on the computer, but I'm not hitting the refresh button (Ctrl+R, F5, the 'Home' link) every 5 minutes on my MySpace page. The only time I did that was 'cause I was anxious for a response from this dude in Hicksville to wanted to be my band's bassist, he turned me down in case you were wondering.
Here, it's kind of fun.
Still some red tape, but I do what I want, and it's simple, which is why I liked Xanga until it became another MySpace doppelgänger.
I will stay here until I start working on my website, which will be my final move around the Internet for a permanent residence.
I guess we all just want our little corner so people can stop by, have a cup of coffee and chat.
Monday, May 04, 2009
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Whatever this is #01
Maybe it's my age, maybe it's not.
I was slightly eager this afternoon to come on here and write about my ideas and experiences about flatulence. Yes I know, I am in 5th grade. But then, I don't know what happened, I didn't. I opened the tab on my Google Chrome, typed in "b-l-o," selected the blogger site and voila, here I am. How do you spell "Voila"? actually? According to Google it's misspelled. I know it's French word.. right? I'm not in the mood to educate myself today on French clichés. Is "cliché" French? Shit, now I probably am.
I realized that I'm in a point in my life where I'm not happy, but it's ok. Anyone can vouch for me, I live for me. I live about me. I-- I just don't know anymore.
The reason this is titled "Whatever this is #01" is because I've realized that I have these moments a lot. I have a journal too, but, I just bundle it up with my vulnerabilities. Some may say that I don't need to have 2-3 blogs/journals. But they all exist for a reason.
One of my blogs is for my close friends, which will soon end for the number of my close friends are dwindling to a number where a blog isn't necessary to share my experiences.
My MySpace blog was kind of like this, but it closes me off, I don't know. Something about it feels restricting, and exposing. There's only so much I want to expose of myself.
As I mentioned there's my Journal. I love that thing. It's where I return to myself, who I know I am. I don't feel comfortable being myself around anyone, even my closest friends. I mean there are moments there, but, eh, what can I say?
This blog is freedom. Something about this feels me. I don't get why.
I am aspiring to be a physician. I don't know exactly what field to specialize in. That'll come to me I suppose, one day.
I'd like to take the time to discuss my personal relationship life..
I was slightly eager this afternoon to come on here and write about my ideas and experiences about flatulence. Yes I know, I am in 5th grade. But then, I don't know what happened, I didn't. I opened the tab on my Google Chrome, typed in "b-l-o," selected the blogger site and voila, here I am. How do you spell "Voila"? actually? According to Google it's misspelled. I know it's French word.. right? I'm not in the mood to educate myself today on French clichés. Is "cliché" French? Shit, now I probably am.
I realized that I'm in a point in my life where I'm not happy, but it's ok. Anyone can vouch for me, I live for me. I live about me. I-- I just don't know anymore.
The reason this is titled "Whatever this is #01" is because I've realized that I have these moments a lot. I have a journal too, but, I just bundle it up with my vulnerabilities. Some may say that I don't need to have 2-3 blogs/journals. But they all exist for a reason.
One of my blogs is for my close friends, which will soon end for the number of my close friends are dwindling to a number where a blog isn't necessary to share my experiences.
My MySpace blog was kind of like this, but it closes me off, I don't know. Something about it feels restricting, and exposing. There's only so much I want to expose of myself.
As I mentioned there's my Journal. I love that thing. It's where I return to myself, who I know I am. I don't feel comfortable being myself around anyone, even my closest friends. I mean there are moments there, but, eh, what can I say?
This blog is freedom. Something about this feels me. I don't get why.
I am aspiring to be a physician. I don't know exactly what field to specialize in. That'll come to me I suppose, one day.
I'd like to take the time to discuss my personal relationship life..
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Sick or Same?
Meh, I'm sick. It sucks the big one, and sucks it well. I haven't been sick since December, I thought I'd be fine, but I guess one should really read the warning labels when shooting crack off of a Samoan man whore's penal crevasse.
The weird part about it is it get's worse as time passes. Usually there's a schedule..
Day 1: Sore throat, possible coughing, light headed.
Day 2: Continuing from a preceding night of a slight possible fever and cold shivers, I wake up with a temperature of 101 and a runny nose like a broken dike (or dyke , if you get the metaphor), Eyes are watery, sore throat proceeds, and loss of ambition to do anything.
Day 3: 75% of symptoms clear up, temperature returns to 98.6.
Day 4 and on: For about 2 weeks I have a stuffy nose and a sore throat but can function and I finally learn to appreciate breathing until the process happens again a year or 2 later.
I'm relatively always healthy, other than emotional baggage (treatment: nightly dosage of about 6 ounces if scotch, divided in thirds within an hour and a full nights sleep), but it's only been 3 months, and this cold is weird. Since I'm studying medicine I've been trying to diagnose myself. So far, it's the common cold. Possibly a different strand of bacteria is the culprit, or who knows. It sucks, I can't function well, and I plain old don't like it!
I went to see Stephen Lynch's Three Balloons show in Wilbur Theatre in Boston MA. Always entertaining. He brought back some goldies like, "Special", "Grandpa", and the famous "Little Gay Robot." A lot of the final act was repeated from his previous tours, but it never gets boring. Besides his typical scoffing at the audience, guitar and singing, and random banter, there was use of a projector which aired small clips he directed for the tour as "ice breakers" or "intermissions" NO more than a few minutes long, it was different. Possibly utilized before, like on The Chappelle Show, or Important Things with Demetri Martin, but to use it as a prop for a tour, was brilliant.
Ok, I'm taking a nap, I'm not in the mood to do anymore. More on shit later. Fuck off.
The weird part about it is it get's worse as time passes. Usually there's a schedule..
Day 1: Sore throat, possible coughing, light headed.
Day 2: Continuing from a preceding night of a slight possible fever and cold shivers, I wake up with a temperature of 101 and a runny nose like a broken dike (or dyke , if you get the metaphor), Eyes are watery, sore throat proceeds, and loss of ambition to do anything.
Day 3: 75% of symptoms clear up, temperature returns to 98.6.
Day 4 and on: For about 2 weeks I have a stuffy nose and a sore throat but can function and I finally learn to appreciate breathing until the process happens again a year or 2 later.
I'm relatively always healthy, other than emotional baggage (treatment: nightly dosage of about 6 ounces if scotch, divided in thirds within an hour and a full nights sleep), but it's only been 3 months, and this cold is weird. Since I'm studying medicine I've been trying to diagnose myself. So far, it's the common cold. Possibly a different strand of bacteria is the culprit, or who knows. It sucks, I can't function well, and I plain old don't like it!
I went to see Stephen Lynch's Three Balloons show in Wilbur Theatre in Boston MA. Always entertaining. He brought back some goldies like, "Special", "Grandpa", and the famous "Little Gay Robot." A lot of the final act was repeated from his previous tours, but it never gets boring. Besides his typical scoffing at the audience, guitar and singing, and random banter, there was use of a projector which aired small clips he directed for the tour as "ice breakers" or "intermissions" NO more than a few minutes long, it was different. Possibly utilized before, like on The Chappelle Show, or Important Things with Demetri Martin, but to use it as a prop for a tour, was brilliant.
Ok, I'm taking a nap, I'm not in the mood to do anymore. More on shit later. Fuck off.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
The Fray - The Fray Review
The Fray released their new self-titled album February 3rd.
No instead of studying for my AbPsych exam like I should I'm going to toss back a beer and write this review (I need to do something else besides reading the same chapter over and over again to drill it in my mind, I did fine at first but after a few hours, one falls asleep.)
I've taken this long to type up the review because I was actually doing nothing but saturating myself in this album. At first, it was for the sole task to type up this review, but then, it became another article of clothing. I put on my shoes, jacket, hat, and this album. I've heard the same tracks over and over again, they still feel new (except 'You Found Me', for the fact that it was released months before the album was). This album was my wake up and me good night. It's not a fantastically brilliant, genius, adventure of an album. It's just a very good humble CD, which can be eaten with ketchup or as is, you can listen to it for a good listen or to help deflect your personal issues and soundtrack your life.
How should I do this? I don't want to bore anyone who might want to read this and do a full biopsy, track by track. I guess I'll do it the, "New York Times" way, or the "Paper" way, as if I was writing a paper for class.
Another thing, should I do this professionally or personally? I suppose I could be clever and make it professionally personal, but after tossing back a few vodka-tonics and 2 beers I'm a little too smooth to be taken rigid.
When I purchased The Fray's new album I went ahead and got their "premium-super-package-deluxe-o-max" release, with 4-5 digital bootlegs, a DVD, 4 postcards, and the album. I was a huge fan of their first (which I still need to repurchase due to carelessness) so I pretty much took a chance. I don't normally take purchase risks like that if it isn't Jason Mraz or Senses Fail (as everyone knows I' a huge fan of), since they have proven to me worth their effort. Something though, encourage me to just get the bundle, so I did. Without thinking twice, it arrives Feb 4th (probably 'cause I ordered the album late), the box itself is impressive. I'd supply a photograph, but I unfortunately haven't purchased that camera I've been trying to save up for.
I first watched the DVD (since I figured it was probably either a documentary of the album or footage of their past shows since this album is too new to be recorded), low and behold it was a documentary. Now this was weird, the documentary itself provided a sort of preface, or a kind of foreshadowing to how this album will feel, it's this overwhelming presence that exists while watching these dudes do what they do, and then hearing their finished product. You almost feel as proud as they do. This may have given me a biased opinion on the album but I don't care.
A few tracks are pretty personal, especially one written for his mother (or/and grandmother?) titled "Enough for Now," it's pretty fantastic, especially the way the chorus is sang, the elements in the background fills out well. What I love most is that it's a piano heavy song leave the singer [Isaac] to give that feel that it's mainly coming from him, not the band itself. Whether the song was written before the subject matter, it was still his to direct towards it.
My personal favourites are "Never Say Never," and "Ungodly Hour." What was weird about "Never Say Never" was actually listening to it next to someone I personally attached this track to. "Ungodly Hour" was the same, listening to it next to her gave that same, personal haunting effect, but overall, it's the track I relate to most regardless. It's my "Vienna" from How to Save a Life. I can honestly listen to this song anytime, I could never get tired of it, in fact, personally I wish it was longer, and that it went through more different phases, but the song is overall brilliant.
Musically it's pretty top notch. The drums aren't anything significant, neither are the guitars, but they do their job to do just what's needed, sometimes less is more, but this is not the case. The case was, from what I believe, is that they were completely satisfied with it, they felt that they could do nothing else to it and it was it. Which is absolutely fine. Personally I could definitely see more percussion and guitar going on. The piano is fine, especially with this type of music. I felt it did it's job over all, simple and clean. With a few tracks you could even hear how raw the recording was done. I love that, it felt homier and not too synthesized. "We Build Then We Break" is a fantastic album that actually demonstrate the strength all instruments have. I think it's totally fine in every aspect, with that harsh "industrial" feel, well executed.
The album is pretty good. It doesn't bore, it's soothing, exciting, smiling and crying. Give it a shot, well worth a listen.
No instead of studying for my AbPsych exam like I should I'm going to toss back a beer and write this review (I need to do something else besides reading the same chapter over and over again to drill it in my mind, I did fine at first but after a few hours, one falls asleep.)
I've taken this long to type up the review because I was actually doing nothing but saturating myself in this album. At first, it was for the sole task to type up this review, but then, it became another article of clothing. I put on my shoes, jacket, hat, and this album. I've heard the same tracks over and over again, they still feel new (except 'You Found Me', for the fact that it was released months before the album was). This album was my wake up and me good night. It's not a fantastically brilliant, genius, adventure of an album. It's just a very good humble CD, which can be eaten with ketchup or as is, you can listen to it for a good listen or to help deflect your personal issues and soundtrack your life.
How should I do this? I don't want to bore anyone who might want to read this and do a full biopsy, track by track. I guess I'll do it the, "New York Times" way, or the "Paper" way, as if I was writing a paper for class.
Another thing, should I do this professionally or personally? I suppose I could be clever and make it professionally personal, but after tossing back a few vodka-tonics and 2 beers I'm a little too smooth to be taken rigid.
When I purchased The Fray's new album I went ahead and got their "premium-super-package-deluxe-o-max" release, with 4-5 digital bootlegs, a DVD, 4 postcards, and the album. I was a huge fan of their first (which I still need to repurchase due to carelessness) so I pretty much took a chance. I don't normally take purchase risks like that if it isn't Jason Mraz or Senses Fail (as everyone knows I' a huge fan of), since they have proven to me worth their effort. Something though, encourage me to just get the bundle, so I did. Without thinking twice, it arrives Feb 4th (probably 'cause I ordered the album late), the box itself is impressive. I'd supply a photograph, but I unfortunately haven't purchased that camera I've been trying to save up for.
I first watched the DVD (since I figured it was probably either a documentary of the album or footage of their past shows since this album is too new to be recorded), low and behold it was a documentary. Now this was weird, the documentary itself provided a sort of preface, or a kind of foreshadowing to how this album will feel, it's this overwhelming presence that exists while watching these dudes do what they do, and then hearing their finished product. You almost feel as proud as they do. This may have given me a biased opinion on the album but I don't care.
A few tracks are pretty personal, especially one written for his mother (or/and grandmother?) titled "Enough for Now," it's pretty fantastic, especially the way the chorus is sang, the elements in the background fills out well. What I love most is that it's a piano heavy song leave the singer [Isaac] to give that feel that it's mainly coming from him, not the band itself. Whether the song was written before the subject matter, it was still his to direct towards it.
My personal favourites are "Never Say Never," and "Ungodly Hour." What was weird about "Never Say Never" was actually listening to it next to someone I personally attached this track to. "Ungodly Hour" was the same, listening to it next to her gave that same, personal haunting effect, but overall, it's the track I relate to most regardless. It's my "Vienna" from How to Save a Life. I can honestly listen to this song anytime, I could never get tired of it, in fact, personally I wish it was longer, and that it went through more different phases, but the song is overall brilliant.
Musically it's pretty top notch. The drums aren't anything significant, neither are the guitars, but they do their job to do just what's needed, sometimes less is more, but this is not the case. The case was, from what I believe, is that they were completely satisfied with it, they felt that they could do nothing else to it and it was it. Which is absolutely fine. Personally I could definitely see more percussion and guitar going on. The piano is fine, especially with this type of music. I felt it did it's job over all, simple and clean. With a few tracks you could even hear how raw the recording was done. I love that, it felt homier and not too synthesized. "We Build Then We Break" is a fantastic album that actually demonstrate the strength all instruments have. I think it's totally fine in every aspect, with that harsh "industrial" feel, well executed.
The album is pretty good. It doesn't bore, it's soothing, exciting, smiling and crying. Give it a shot, well worth a listen.
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