They say if it still hurts, you still care.

Should a man see only power, he becomes a wolf — prowling, hunting and stalking the elusive game. Recognition is his prey and people are his prizes. His quest is endless. As a result, he who sees only power is degraded to an animal, an insatiable scavenger, controlled not by a will from within, but by luring from without.

Should a man see only pleasure, he becomes a carnival thrill-seeker, alive only in bright lights, wild rides, and titillating entertainment. With lustful fever he races from ride to ride, satisfying his insatiable passion for sensations only long enough to look for another.

Seeker of popularity, power, and pleasure. The end result is the same: painful unfulfillment.

Only in seeking his Maker does a man truly become man. For in seeing his Creator man catches a glimpse of what he was intended to be. He who would see his God would then see the reason for death and the purpose of time. Destiny? Tomorrow? Truth? All are questions within the reach of the man who knows his source.

-Max Lucado

“Once there was an ugly barnacle. He was so ugly that everyone died. The end.”

-Patrick Star

Bismark was nearly as long as Titanic and twice as heavy because of its deck armor, conning tower, etc. Titanic was an empty eggshell, Bismark was solid to the core.

Put on a pot of coffee and watch this documentary when you have a free 1:32:32. It’ll blow your mind.

Mid-semester I read a short story by Ambrose Bierce for one of my required english courses, a story called “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” that had a profound effect on me. It wasn’t until later that I discovered the 1962 French film adaptation that ended up changing my general outlook, my frame of mind, my point of perspective, and my entire life from that moment on. It was a hammer between the eyes and I remember driving my white beat-up 92′ Caravan to work at Coke with tears in my eyes because of the ironic and obvious spiritual comparisons between my life and the impact of the story.

Read it for yourself or watch the film if you wish to draw your own conclusions. I find both totally inspiring and incredibly powerful. The film is one of the most beautiful pieces of cinema I’ve ever seen.

People tend to ask me “why Owl City?” and it’s not the kind of answer I can explain in thirty seconds during a loud meet-and-greet while the opener is soundchecking in the same room two people are trying to converse in. Even if you and I had half an hour and a quiet coffee shop, it’s not that simple.

Make of it what you will. After reading the story or watching the film, I always walk away feeling like I’ve gotta start living… an emotion I believe we all need to feel more often than we do.

Each time I think about it, the character in the story is me… and all I have left is a little bit of time.

That’s why Owl City.

But that isn’t really the point.

Me and Daniel stayed in a hotel in Hollywood for a week with an awkward window between the bathroom wall and the outside hallway so we taped the room’s complimentary bathrobe over the glass and it was awesome. Lee told me he was about to drive a Durango and I almost died. That was before some kid called some dude a fartknocker and I tried not to laugh because I’m a 4th grader.

My ears are bleeding and one of my eyes feels like a screw. Cecelia Nuthatch has the most annoying voice in the entire universe and Rex uses a pickup truck as a skateboard when the cops are chasing him. So many hours in LA studios. So many new songs and lyrics that won’t leave me alone or let me sleep until they’re finished. People listen REALLY loud and we drive a weird car that smells like salsa. So many things. One place makes me wanna crawl in a hole and die. There was a ton of people at the parade but they all ran away and that old lady had super round glasses but she had a kind face and a voice like butter. It’s weird how there are pentagrams in a kid’s movie and when those crows ate that creepy old guy, I thought about how scary it was when I was a kid upstairs while my mom was driving home from work and my dad was in the shop. It’s supposed to be super cold outside but it’s not and now I just wanna create a thirty-acre lake or maybe 170 jobs or a decent night’s sleep. Places are funny. My friend Rachel and I got coffee here one time. She is nice to me.

Goodbye.

The more I turn pages, the more I realize this guy was one of the leading lights and greatest heroes of the twentieth century, a man who stood up to Hitler. He was a theologian whose unshakable faith and moral courage led him to boldly confront the monstrous evil that was Nazism. The book reads like a narrative, ostensibly a philosophical commentary on a man so steadfast in his faith, nothing could make him flinch — something I personally find remarkable. In contrast to what he calls “cheap grace,” Bonhoeffer lived and died believing true grace influences all aspects of a Christian’s life and requires a willingness to sacrifice everything to God. Ethics were not reduced to a set of rules to him.

Beyond Bonhoeffer’s personal story, the biography sheds light on some of the circumstances and personalities that led Germany from the defeat of WWI to the atrocities of WWII, which has kindled sort of a new fascination for a kid who’s never received good grades in history classes. It’s like learning about it again for the first time, only far less vexing, as was my experience of twentieth century history in high school.

And so it seems whenever I’m not working on music, I’m reading, or flying in airplanes, or both. The better the book, the shorter the flight.

It’s called “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy”

This is a good thing.

If you are a creative person, perhaps you suffer from the same thing I do which has me constantly wondering if “I’ve still got it” after enough time has passed without either conception of completion of a given idea to suggest I’ve still got something exciting up my sleeve. Of course that’s nonsense and sometimes exactly what you NEED is this kind of amnesty granted by your intuition in order to move forward. You can run yourself into the ground if you never take a breath, the same as you can get into trouble if you let repose bloat and morph into lethargy or apathy. I hate the word “bloat.”

All this to say, I’m finally in the zone, totally focused on the next few rungs of the ladder and I’m excited to take in the view when I finally make it to the top. The thought is compelling and at this point, forward movement is almost as inspiring as the realization or accomplishment of a given creative idea itself. This means I am writing new songs like a madman, all of which I am terribly excited about. I’ve never collaborated much with outsiders (namely producers or co-writers) except for co-writing with my friend Matt and this new record marks a flying leap in that direction — because it’s new to me, because the thought is compelling, because I’ve never really done it before. I’m also mixing the new Dispatch record and it’s incredible.

As far as songwriting, and in the grand scheme of things, I’ve discovered an AMAZING network of veins and the coal mining down here is incredible. There are endless passages and shafts dying to be explored, hidden ducts and channels, tight squeezes, treacherous ledges, secret stairs and underground waterfalls; one could spend forever down here and the map keeps growing bigger by the day.

Thinking about a new record summer/fall of 2012. If you need me before then, I’ll be underground.

A s’more (sometimes spelled smore) is a traditional nighttime campfire treat popular in the United States and Canada consisting of a roasted marshmallow and a layer of chocolate sandwiched between two pieces of graham cracker.

The word “s’more” appears to be a contraction of the phrase, “some more.” While the origin of the dessert is unclear, the first recorded version of the recipe can be found in the publication “Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts” of 1927. The recipe is credited to Loretta Scott Crew who reportedly made them by the campfire for the Scouts. It is unknown whether the Girl Scouts were the first to make s’mores but there appears to be no earlier claim to this snack. Although it is unknown when the name was shortened, recipes for “Some Mores” are in various Girl Scout publications until at least 1971.

Various confections containing graham cracker, chocolate, and marshmallow are often sold as some derivative of a s’more, however they are not necessarily heated or served in the same shape as the traditional s’more. The Hershey’s S’mores bar is one example. Pop-Tarts also feature a s’mores variety.

HOW GIRLS MAKE S’MORES:

01. Break graham cracker in half
02. Place four squares of Hershey bar on graham cracker half
03. Toast marshmallows golden brown
04. Place toasted marshmallows on Hershey bars to melt chocolate
05. Top with other half of graham cracker and eat gingerly

HOW BOYS MAKE S’MORES:

01. Eat Hershey bars
02. Burn marshmallows black
03. Eat marshmallows
04. Throw graham crackers and gooey marshmallow leftovers at girls
05. Howl with laughter

Check it out here.

And now here I sit alone in my living room, exactly the way I left it, like a veteran home from the war. The bus is gone, the gear is in storage, I don’t have to ask my tour manager where the green room is or what time soundcheck is or whether I’m going to get a shower tonight or not. I don’t have to search the corners of the room for outlets, I don’t have to live out of a suitcase anymore.

For the moment, I’m not sure what to do with myself. There’s always a transitional handful of days that inevitably follow the end of a long journey, and when it clocks in at over half a year, it’s a big change of gears. It’s like a tall glass of jet lag with a slice of bittersweet lemon.

It’s the end of an era.

But soon I find myself sitting around a table in a noisy restaurant with friends and family who ask me how the tour went, what I did, what I saw, how I felt, and what the whole thing was like. I watch the anticipation/expectation spread across their faces and it’s then that I feel a little disappointing because the life of a tourist is rarely as glamorous as it seems, which means life on tour doesn’t really make for five-star storytelling. So I usually just sigh and smile and order another lemonade and say, “Oh, it was a lot of time driving and waiting in airports.”

Life on tour is not the kind of thing one can really talk about because you really have to be there. It’s a difficult thing to describe and few people understand it themselves, let alone possess the patience or resolve to be understanding of it. I’ve learned this the hard way.

The thing I think I miss the most when I return home after a long journey is the soothing lull and rumble of bus tires on asphalt directly underneath me. I miss the muffled hum of the generator and the way the engine sometimes coughs as it carries me hundreds upon hundreds of miles through the night. I’ll have to figure out how to sleep in a bedroom again.

I miss the frivolous banter and the familiar voices in the green room or on the other end of my in-ears. I miss the way the backstage rooms shudder and shake and things rattle and move while Jackson is EQing bass tracks in the house. I miss not knowing where we are or where we’re going or where the next show is, but loving the ride because in so many ways, life is about the journey and not the destination. I miss the new faces and the energy in the audience and the spirit in the room so thick you could cut it with a knife. I miss the sparkle and shimmer and the dull roar of the opening band playing downstairs and the thunderous applause after each song. I miss the butterflies, the dull ache of nervousness before the intro. I miss the camaraderie and the companionship and the mutual support, the jokes, the chatter and the lightheartedness. I miss knowing there’s a job to be done and taking it seriously, viewing the appointed task as something you get to do rather than something you have to do.

Life on the road is a whirlwind, a wild roller coaster with all kinds of unexpected twists and turns and tunnels and sudden drops, but it’s such a magical, extraordinary thing to experience that, given the chance, I wouldn’t choose anything else.

Endless love and thanks to my incredible band and crew for the past six months of memories I will cherish forever. I’d be nowhere without them.

And infinite acknowledgment and appreciation to each individual person who bought a ticket, came to a show, fought traffic to find the venue, listened to me sing for 95 minutes, applauded before the encore, bought a record, handed me a letter, brought cookies for the crew, waited outside the bus, asked for photos, and a million other gracious acts that made my heart melt over the past six months around the globe.

Silent gratitude is no use to anyone so I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Two years ago, if you told me, “Adam, you can quit your lackluster job, you can stop going to school for nothing and focus 100% of your time and energy on your true passion in life, you can drop everything and start writing songs, recording albums, playing shows, making friends, and ultimately devote yourself to the ONE thing in this world you’ve ever been good at…”

I would’ve never believed you, but here I am, and I don’t deserve an ounce of the grace I’ve been given.

And so for giving an undeserving shy boy from nowhere a shot at reaching out and taking hold of the dream he never thought was reachable, I thank you. Thank you with every fiber of my being.

Glory to God.

It feels good to be home.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 (NCV)

Inspired by the majesty of a tropical island, this particular cruise yacht boasts an endless assortment of lavish luxuries. Cabana beach huts, a deck swimming pool fed by a waterfall and a river spanning the length of the ship, and even an entire volcano. It comes packed with VIP rooms, an arcade, a gym, lounges, spas, and even a helipad.

At the stern is a retractable beach deck which allows easy access to the sea itself, and of course, all sorts of other water activities such as fishing, sunbathing, wake boarding and jet-skiing. The whole concept is pure genius and the result looks even better.

www.yachtislanddesign.com

Of course there are a slew of obvious comparisons to be drawn between Eragon and The Lord of the Rings, but I’ll be the first to admit that any epic fantasy of my own (written as a fifteen-year-old high school grad) would inevitably bear TONS of comparisons to other renown literary works in the same vein, especially given I’m an admirer of the genre. This is not criticism but merely the positive pointing out of similarities. Nothing but props to Christopher Paolini. The story is a flowery masterpiece of prose, plot and composition and I find myself wishing I too had the tremendous talent and resolve required to craft such a complex work of art. The guy is a genius.

Action, legend, adventure, mystery, revenge, danger, suspense, heist, peril, uncertainty, folklore, mythology — all savory toppings I prefer on a masterfully constructed literary sandwich of epic proportions.

I’ve acquired a taste for epic fantasy and Eragon, by all means, is hitting the spot.

Every year about the time the autumn leaves start falling, I dig Bambi out of my bookshelf because of a chapter concerning two introspective oak leaves entitled, Winter. It’s poignant and beautiful and I wilt and smile at the same time because Salten’s words benevolently remind me that life is fragile and even the smallest moments should be cherished dearly. I like how subjective and sobered I feel after reading the chapter. I can’t wait to read it to my son or daughter someday when he/she inquires about the subject of death (and even more excited to further explain that death isn’t the end for followers of Christ) but that’s another story.

A brilliant radio dramatization of the chapter recorded in the late 50′s by Ted Strasser:

The leaves were falling from the great oak at the meadow’s edge. They were falling from all the trees. One branch of the oak reached high above the others and stretched far out over the meadow. Two leaves clung to its very tip.

“It isn’t the way it used to be,” said one leaf to the other.

“No,” the other leaf answered, “So many of us have fallen off tonight we’re almost the only ones left on our branch.”

“You never know who’s going to be next,” said the first leaf. “Even when it was warm and the sun shone, a storm or a cloudburst would come sometimes and many leaves were torn off, though they were still young. You never know who’s going to be next.”

“The sun seldom shines now,” sighed the second leaf, “and when it does, it gives us no warmth. We must have warmth again.”

“Can it be true,” said the first leaf, “can it really be true that others come to take our places when we’re gone, and after them still others, and more and more?”

“It is really true,” whispered the second leaf. “We can’t even begin to imagine it, it’s beyond our powers.”

“It makes me very sad,” added the first leaf.

They were silent a while.

Then the first leaf said quietly to herself, “Why must we fall?”

The second leaf asked, “What happens to us when we’ve fallen?”

“We sink down.”

“What is under us?”

The first leaf answered, “I don’t know. Some say one thing, some another, but nobody knows.”

The second leaf asked, “Do we feel anything, do we know anything about ourselves when we’re down there?”

The first leaf answered, “Who knows? Not one of all those down there has ever come back to tell us about it.”

They were silent again. Then the first leaf said tenderly to the other, “Don’t worry so much about it, you’re trembling!”

“That’s nothing,” the second leaf answered, “I tremble at the least thing now. I don’t feel so sure of my hold as I used to.”

“Let’s not talk anymore about such things,” said the first leaf.

The other replied, “No, we’ll let be. But — what else shall we talk about?” She was silent, but went on after a little while. “Which of us will… which of us will go first?”

“There’s still plenty of time to worry about that,” the other leaf assured her. “Lets remember how beautiful it was, how wonderful, when the sun came out and shone so warmly that we thought we’d burst with life. Do you remember? And the morning dew and the mild and splendid nights?”

“Now the nights are dreadful,” the second leaf complained, “and there is no end to them.”

“We shouldn’t complain,” said the first leaf gently. “We’ve outlived many, many others.”

“Have I changed much?” asked the second leaf shyly but determinedly.

“Not in the least,” the first leaf assured her. “You only think so because I’ve got to be so yellow and ugly. But it’s different in your case.”

“You’re fooling me,” the second leaf said.

“No, really!” the first leaf exclaimed eagerly, “believe me, you’re as lovely as the day you were born. Here and there may be a little yellow spot, but it’s hardly noticeable and only makes you handsomer, believe me.”

“Thanks,” whispered the second leaf, quite touched. I don’t believe you, not altogether, but I thank you because you’re so kind. You’ve always been so kind to me. I’m just beginning to understand how kind you are.

“Hush,” said the other leaf, and kept silent herself, for she was too troubled to talk anymore.

Then they were both silent. Hours passed.

A moist wind blew, cold and hostile through the treetops.

“Ah, now,” said the second leaf, “I…”

And then her voice broke off. She was torn from her place and spun down.

Winter had come.

Minneapolis
Chicago
London
Hong Kong
Osaka
Nagoya
Tokyo
Seoul
Manila
Jakarta
Honolulu
Flagstaff
Oklahoma City
Omaha
Waukesha
St. Louis
Louisville
Cedarville
Allentown
Sayreville
Norfolk
Washington DC
Cleveland
Grand Rapids

So much flying.

My friend Anna let me borrow the first book of the Inheritance Cycle series by Christopher Paolini. Nothing like a solid high fantasy to get lost in while sitting in the sky. I’m excited to start reading. I’m excited to begin imagining.

See you soon.

Inside was a large metal rivet.

My favorite place in the whole world is Canal Park in Duluth, Minnesota, and possibly my favorite thing in the whole world is the Duluth Aerial Lift Bridge perched on the harbor. The view of Sydney Harbor from inside the dentist’s office in Finding Nemo is a spitting image of Duluth, but perhaps a bit more “industrial” and a lot more Midwestern. Duluth is my safe haven, my sanctuary, if you can call it that. There’s a certain flower garden in the hills overlooking Duluth I might attempt to convince my future bride to marry me in (if she’s not into Howth, Ireland). But that’s another story.

What was this mysterious rivet? It didn’t dawn on me until I read the handwritten note included in the box.

A very sweet girl from Virginia somehow knew of my love for the bridge and actually took the time and energy to contact a local Duluth gift shop to purchase an ACTUAL rivet taken from the bridge during maintenance (the last one the shop had), and ultimately place it in my hands via the hands of Mat Kearney.

Totally amazing. I screamed like a girl.

She also included this:

I now own a piece of my favorite thing in the entire world. How many people can say that?! How am I supposed to talk about this without smiling from ear to ear? This is a big deal.

Dear Ashely from Alexandria, Virginia — thank you from the bottom of my heart for the rivet. I truly appreciate your thoughtfulness and am honored to be the recipient of such a treasure. You have the gift of encouragement.

Hugs,
Adam

First, a bit of preface.

Without delving too deep, Piper defines what he calls Christian Hedonism as the way by which “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him,” furthering the idea that man’s chief end is to glorify God. He goes on to explain the following:

We all make a god out of what we take the most pleasure in. Christian Hedonists want to make God their God by seeking after the greatest pleasure — pleasure in him.

-John Piper

Beyond that, I’ll let you read the book for yourself and draw your own conclusions if you find yourself searching for deeper meaning. The subject of this blog entry is not about Christian Hedonism directly, but rather about a quote within “Desiring God” that I found ASTOUNDING and haven’t been able to get out of my mind since.

Piper writes:

In “The Simple Life”, Vernard Eller delights himself in some of the great parables of SØren Kierkegaard. One of his favorites is the parable of the lighted carriage and the starlit night. We could also call it the crisis of Christian Hedonism. It goes like this:

“When the prosperous man on a dark but starlit night drives comfortably in his carriage and has the lanterns lighted, aye, then he is safe, he fears no difficulty, he carries his light with him, and it is not dark close around him. But precisely because he has the lanterns lighted, and has a strong light close to him, precisely for this reason, he cannot see the stars. For his lights obscure the stars, which the poor peasant, driving without lights, can see gloriously in the dark but starry night. So those deceived ones live in the temporal existence: either, occupied with the necessities of life, they are too busy to avail themselves of the view, or in their prosperity and good days they have, as it were, lanterns lighted, and close about them everything is so satisfactory, so pleasant, so comfortable — but the view is lacking, the prospect, the view of the stars.”

This parable BLEW MY MIND. What a potent dose of perspective these words are! And furthermore, which man am I? Am I MISSING OUT completely on the beauty that lies around me because I choose to live in a temporal existence occupied with the pleasures/necessities of life versus an awareness and enjoyment of God?

Piper summarizes:

Eller comments, “Clearly, ‘the view of the stars’ here intends one’s awareness and enjoyment of God.” The rich and busy who surround themselves with the carriage lights of temporal comfort, or the busy who cover themselves with troublesome care, cut themselves off from what Kierkegaard calls “the absolute joy”:

What indescribable joy! — joy over God the Almighty… for this is the absolute joy, to adore the almighty power with which God the Almighty bears all thy care and sorrow as easily as nothing.

Wow.

If you really mull this over, it’ll have you tossing and turning in no time — and the more you think about it, the more profound it becomes.

I’m a thinker, not a talker. Mind pictures, exemplums and allegories hit home. This one was a grand slam.

I’m unbelievably excited about this.

So in a way, musings like these have purpose. Or at least challenges I can benefit from.

Twenty years from now I imagine I’m going to feel like I missed out on something profoundly heartfelt when I look back on this pivotal scenario and the way it played out. Even if I loosen my grip long enough to steal an introspective moment out on the balcony, somehow I believe I’ll catch myself thinking, “I wish I’d been more assertive!” instead of idly letting life play out scene-by-scene in front of me. Maybe that’s just preconcerted apathy but my brain tends to harbor some deep-rooted necessity to keep reminding me that this fateful meeting could happen at any moment (and of course it could) but more importantly, that I be ready and waiting in the wings to handle it the way I’ve already anticipated.

It’s annoying but I’m so glad it doesn’t work like this. The caveat is that there’s NOTHING to be ANTICIPATED, or rather, it’s not my job to worry about it.

Call it the common dwellings of reticent people but at the end of the day, it’s all smoke and mirrors. My mind is a house standing against a background of sheltering trees that cannot protect it from every whip of wind that bends quasi-romantic intellectual faculties into deviations of straight lines; rigid projections of backbones that show signs of curving or arcing over time.

But I don’t worry about it.

But more than this, I’m deeply comforted to know that no amount of absentminded woolgathering can reconstruct “the plan” into something that I must practice or rehearse for, even if I wanted to. It will be unplanned, unpremeditated, extempore, unconstrained, unforced, and the thought becomes more beautiful the more I think about it (or perhaps the more I try not to).

Above and beyond all of this, I take great joy and comfort in knowing my Savior has it all blueprinted and planned down to the tiniest detail, and that my job isn’t to blubber and worry about the design — but to hush. To be concerned with the principles of morality, servanthood, discipleship and character, and ultimately, to trust.

For what is faith without trust?

And so you sit and think.

But you CAN’T think about things like this so you distract yourself!

And it actually works.

Wow, I feel better already.

Goodbye now to the breakdown between thought, emotion and behavior. Farewell to faulty perception and inapt actions and feelings. Goodbye to withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion. Good riddance to an overwhelming sense of mental fragmentation!

Life is way too short to worry about the past, and I for one, don’t have time for anxiety.

If you need me, I’ll be in my fuzzy turtleneck with a bowl of cereal staring out the kitchen window. I like the way the rain sounds against these old bay windows.

I’ll also marry you.

The song is absolutely beautiful. It’s soothing and quiet, romantic and molasses-sweet, but brave and confident, even shy and vulnerable — all at the same time. It’s a flowery patchwork of ear candy and I’m humbled to have been asked to leave my fingerprint on it. Big hugs and many thanks to Rachel Taylor and Trevor Kelly. May God use the song to whatever capacity He wills.

Check it out.

itunes.apple.com/us/album/all-about-us-feat.-owl-city

I spotted her perched on a sidewalk bench under a streetlight and away we strolled.

Melbourne was still a new place to me, bursting with so may intricacies and marvels that my wide eyes undoubtedly labeled me TOURIST to all observant bystanders. But I didn’t mind; the shy smile on my face gave me away. A steady current of city nightlife carried us down several traffic-choked veins before dumping us out onto a winding riverside footpath with front row seats to a shimmering skyline.

It was dazzling, one of those rare occasions in life you wish you could bottle up and refrigerate for later to relive its wonder. The Yarra River pulled fancy dining boats draped in twinkle lights downstream at a lazy pace as hushed laughter and the clinking of crystal spilled out from somewhere onboard. We sat by the water and drank in the evening. A few brave seagulls chose to spend their time on the sidewalk eyeing our ice cream versus hovering over the food court stealing trash or whatever it is they do. Everything in front of my eyes appeared 20% clearer, the night was deep, the world looked brighter than I’d remembered it a few hours before, the dull city ambience hummed clean and pure in my ears and I had to remind myself to keep breathing because it was all too breathtaking. There are moments in life when you find yourself wishing you were somewhere else (for whatever reason, good or bad), but on this night, there was nowhere else on the planet I would’ve rather been. It was flawless. So we kept walking.

Tall stone pillars lined our side of the river and burst big plumes of fire up into the sky on the hour. Over thirty feet away, I could feel the flames warm on my face and it felt good in the brisk night air. I’m a Minnesota boy and she was an Australian girl but we both felt the cold burn in our fingers so we moved on and continued walking. The ornate hotel fountain we found was glorious. How do they get water to jump across the room from one spot to another in perfect streams of green and blue? We explored a treelined avenue washed in soft lavender, a network of garden paths under a heavy scent of flowers — everything seemed to twinkle and sparkle in the low light and it was all so captivating.

I liked the way we both knew the same words but said them so differently. There’s something quite musical about Australian accents, I’ve always thought so.

We slowly made our way back across the bridge, back through the city the way we came, and suddenly we were back where we started, saying shy goodbyes although it felt like we’d only just said hello. And then just like that, she was gone.

In the elevator on the way back up to my room I remember taking a deep breath and thinking, “Wow… I’m never going to forget this night.”

Antisocial

Up Ship

Kookaburra Knockout

Gold Coast Swimmers

Emo

Whirligigging

COME AT ME BRO

Beachcomber

Mr. Roo

Legz

Tradition

Unimpressed

Sky City

Scott Stapp

Gandalf

SOON

Tamborine Mountain

I hope a furious kangaroo runs out onto the fairway while I’m playing nine holes of golf and challenges me to a fight of bare fists.

I’d own that silly little plant-eating marsupial like a boss.

We’ll be seeing ya!

It is critical to distinguish between these two — one savior, the other archnemesis; one shining day, the other blackest night; one yang, the other yin, except in this case there’s no yang in the yin and no yin in the yang. But anyways.

It’s a well-known fact that an octopus can camouflage itself so that it looks like rocks or other underwater features of submarine landscape. The secret behind their color capability is a special skin cell called a chromatophore. Each chromatophore consists of three bags of pigment and by squeezing or expanding these bags, octopuses can change the color displayed by each cell, allowing millions of subtle combinations. Sneaky little menaces.

So if you thought they are always the same color then you obviously don’t know the first thing about octopuses.

How would you sum up an octopus in three words?
Vicious, vicious killers.

How about nine words?
Vicious, vicious killers who know exactly what they’re doing.

Can’t legal means be brought to bear?
Unfortunately, no. Octopuses, as they well know, are technically outside the reach of our laws and judicial systems.

What can I do?
It’s natural, after learning about what octopuses are really all about, to want to help in the effort to defend against them, but I’m afraid that it may already be too late. Despite this, there are some things we can do, and the valiant power of the human spirit (and the American Spirit!) are things that give us hope even in these times of woe. Here are some ideas, drawn from the playbook of real-life:

01. Spread the word.

02. Put up signs in your neighborhood explaining what’s wrong and how we’ve been misled by our own government (it’s not unpatriotic to criticize the government — what’s unpatriotic is not to care). Here are some slogans you can use for signs:

“The octopus is upon us!”

“Don’t leave your baby with an octopus.” (because it might eat the baby)

03. Be on the lookout for an octopus coming to get you — and if it comes to get you, give it “a little grief.”

07. Again, use common sense. Would you leave your son or daughter with a known killer? No? Then why would you leave him/her with a known octopus?!

I think it’s obvious by now that the Octopus Question has no solution, only more questions. But it’s still the case that octopuses are as dangerous as terrorists in most U.S. cities, and in many, twice as dangerous (twice as many limbs to use for evil purposes). But somehow, even though the information is right in front of us, most of our countrymen prefer to snuggle with their wives and kids and thus ignore the ominous threat that looms before us as though it wasn’t even there at all. Classic.

Ignorance may be bliss but it is also a grave problem because knowledge is power, and with power comes responsibility. Responsibility to act. Responsibility to fight with courage and valor. Responsibility to fellow man. An octopus has eight tentacles and knows it how to use them. So, too, must we know how to use the tools that God has given us: our friendships and relationships; our brains and skills; our ability to create technologies that will stand the test of time. This fight will not be easy, nor will it be waged on the cheap. But it must be fought, and, indeed, won. The Octopus is not the Hydra: cut off its head and two more will not appear. It is merely a question of whether we can marshal our resources and act with sufficient speed. It’s true, we are down — but not out.

Are we our brother’s keeper? Only time will tell.

And it was all… just a dream…

She was trying to teach me how to dance and it was really awkward but I didn’t care because she was beautiful and exquisite and endearing and I was so in love with her, I didn’t care about being embarrassed. The walls were painted pitch black, the lights were low and there wasn’t any music playing but there were throngs of people everywhere and a man with a beard kept asking me a lot of questions. He reminded me of Gandalf the Grey and I smiled inwardly because I’m a dork. I sang and played my heart out that night and I just couldn’t contain the sparkling cocktail of wide smiles and bright eyes that poured out of me because things felt so right and pure in that definitive moment.

She surprised me. She was waiting for me. She threw her arms around my neck and I held her close and felt her giggle with happiness, the kind of joy you can’t hold back no matter how hard you try. But why would anyone try?

The street bikes and motorcycles were a bit much but that didn’t really bother me. It was the right place for them, actually, the right kind of setting so I guess that made me sort of the oddball. I remember people yelling at each other over airwaves and cell phones and it was pretty intense for a moment, but you know me, I just tried to stay out of the way. I’ve never liked confrontation. I remember she had a pretty summer dress on and a flower in her hair and I remember the way her perfume made my insides freeze and spiderweb crack like dry ice before bursting into a million tiny crystal shards that clawed the rungs of my ribs and burned butterfly prints on the inside of my chest. I loved her and I couldn’t wait to see her because it had been so long since I’d held her in my arms. She was the last thing I expected to happen to me, but there she was and it made me believe that pure and sudden bliss was not a rare anomaly. Moving on is simple, it’s what you leave behind that makes things difficult.

Then the lights clicked off as the last box was loaded into the truck and I said a handful of warm goodbyes to people I’d never met before. A nice pair of parents were there with a car and I remember driving home, exhausted, drained, dog-tired, but quite content and exhilarated. It was dark outside and the hum of interior cab noise made me sleepy as the moon followed outside my window. I remember holding hands with her in the dark.

Now there’s something sharp in my wrist and I think it’s the same thing inside my mouth. There’s a sharp coiled cable running from the light to the wall and a soft place to put things nearby but I never really use it. I’m always afraid I’m going to forget something important when it’s time to leave, and there are few things worse than realizing you’ve lost something for good, whatever it may be. I’ve never been fond of leaving, except for perhaps leaving bittersweet the warehouse after a long day or the dentist’s chair after a tortuous hour. Those kinds of departures are enjoyable and I always tend to drive faster and sing louder post-appointment, but I feel like there are many kinds of “leaving” and most of them tend to be tiresome.

Sometimes I purposefully forget to turn the lights out when I leave so that when I return home, it feels like someone is expecting me. Sometimes it’s nice to feel expected, the same as it’s nice to feel unreachable from time to time. We always talked about doing so many things, going so many places, seeing and feeling and tasting so many flavors of emotion and scenario, some of them we did in fact experience, others we just never got around to. It feels distant and hazy and pretty miserable at times, but all the more reason to cling tight to what is true and real and sustaining. Missing someone is like a bad dream you can’t wake yourself up from.

But the glass shatters in a cool way and I love imagining what it would be like to repel off the side of skyscrapers in Hong Kong or fight crime in Gotham City or spend all my weekends as two different people. Laura is buying clothes somewhere in LA right now and I need to figure out how to enjoy the atmosphere because it would be silly to wake up anxious. There are so many places to hide out here, so many pieces of driftwood and bits of palm trees that cleverly conceal the most beautiful fish. It’s easy to think they might go largely unnoticed but I’m sure this is not the case. I just do my own thing and try not to bother anybody.

It’s funny how time can manipulate and stretch itself like a contortionist. I feel like yesterday was this afternoon. Now I’m lying on a deep royal purple and there are eyes everywhere but it’s a thrilling feeling. Meetings float like battleships on the near horizon and I have to take sleeping pills at night or else I’ll miss everything. I like these quiet secret moments unless of course I must fly somewhere or wake up early. I took the tour and it seemed like a lovely place, full of good people and great ideas but I always catch myself thinking about what lies just beneath the surface. Sometimes I prefer not to know.

Wow.

A billion emotions are buzzing in and around my mind like a psychiatric beehive institution, a crawling traffic jam of bedlam and chaos. Except these thoughts aren’t cute fuzzy little bumblebees with wooly mittens and happy faces, these are awkward, disoriented hornets that aren’t sure where to go or how to get there. It’s an unsettling feeling and sometimes I’m just a lightheaded worker bee who can’t find a place to land. Everything is spinning and my heart beats twice as fast as it should, making tonight an emotional triathlon of which I’m underprepared and totally undertrained for. I’m not entirely sure what’s happening and I don’t believe I could stop this race if I wanted to. My two-stroke heart is pumping double-time and I’m running faster than my legs can carry me, but the scary thing is that I’m not sure where the finish line lies, or if I’m even pointed in the right direction.

The color grey was charming and the blue was intoxicating but I didn’t care; both were so unbelievably gorgeous, I just sat there stunned, staggered, debilitated.

What do I do? Where do we go from here? Everything is split down the middle and I need more wisdom than I thought.

It was a sweatshirt-weather kind of night in California and I remember the way those big green and blue letters stood out like bright neon monoliths in the deepening midnight. She had a red convertible waiting for us in the parking lot and the top was down… actually I don’t think the top even worked at all because I remember us talking and laughing about what we would do if it started raining on us. It was the most natural thing in the world, yet I might be a liar if you asked me now. I remember the stars were quiet and faint because of the layer cake of light pollution above us but still, everything about that night was stunning, by every and all definitions of the word. I could feel the glow of the dash on my face, the flutter of the music in my ears and the swift whip of the sea air in my hair. We put our hands up to see how long we could hold them out before they became ice cubes and I loved feeling wind-tossed because it felt like horizontal sky diving. We raced along the coast in the darkness and wound up on a secret beach somewhere with apple cider and a blanket. I still can’t believe what happened was real because everything about that night was too eloquent for words. I don’t recall speaking or listening, I just remember feeling, processing, sensing, experiencing, living deeply, breathing it all in.

How I wish I could return to that night sometimes. Just for fun, just for a few minutes, just now and again.

Still, that scarf had a charm of its own and that makes me feel a bit better about things.

Surreal.

I always wonder who worked these fields and how many beautiful stories were left untold and thus forgotten in the void of time. It’s rather a world within the world, untouched it seems, by the handprint of fashion and popularity, but honestly, I prefer things that way. I crave for the countryside, unspoiled, uncontaminated by consumerism and tourism and humanity in general. There’s a raw innocent purity amongst the trees, I can feel it. Not like the big city — dirty and noisy and full of vile immorality. Should I have more time on my hands these days, I might settle down by the sea someday. I’d crank out the bedroom window, heavy on its old hinges, and let the soothing sound of water against the sandy banks lull me to sleep. Somehow I imagine falling asleep wouldn’t be as tough, and for an insomniac, that’s a delightful notion. Better still, in a boat. Not a fancy yacht or a cruiser, just an old fishing boat or something to explore sand bars and tiny island chains with. My collection of sand dollars could always use another addition and during such afternoon excursions that slowly burn into dusk and then midnight, I might bring a fuzzy blanket along and settle down onto the floorboards between the seats and get a good glimpse of the starry sky. In goes the anchor and it’s suddenly magical. I could spend forever out here, alive, alone, content and happy.

But that’s a fantasy more or less. Right now there’s a closet full of people staring at me, watching me type out letters that form words which read off a screen they cannot see from where they are. I wonder if they know I’m talking about them. They are the ghosts that lived here long before any of us chose to call it home. I don’t want to look in their direction but the more I try to appear casual, the more I’ll bet they can tell I’m pretending. They’re not scary or eerie or alarming, they’re just sad. I want to help them.

Sometimes I get sad after I watch something melancholy and it’s strange how that emotion doesn’t leave you immediately the way laughter or some other intake of information tends to do. Sadness stays with you like a predator shark locked on a sunfish. It’s hard to shake it and sometimes it seems the more you attempt to avoid it, hide from it, you might successfully call off the chase for a bit but then the second you see something or hear something or whatever, you’re RIGHT BACK AT IT AGAIN. So annoying.

There’s a little country pond across the gravel road and Dad used to tell me snapping turtles lived at the bottom. He said he caught one the size of a trash can lid once and I believe him. I think about that place all the time, whenever I wanna disappear from RIGHT NOW and escape to somewhere peaceful and quiet — somewhere away from the things of man. I dislike big cities because I detest feeling like a helpless consumer who can’t do anything himself. You have to pay to go anywhere or do anything and that gets old really fast to me. No independence, too many people, so much noise, so much sad corruption. Above all else I crave for innocence and purity and even though it’s rarely around, it’s indeed right in front of my eyes and the trick is to see it. So what am I waiting for? It’s time to stop waiting. Because loving the world is the same as hating God. The equation is obvious. It’s time to change.

It’s the same way for my living room. I’m not sure if I should even be writing about it here and now, because of the reminders my mind will associate with that room… bittersweet, but more bitter than sweet. Let’s call it what it is.

I can feel the tubes burning, glowing orange in their rows. It’s louder in here but it’s a good loud, the kind you can feel in your chest, the kind that moves emotion, kindles imagination and maybe even pricks a stinging trickle of joyful tears. The rails on all sides make this square feel like the Giant Tortoise yard at Reptile Gardens in Rapid City, South Dakota but it’s not the kind of place you should feel uncomfortable about, it just is what it is. The hard work is done and there’s something about the Black Hills that soothes the mind. Dinosaur Park perched over the skyline. I just like thinking about it.

And so men and women sit on slouched couches pressed against every wall in the room and the ceiling lights are never that good but that doesn’t matter because we’re merely visitors and don’t intend to stay until shortly after dark. My voice always seems to split down the middle like a hairline fracture and I remember hearing a pretty girl whisper in my ear, “Aw, listen to your tired little voice!”, but that was a long time ago and I’d rather forget it. Friends enter and leave the room all the time but that’s what I like about it, it’s bustling with life but it’s busy in a good way. I’ve never been into parties or receptions or functions or ANY social affairs AT ALL for that matter, but there’s something different about these hot summer nights. There’s a kind of camaraderie, a mutual trust among people who spend a lot of time together — and I’ve grown fond of that because it feels right and good and pure and honest. Unlike a strange wedding reception I obviously don’t belong at, I feel like I’m supposed to be here, and that’s a comforting thing.

Curtains are closing by themselves now. Lights are switching off, tires are singing their nightly songs and my eyelids are filled to the brim with liquid iron. I met a lot of nice people tonight and it was lovely because this was my first time in the mountains and I wasn’t under the weather. Gone now are the sad sounds of the disappointed city, so full of unhappy people, the watchman’s wristwatch, the tired taxi crawl, the sirens that make me wince with their sharp echoes that never seem to land. Here now are the sounds of slumber and stillness and comfort and whimsy and dreams and dust and reverie.

I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined the summer weather in New York. A pretty girl in a white dress told me she thought I was cute and I blushed all the way home.

It’s a devotional Bible with bits and pieces of insight written by Max Lucado before and after each chapter. A few nights ago I was snuggled into my bunk on the tour bus about to begin the book of 2 John when Lucado’s well-worded preface sparked a new flicker of perspective like a kitchen match in a dark room.

Here’s what he wrote:

The single most difficult pursuit is truth and love.

Truth and love. Love and truth. Never one without the other. To pursue both is our singular task.

A compelling notion but one I’ve never thought too deeply about until now; the idea that truth and love must walk hand-in-hand. Everyone strives to love by all capacities the word includes, and naturally that’s an beautifully admirable thing to pursue, BUT how powerless is love without TRUTH? Applicable to my own life: how often do I worry about living a pure life of love if/when I’m not living the way God has commanded me as a follower of Christ? By all means, I am guilty.

So often I’ve heard quoted something cliche and melodramatic like, “all you need is love” in response to so many of life’s toughest questions and hardest struggles, but sometimes it’s easy to lose focus of that truth-shaped hole, that essential missing puzzle piece that’s required in order to glimpse the bigger picture which demands both love and truth, the latter being life lived as God has commanded.

I spent the night tossing over it and it seems all roads lead to one conclusion. Ultimately, my prayer is that Jesus continue His ever-present work in my heart, change me from the inside out, unearth and kill off those roots of sin, doubt and immorality so that I may better reflect Christ, so that I may better serve Him, so that I may better understand and live the life of love He’s called me to live via truth.

I’m so excited about this.

To Him be glory, greatness and power.

“I ask you that we all love each other. And love means living the way God commanded us to live. As you have heard form the beginning, God’s command is this: Live a life of love.”

2 John 5-6

Twirling hand-in-hand, ballroom dancing with the love of her life. Instead of the old tank top and sweatpants she’d put on before bed, she gasped to find herself draped in the most elegant, exquisite evening gown she’d ever laid eyes upon. With a humble inward smile, she secretly felt like the most beautiful girl in the room… and believe me, it’s because she was.

She was slightly hesitant at first because everything felt a bit fuzzy and she wasn’t exactly sure who this mysterious admirer was dancing opposite her, but it was both unmistakable and innately obvious that this handsome boy in his striking tuxedo was the ONE. She couldn’t explain it but deep down she KNEW she was dancing with the man of her dreams. He smiled down at her and her knees instantly went weak as a myriad of butterflies threatened to explode from her chest. She couldn’t explain what was happening, she could only feel it. The atmosphere was glistening and the moment was so enchanting, she didn’t even try not to blush.

There was something delightfully familiar about this moonlighter’s duet, this prince and princess swirling and swaying in time with the orchestra. The place was packed and the spiraling motions coated her peripheral vision in a vivid blur of brilliant light and color, but she only had eyes for her boy, and she couldn’t bring herself to unlock her gaze from his. They waltzed and whirled for hours it seemed until she observed a roguish grin sweep across his face before he winked and swept her through an empty doorway and out into the night air. What a stud. She found herself on an open courtyard balcony overlooking a lush green countryside which stretched out for miles in all directions. This was definitely NOT the city she fell asleep in. This was a palace, an old stone castle built right into the rocky bluffs and craggy cliffs of the Alpine Mountains. She could barely catch her breath. What was happening? Was she in a fairytale?

Twilight approached swiftly as the stars beat down on the old stone veranda and formed pools of light that seemed to shimmer and ripple like tiny oceans. The mysterious boy took her by the hand and led her down a secret staircase that steered them down into the deep evergreen darkness below. The forest reached out to embrace the duo as as a nightly procession of crickets and tree frogs struck up a gentle chorus and serenaded the two lovers deeper into the enchanting arboreal realm. Only the sharpest of eyes peering down from the balcony above could glimpse their silent silhouettes steal through the flower garden, skirt past the goldfish pond, and then disappear into a heavy thicket of blue spruce and white pine.

The eventide deepened and yet she couldn’t brush aside whatever uncanny familiarity this dark, handsome stranger seemed to embody. What was it about this mystery boy? Had she known him before? There was something about his eyes… something enigmatic but beautiful. Was he a stranger from a distant dream? Was he a long-since forgotten acquaintance she’d met long ago? A giddy pang of adrenaline pulsed through her veins. This was beyond words. She marveled silently as they crept through the shadows like thieves, tunneling under the heavy evening hush that hung suspended above the treetops. Her pulse pounded like rising thunder and her eyes grew wide. Suddenly a strange sensation cascaded over her. She felt as though she were made for this moment. This dashing boy, this sense of romance and wonder all around her, this dreamlike reality. She squeezed the boy’s hand and felt him squeeze back.

She’d never felt so alive.

They pressed on into the thick undergrowth until at last the forest seemed to step aside and there in the center of a small clearing, they beheld the yawning mouth of a crystal cavern. The sudden sight struck her with goosebumps but not the kind you get when something frightens you… for this was real, genuine exhilaration. Her cheeks flushed with excitement. The jagged halo of rocks protruding from the hillside reminded her of a skeletal shark mouth, something you’d find in a museum or a high school science room. What was in this cavern? What was it doing here? How deep did it plunge? Where did it lead?

Suddenly the boy turned and smiled at her as if to say “shall we?” before motioning to the cave. Before she could answer, he leaned down and kissed her and in that instant, everything slowed down and she felt as though she could hear the stars overhead flicker and pop with supercharged electricity. The cloudy overcast pulled back and an endless celestial sky opened up above them. The world seemed to burst with energy and light. Still too surprised to utter a word, the tall handsome boy again took her by the hand in the darkness and whispered five words into her ear:

This is not a dream.

A then, hand-in-hand, they stepped into the black unknown, ready for anything. The ground heaved and gave way as the mighty sound of rushing wings split the silence like thunder and suddenly they were falling. She felt as though she’d stepped into another world in which gravity had no grip over her. The forest above, the castle in the bluffs, and the deep green countryside all seemed to uproot and plunge into the blackness after them as the great shark’s mouth swallowed them whole. She felt like screaming but not from panic or foreboding, rather a joyful giddy shout of pure bliss. Everything was beautiful and she was perfectly happy in this frozen moment, lost in an unknown world where above all else, she felt what it was like to experience total and overwhelming joy. She closed her eyes and tasted the moment. So this was what falling in love felt like.

When she opened her eyes again, she found herself back at home in her bedroom, everything exactly as she’d left it except for the wide smile on her face and the racing of her heartbeat.

I was lucky enough to discover a book called, The Introvert Advantage (How To Thrive in an Extrovert World), by Marti Laney, Psy.D. I feel like someone has written an encyclopedia entry on a rare race of people to which I belong. Not only has it explained many of my eccentricities, it helps me to redefine my entire life in a new and positive context.

Sure, anyone who knows me would say, “Duh! Why did it take you so long to realize you’re an Introvert?” It’s not that simple. The problem is that labeling someone as an Introvert is a very shallow assessment, full of common misconceptions. It’s more complex than that. (Since Carl King is talking about it, it has to be.)

A section of Laney’s book maps out the human brain and explains how neuro-transmitters follow different dominant paths in the nervous systems of Introverts and Extroverts. If the science behind the book is correct, it turns out that Introverts are people who are over-sensitive to Dopamine, so too much external stimulation overdoses and exhausts them. Conversely, Extroverts can’t get enough Dopamine, and they require Adrenaline for their brains to create it. Extroverts also have a shorter pathway and less blood-flow to the brain. The messages of an Extrovert’s nervous system mostly bypass the Broca’s area in the frontal lobe, which is where a large portion of contemplation takes place.

Unfortunately, according to the book, only about 25% of people are Introverts. There are even fewer that are as extreme as I am. This leads to a lot of misunderstandings, since society doesn’t have very much experience with my people. (I love being able to say that.)

So here are a few common misconceptions about Introverts (I put this list together myself, some of them are things I actually believed):

Myth #1 – Introverts don’t like to talk.

This is not true. Introverts just don’t talk unless they have something to say. They hate small talk. Get an introvert talking about something they are interested in, and they won’t shut up for days.

Myth #2 – Introverts are shy.

Shyness has nothing to do with being an Introvert. Introverts are not necessarily afraid of people. What they need is a reason to interact. They don’t interact for the sake of interacting. If you want to talk to an Introvert, just start talking. Don’t worry about being polite.

Myth #3 – Introverts are rude.

Introverts often don’t see a reason for beating around the bush with social pleasantries. They want everyone to just be real and honest. Unfortunately, this is not acceptable in most settings, so Introverts can feel a lot of pressure to fit in, which they find exhausting.

Myth #4 – Introverts don’t like people.

On the contrary, Introverts intensely value the few friends they have. They can count their close friends on one hand. If you are lucky enough for an introvert to consider you a friend, you probably have a loyal ally for life. Once you have earned their respect as being a person of substance, you’re in.

Myth #5 – Introverts don’t like to go out in public.

Nonsense. Introverts just don’t like to go out in public FOR AS LONG. They also like to avoid the complications that are involved in public activities. They take in data and experiences very quickly, and as a result, don’t need to be there for long to “get it.” They’re ready to go home, recharge, and process it all. In fact, recharging is absolutely crucial for Introverts.

Myth #6 – Introverts always want to be alone.

Introverts are perfectly comfortable with their own thoughts. They think a lot. They daydream. They like to have problems to work on, puzzles to solve. But they can also get incredibly lonely if they don’t have anyone to share their discoveries with. They crave an authentic and sincere connection with ONE PERSON at a time.

Myth #7 – Introverts are weird.

Introverts are often individualists. They don’t follow the crowd. They’d prefer to be valued for their novel ways of living. They think for themselves and because of that, they often challenge the norm. They don’t make most decisions based on what is popular or trendy.

Myth #8 – Introverts are aloof nerds.

Introverts are people who primarily look inward, paying close attention to their thoughts and emotions. It’s not that they are incapable of paying attention to what is going on around them, it’s just that their inner world is much more stimulating and rewarding to them.

Myth #9 – Introverts don’t know how to relax and have fun.

Introverts typically relax at home or in nature, not in busy public places. Introverts are not thrill seekers and adrenaline junkies. If there is too much talking and noise going on, they shut down. Their brains are too sensitive to the neurotransmitter called Dopamine. Introverts and Extroverts have different dominant neuro-pathways. Just look it up.

Myth #10 – Introverts can fix themselves and become Extroverts.

A world without Introverts would be a world with few scientists, musicians, artists, poets, filmmakers, doctors, mathematicians, writers, and philosophers. That being said, there are still plenty of techniques an Extrovert can learn in order to interact with Introverts. (Yes, I reversed these two terms on purpose to show you how biased our society is.) Introverts cannot “fix themselves” and deserve respect for their natural temperament and contributions to the human race. In fact, one study (Silverman, 1986) showed that the percentage of Introverts increases with IQ.

It can be terribly destructive for an Introvert to deny themselves in order to get along in an Extrovert-Dominant World. Like other minorities, Introverts can end up hating themselves and others because of the differences. If you think you are an Introvert, I recommend you research the topic and seek out other Introverts to compare notes. The burden is not entirely on Introverts to try and become “normal.” Extroverts need to recognize and respect us, and we also need to respect ourselves.

-Carl

A dear fan gave me a beautiful letter after my show a few nights ago and she wrote a verse on the inside cover.

Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. (Colossians 3:17)

I’m sure I must’ve read this verse fifty times before, but tonight it struck me in a new way. I spend so much time DOING… in whatever capacity the definition of the word DO includes. I, as a mortal human being, would go nuts if I wasn’t always DOING whatever it is I DO… and of course not all of it is BAD per se, because all of it just IS and sometimes I don’t pay any attention to it. I wake up, I do stuff, I fall sleep, I repeat. The conviction here is the fact that I so often forget to do whatever it is I do… in the name of the Lord Jesus, not because I’m willfully trying to be a greedy little monster (despite the classic nature of the flesh) but because sometimes it just doesn’t cross my mind. I stood onstage the other night during the encore and felt the Lord suddenly say, “You don’t have to be afraid to trust me. I’ve got you.” Everything in me wanted to cry out and say, “Yes, but I’m such a helpless sinner! What good can I do?!” Later that night I found myself reading 2 Peter chapter 3, and there was my answer… the fact that my wonderful Savior is ALIVE, and He is going to return for His own. Despite my many flaws, despite my endless list of weaknesses, Christ is so much BIGGER than all of that… my prayer is only that He grant me the strength required to finish this race, to fight the good fight, to remain steadfast, to further the Kingdom, and to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ… for it is painfully obvious that without Him, I am absolutely nothing. I deeply desire more than anything to make Him proud, that by my life or death, His name may be glorified.

Sometimes the good fight feels impossible, but I for one, am NOT giving up.

Jesus Will Come Again

My friends, this is the second letter I have written you to help your honest minds remember. I want you to think about the words the holy prophets spoke in the past, and remember the command our Lord and Savior gave us through your apostles. It is most important for you to understand what will happen in the last days. People will laugh at you. They will live doing the evil things they want to do. They will say, “Jesus promised to come again. Where is he? Our fathers have died, but the world continues the way it has been since it was made.” But they do not want to remember what happened long ago. By the word of God heaven was made, and the earth was made from water and with water. Then the world was flooded and destroyed with water. And that same word of God is keeping heaven and earth that we now have in order to be destroyed by fire. They are being kept for the Judgment Day and the destruction of all who are against God.

2 Peter 3

As a very humbled artist who can’t even believe this is real life (let alone reality), right now is an exciting moment for me because my brand new audio recording entitled,“All Things Bright and Beautiful” comes out TOMORROW.

I always forget how much work it takes to make a record, and for one guy alone in a basement, it unfailingly takes forever. But despite the blood, sweat and tears, the art of making an album never quite feels like “work” for a grateful artist who remains unbelievably thankful for the job he’s been given.

It’s an exciting emotion when the final mixed/mastered collection of songs goes out the door and there’s always a giddy pang of anticipation mixed with adrenaline that pulses in time with the ticking countdown to release day. For me, that day is TOMORROW and I just want to go on record and personally thank you for sticking with me for so long. I am filled with more gratitude than my fingers can type into words for you to read on a computer screen. I am blessed beyond imagination and I really truly treasure your willingness to listen.

So what I’m saying is thank you!

I appreciate you. I really do.

Adam

Perhaps you can relate to what I’m about to describe because it’s the kind of feeling you can sense hurtling toward you before it impacts your casual given disposition like a hammer to a bell. There’s usually a dead moment before the explosion, a lull before the storm, a deep breath before the plunge — and then the painful memory is all over you like white on rice. Something you see or read, something somebody says, some random thought triggers another thought and the whole mess snowballs… it doesn’t really matter what causes it… it just reminds you of HIM or HER, and such a sudden pang of romantic remembrance thrusts a sharp knife into your spine, a painful antithesis to the old sentimental shivers that used to shoot down said spine.

It’s funny how insomnia has a way of hauling faded memories up from the cellar of the mind, unearthing buried bits of nostalgia from deep within and spreading the broken, jagged pieces out in front of you like a display of junk at a garage sale. It makes you feel cheap and guilty when you didn’t do a thing in the world to kindle the dull burn in your veins or the sting in your eyes. Some nights the painful past unexpectedly pushes up through the floorboards like an ugly nightmarish weed, and by doing so, cultivates and nurtures an entirely new species of headache.

Sometimes I’m asked why the music I create tends to sound like it does — why the optimistic flavor? Is that because you’re an excessively happy person? Do you ever have bad days? It’s an innocent question and I enjoy answering it because music has always been my way of “dealing with life” by way of escapism. Rather than create art that mirrors the inevitable dark days I’m plagued with just like everyone, I prefer to let my daydreams carry me away into places where one can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone, in a way that only the mind can allow. And rather than express whatever angst and malaise that gets dealt my way by writing profane songs littered with curse words or crude allegories or sexual vulgarities, I’d rather spend my time imagining how immensely BEAUTIFUL this life has the perfect potential of being. Of course, each artist to his or her own, but somehow “portraying true, gritty hard reality” tends to make me sick, whatever the medium of art. I can’t even watch an R-rated movie without feeling violated and totally nasty.

Regardless of circumstance, attempting to usurp the emerging enmity between yourself and the past is like trying to fight an endless army of vampires back up the attic stairs, armed only with a rolled up newspaper. Little can be done to avoid such sudden “attacks” if you can call them that, and what exactly are you supposed to do when they occur? Let them dishearten and harrow you until they’ve lost their perceived potency and you feel yourself caught in a slow death grind where compromise is inevitable? Do you battle the onrush back long enough to slam the attic door and lock it down with the biggest padlock you can find? And then what? How do you get rid of the key? Do you hide it in the bottom drawer you never use? Do you bury it in the garden under the lilacs? It’s only a matter of time until they break down the attic door, in which case it means you either run… or wait for them.

Memories are tough things to consciously ignore, especially the sad variety. They’re difficult to predict, hard to forecast, and once the downpour begins, it’s impossible to stay dry. Angry clouds jam together in the overcast like newly felled timber logs floating downriver, headed for a network of rapids, spillways, waterfalls, and ultimately the saw.

This is a depressing way to end a blog entry, especially for someone who just told you he prefers to skip the depressing junk. Cloudy days are terribly unavoidable and thus, I keep a line of text printed on the front of my mind to keep myself remembering why I continually strive to gaze past the thunderheads and on into a world beyond reality.

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him.”
- Philippians 3:8-9 (ESV)

Sometimes my computer beats me at chess but it’s no match for me at kick boxing. The same goes for my long lost brother Lionel and his Nintendo 64 whenever he plays FIFA ’98.

My older brother and I were great friends growing up. Amid longwinded bouts of friendly horseplay and brotherly buffoonery, we got ourselves into all sorts of trouble and had the time of our lives doing it — long before YouTube and Facebook were twinkles in the mischievous eye of technology. We’d climb trees, play catch, ride bikes, catch frogs, build forts, dig in Mom’s garden, throw baseballs, break windows, get into mischief, chase cars, shoot off fireworks, spit watermelon seeds, sing songs around the campfire, eat worms, wear cowboy boots, and ultimately orchestrate and/or participate in all forms of tomfoolery until the summer streetlights warmed up and silently clicked on.

Oh man, the memories are endless! We used sneak out at night and throw leaves into the neighbor’s swimming pool, we used to dress up like Bible characters and ride motorcycles around the neighborhood, shouting commandments and cheering at the top of our lungs as our holy robes billowed and trailed wildly behind us. We used to take our bikes off sweet jumps and get three feet of air; we used to pull the rubber grips off Dad’s golf clubs, climb onto the roof during lightning storms and see who could hold up the nine iron longest. Mom and Dad would just smile with their eyes, sigh melodramatically (in a loving way) and merely carp, “Boys will be boys!”

Lionel and I were best buds… until the accident.

You see, back when I was a young impressionable freshman in high school, I tried out for the football team and (to everyone’s horrified surprise) I was elected quarterback. Growing up in a small town is soOoOo cool! We got to put on old moldy shoulder pads and flop around on the field, we hurled footballs in the air and punched each other when the ref was in the bathroom. We did pushups and counted to ten in gruff quasi-masculine prepubescent voices and we maliciously whipped each other with towels and talked about really disgusting things like rotten mattresses and burning termites with magnifying glasses! Those were the days.

Lionel and I remained best friends (as well as brothers) and life seemed to flux and flow like a molten river of thick chunky honey.

One pre-game friday night, Owatonna was about to pwn Rochester and I was strutting up and down the field, turning perfect cartwheels, winking at crammed bleachers of cute girls and occasionally flashing lightning fast “thumbs ups” to congregations of begrudging, irritating, jealous bros. I was young, I was confident, I was wearing a real mesh jersey with YOUNG stamped on the back… life was good.

Rochester’s barefooted kicker stepped out of his shoes and prepared for the punt. The whistle blew like a stinging silver trumpet from Heaven and suddenly the bloated pigskin was aloft.

I remember actually yelling to my teammates over the roaring crowd, “You guys just take it easy, okay? I totally got this one!” as I puffed out my barrel chest like a proud rooster and strode down the field with my skinny fists raised like antennas to heaven. The air was electric. The bleachers were bursting at the seams, everyone was on their feet, all eyes glued on me. The ball sailed through the air like a Russian missile, aimed perfectly for my muscular arms spread wide like a father ready to embrace prodigal son. My teammates grunted encouragingly from the bench, a sea of attractive females squealed, swooned and theatrically fainted, the sweaty marching band looked on with genuine awe, and even the guy selling hotdogs in the parking lot stopped counting his apron full of wadded dollar bills to watch the amazing catch I was about to perfectly execute.

This was going to be a picture perfect moment, real front page material. I hoped the local newspaper guys and their sweet Canons were poised like cobras ready to strike. I turned one last time and flashed the home crowd a thumbs up and a grin of glistening pearly whites; this was going to be the most defining moment of my entire life!

I turned my eagle eyes back to the ball in the sky and suddenly felt a sickly twist of anguish wrench my stomach. It wasn’t there. The football. The stadium style lights beat down on the field like ultraviolet napalm, burning my retinas. My eyes couldn’t focus… I couldn’t locate the ball.

I tried to keep my cool as two thousand riveted people watched in stunned, suspenseful silence, every muscle tensed. I felt my confident youthful sprint falter, hesitate and slow to a heavy awkward trudge. My eyes burned like fire, dazed by the blinding field lights, my senses staggered by my inability to pinpoint the precious leather projectile hurtling toward me at lightning speed. My legs turned to dead weight shipyard iron, my outstretched arms like soggy wet noodles and my shoulder pads became the equivalent mass of a dead elephant on my back. This was not good.

Suddenly everything became HD. My mind emptied of all thoughts like an evacuated building as my spinning world reduced breakneck speed to a grinding slow motion rate of rotation. The scene played out before my eyes at approximately four frames per second. My large saucer eyes shifted to the motionless crowd and there he was.

My dear brother Lionel, clad in turquoise sweatpants (with elastic around the ankles) and a yellow plastic sombrero atop his head, was holding up one of those funny oversized foam hands with the pointer finger up and he was shouting something at the top of his lungs. His mouth moved up and down in slow motion but I squinted my eyes and slowly made out the words, “LOOK UP, IDIOT!”

A sickening moment of dread cascaded over me before the monumental explosion.

BOING!

Naturally I never saw exactly what occurred but the story would live to be retold a hundred times over throughout my high school years and on into my twenties. Apparently the airborne pigskin rocketed through the atmosphere like a hot shell from an angry mortar, sailed through the sky down the length of the field and bounced off the top of my helmet. Bullzeye! I spun around like a dizzy ignoramus and fell flat on my face. The stunned crowd wasn’t sure if they should laugh or cry. The wonderful thing about this whole story is that I don’t remember any of this actually happening because, of course, I was knocked unconscious and had to be wheeled away on a squeaky gurney… in front of EVERYONE.

I could write a hundred blogs about how embarrassing that day was, but the point here is that Lionel has always been a great brother to me. On that fateful night he tried his best to get my attention and warn me of the impending disaster, and although his warnings were left unnoticed until the last instant, we’re still talking about “the thought that counts,” am I right?

All this to say — I appreciate my dear brother Lionel SO MUCH because no matter what, he’s always there for me… and sometimes he’s there wearing turquoise sweats and a yellow plastic sombrero.

And quite seriously, what more could you ask of a brother?

Downy feathers kiss your face and flutter everywhere. Reality is a lovely place but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Weighed down by heavy lids and lunar lullabies, I knew you were wide awake because you smile with your eyes.

Downy feathers kiss your face and flutter everywhere. Reality is a lovely place but I wouldn’t want to live there.

From the green belt balcony, the wildfires look so pretty. Ponderosa canopy, I’d never leave if it were up to me. To the ruby redwood tree, and to the velvet climbing ivy: painted all mahogany, I’d never leave if it were up to me.

With a starry brush, paint the dusk venetian blue, because in the evening hush, you’ll never believe the view. And when the leaves return and their whisperings fill the night, they’ll freeze and burn where fire and ice collide.

Can you feel a silk embrace in the satin air? If we dissolve without a trace, will the real world even care? Downy feathers kiss your face and flutter everywhere. Reality is a lovely place but I wouldn’t want to live there.

The twilight deepens and the city is suddenly ablaze with shimmery enchantment. It’s getting dark but you’re still chasing rainbows and I’m rearranging lobby chairs on the hotel patio. Across the avenue, the garden carpet peels up and sweeps you off your feet, swinging you out over the edge of the veranda balcony, swirling and twirling you through the eventide. I look up and try not to smile because I rather admire you.

I guess I just want to say that if you ever need someone to keep you company, I’ll be right here.

The servant’s door shrieks on its hinges as an endless corridor empties into a dark master bedroom, occupied by a moth-eaten canopy bed dripping with cobwebs. Sallow peeling wallpaper sheds from the walls like dead snakeskin and flutters to the floorboards as you brush past. In the corner on a tattered rug sits a child’s wooden rocking horse, the seat worn smooth, the corded mane and tail coated in dirt. A mahogany chest of drawers stands lifeless with the top drawer still pulled out as if someone left in a hurry; a cracked mirror clings to the wall just above it, but you know better than to catch a glimpse of yourself in it.

The air is thick and heavy and it seems you inhale the shadows around the room as they cower and shrink back from the light of your candle. Their twisted silhouettes and outlines bottleneck in your throat like dead leaves circling a drain, and during this moment it becomes obvious that the quiver of a gentle candle flame may not be enough to keep the ghosts under the stairs… from coming out.

Slipping back the way you came, you creep down the hall like a thief and peer over the broken banister. Below lies a sad arrangement of disarray… sheets draped over furniture, tattered curtains hanging by mere threads, a cold stone fireplace, wet rotten holes in the plaster walls, a chandelier with broken strings of crystals, a man’s derby hat still hanging from a coat rack, and all manner of papers and debris strewn about the room. The walls lean in. Your blood suddenly stirs. Someone is crying in the room above you. Behind you are the attic stairs.

Your body’s reaction to the sudden drop in temperature sends an icy chill down your spine like a razor blade. A window is open somewhere. A dead breeze wafts the scent of mold and decay over you as the orange pinch of flame atop your stump of candle flickers once, twice, and then is gone. The darkness settles over your head and shoulders like a deathly bridal veil as your heartbeat quickens and goosebumps spread across your flesh. A foul dust in the air coats your tongue with a stale film and turns your throat to dry cotton. Now directly in front of you, like a tomb in a mausoleum, the attic door stands wide open, hanging by one hinge. There is movement in the walls.

Each stair screams out in pain as you ascend into the pitch darkness and both hands grip the wooden banister for fear of stumbling and falling backwards. At the summit, a few paces into the room, a lightbulb chain hangs in the blackness and you hold your breath as you give it a sharp tug. Nothing. Instead of flooding the room with light it seems to deepen the shadows even more, stirring up darkness like a diver stirring up soot in the belly of a shipwreck. You can’t see your hand in front of your face. Sweat soaks through your clothes, a hammer pounds at the insides of your chest and hot shivers cascade down your backbone. The silence is deafening.

Suddenly something moves in the room. You want to scream but you can’t. The sound of fingernails tear and claw at a chalkboard. A door slams somewhere downstairs. Hot tears spill down your cheeks. The mirror in the master bedroom crashes to the floor. Something moves toward you in the darkness. Your body commands you to make a break for the staircase but you’re far too paralyzed to move. Someone is screaming downstairs, shrieking with murderous ferocity, wailing with misery like a lamenting sailor’s widow. Footsteps pound down the second story hall from the master bedroom and pause at the foot of the attic stairs. Your vision blurs. They know you’re here.

It’s funny how the world has an uncanny way of resembling a haunted house sometimes. I suspect this statement seems unorthodox coming from an artist who publicly revels in both construction and consumption of uplifting music, but I suspect I’m not the only one who feels this way — from time to time.

My buddy Matt and I wrote a song about this idea. The lyrics paint a picture of a forlorn haunted house, sad and forgotten, dead and lifeless on the outside but very much alive in its own nightmarish horror on the inside. The song quips about the idea that the ghostly inhabitants of such a spine-chilling place secretly long for sunlight to crash through the dirty windows and daisies to push up through the floorboards so they’ll feel alive again. I imagine if I myself were the resident of a haunted house, I’d wish for my fair share of sunshine just like anyone else, and that parallels the way I choose to “escape” from reality whenever the real world begins to grow cobwebs and lights start turning on and off by themselves. For me, those daisies are the most wonderful glimmers of hope imaginable, and such sudden sparkles of optimism and beauty suddenly make me feel brave.

All whimsy aside — and on an even more personal level than the aforementioned metaphorical disclosure, this song’s deepest level of symbolism parallels Jesus Christ as the only ray of hope I have in this haunted house of a world. For me, sometimes it’s easy to focus on the bloody nightmares that inevitably show themselves from time to time, but despite such dismal distractions, it’s obvious the Lord has a way of planting victorious hope all around, and sometimes such beautiful blooms of color and vibrancy crop up out of nowhere when I least expect them. At times it requires wisdom to see them, other times it’s stunningly obvious, but regardless of circumstance, these angelic reminders are tremendously potent and absolutely real. Thus I continue to keep my knees black-and-blue, constantly on the hardwood floor, wholeheartedly thanking my Savior for the tremendous grace I’ve been given, for I’m not praying to the ceiling anymore.

In so many words, this is the main idea behind a song entitled Plant Life on the upcoming record.

At the end of the day, I can only answer for myself and I’ll be the first to admit I’m nothing but a worthless sinner, day in and day out. I’m as imperfect and flawed as they come. Thus, when the sun disappears behind the clouds and life suddenly turns into a haunted house, I cling to Jesus with every fiber of my being because He is unfailing, He is absolute, He is steadfast and His grace is deeper and wider than my imagination can even fathom. In Him and Him alone is where I’ve discovered a hope more bright and beautiful than words can possibly describe.

This is where I shave my head, put on a loin cloth and crouch in the shadows muttering, “It came to me, my own, my love, my preciousssssss…” in a super creepy voice.

I started recording, producing and mixing entirely in the box so the analog realm is an exciting new frontier for me. I’ve long since packed my bags for the impending lifelong journey in which I attempt to better capture such ever-elusive deep-buffed audio perfection as heard in my own head (although the task is impossible) and it’s been an exciting trip to say the least. I crave to create the most ear-pleasing polished art I possibly can so it may better transport myself (and any who would care to join me) into the most stunning beautiful spaces and places where everything is illuminated. Despite all the arguments over how awesome analog hardware gear is versus plug-ins and software, I’ve stayed out of the mudslinging because I prefer to mind my own business and pay attention to the music. However, I’ve recently been bitten by the Curious Bug and I’ve contracted an itch for the real physical stuff. Most of what I do revolves around 90% plug-ins (and I don’t see that changing) but I kinda wanna dive into the deep end of hardware gear and see if I can stay afloat in the best of both worlds, ya know?

I mustn’t forget my snorkel.

This wild monster has an obvious talent for getting into trouble and it seems everybody around keeps a low profile of him. He’s got a “handsome” grin with an endless amount of charisma (and he totally knows it), thus making him a big hit with the ladies and a force to be reckoned with. When tied up in the backyard, any passing cat is instantly made aware that its courage is only as strong as Dude’s chain, and there isn’t one telephone pole within a ten mile radius of which Dude has not claimed as his very own. He’s the Schwarzenegger of dogs; he’s a total macho tough guy and it makes no difference who you happen to be, whatever he wants, he gets. Whenever Dude comes running in your direction, you just get your cheap carcass out of the way because playing with Dude is like brawling with an angry freight train full of dynamite.

Riotous, ungovernable and awkwardly hilarious:

Naturally, I’d be a mean person if I publicly called Dude stupid, but somehow the word “idiot” pops into my head for a number of reasons and I just can’t help but inwardly smile. Dude’s hobbies include chasing cars, insubordinately romping with other dogs, vomiting on clean carpet, rolling on unspeakably disgusting things, mauling horrified little kids, urinating three hundred times a day, terrorizing elderly newspaper readers, maliciously planting repulsive surprises for groggy barefooted morning people, and chewing on various assortments of boots, footballs, books, tennis rackets, extension cords, blankets, garbage, hockey sticks, chair legs, old tires and shredded bits of John’s pajama pants. The primitive and unrestrained antics of such a savage beast tread closely on borders of “brutish” and “lunacy,” and whenever there is a disturbance in the Force or an uproar in the neighborhood, rest assured, Dude is at the center of it.

Classic Dude.

A couple weeks ago John and I were in his backyard jumping on the trampoline, immersed in an atmosphere of boisterous schoolboy howlers, when we wryly came up with a list of canine commandments Dude must henceforth follow:

01. Thou shalt not sniff the crotch of everyone thy encountereth.

10. Thou shalt refrain from coughing and gagging whilst we have company.

We even joked about dressing up as Moses and carrying around two iPads as stone tablets shouting ridiculous “Thou shalt not!” commandments at Dude at the top of our lungs. Thankfully a bit of restraint was shown.

Meanwhile, Dude continues to ignore the rate at which his planet unremittingly rotates, and thus remains distinctly and incomparably, himself.

Long live Dude.

It’s long, quasi-poetic and totally outlandish, so make coffee and pull up a chair if you have any interest in delving into the subconscious of a cuckoo clock. Again, I don’t remember writing any of this, so digest as you feel so inclined.

Here is what I wrote:

I am sipping on old leather, my back is turned against the dark glass patio sliding door. It is night. Parachutes of heavy soft cloud unfurl their fluffy legs as your soft cricket symphonies accompany me into the moonset. Ivory black keys suddenly become dark stained faces and they make my collar bone hurt. This music, this dance, this procession of dreams tastes of summer and cut grass and the way the breeze blows. Autumn plays via a one hundred and twenty piece insect orchestra, swooning and serenading us under violet blankets of night. I can’t seem to be able to feel anything. The deep music is doing the breathing for me; it pushes and pulls its melody and pumps my bloody heart full of ice water. Max is wearing shorts.

I am swimming. Goodnight.

I took a lot of photos:

For currently I plan to tour unceasingly, as though it’s literally going out of business, between the forthcoming months of June and January, respectively.

I am astronomically excited about this.

If you’ve yet to attend an Owl City show, may I be of assistance and attempt to describe the occurrence in a digestible, albeit concise manner:

Eccentric art in the form of music shall be presented at high decibel levels. Songs shall be sung. Instruments shall be played. Eyes shall grow wide with exhilaration. Spirits shall climb and take wing. Smiles shall be uninhibited. Euphoria shall hit the roof. High fives shall be exchanged. Fun shall be had. Tacos shall be ingested. Nerdy jokes shall be made. Screams of laughter shall erupt. Performances shall begin and end. Conclusions shall be drawn. Situations shall be assessed. Wholehearted gratitude and appreciation shall be given. Blessings shall be treasured. Unforgettable memories shall be made.

In other words:

I seriously can’t wait to see you again.

It wasn’t “goodbye forever” per se, but that didn’t matter because this was the sort of goodbye that produces dull, persistent, throbbing heartache, the kind that takes a long time to heal. It was the close of a long chapter of life, the kind of conclusion that keeps you awake for days, pacing the house with the lights out and the phone off. This particular sad farewell left a hole in my chest and a bittersweet taste in my mouth, as saying goodbye has a way of doing. It tasted like past romance, a bouquet of indelible memories laced with lost love and confused emotions, the flowery passion and affection of two starry-eyed dreamers, tangled up in the ribbons of a faded fairy tale.

Sappy and dramatic, yes?

Why is it — the faster you attempt to heal from something painful, the more frequently it tends to haunt you? When will the ghosts under the stairs give up and go home? Why can’t I give them five bucks and the car keys and tell them to take the night off? If anyone knows the answer to these questions, please call me and we’ll discuss the whole thing over bowls of crunchy diamonds drenched in skim milk.

She stopped by my house last Monday night at 10:30 pm. Everything seemed to happen in slow-motion, yet it all happened so fast, I barely had time to think. A hundred trains of thought raced through my heart but my brain did nothing but turn over like a cold engine in January. I couldn’t find the right words, I couldn’t form complete sentences, I tried desperately but speech seemed ineffective and useless, like trying to carve a stone sculpture with a toothbrush. All I could do was stare into those eyes I know so well.

We stood in the driveway, uncertain, unconfident, communicating more with eyes and body language than with words. Everything about her was beautiful. Her perfume was intoxicating. And then I stepped forward and hugged her for the last time… and I’d be a total liar if I said I wanted to let go. But I knew I had to.

Perhaps THAT, dear friends, is the hardest part of saying goodbye to someone; knowing you MUST move on even though every fiber of your being screams at you to obey your instincts to cling for dear life. Maybe that’s why the mountaineer must grit his teeth, dig in his claws and continue the climb, no matter the cost, no matter the odds, no matter the price. Every aching muscle screams at him to give up and go home but he MUST be strong, resilient, resolved and steadfast. It’s funny how the word “integrity” means nothing until you stare Anguish in the face and tell her sister Agony to beat it.

I stood on the steps like a stranger as I watched her walk to the car, back out the driveway, pull away down the street and disappear into the night.

And let me tell you this:

Letting go of that girl made a mountain climber out of me, because saying goodbye was my Everest.

However, despite such odds, the summit has been reached. Saying goodbye to this girl was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life… but of course, it goes without saying that my strength is not my own, for I’ve been given far more grace than I deserve. Despite such a daunting task, I rest assured because I know I am not climbing alone, and that’s a heartening thought. The inescapable issue is the fact that I’ll never be able to listen to Remember To Breathe by Dashboard Confessional again without thinking about her. I suppose I can live with that.

You’ve got mountains of your own, I’ll bet on it. Take heart. Be encouraged. Remain steadfast. Hang on for dear life. You’ve got a better grip than you realize.

Dealing with break-ups is difficult, but thankfully it helps when things are put into perspective.

“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

Ephesians 3:14-21

Thus follows:

A ton of reasons why being a pirate is cool:

-A talking parrot is the preferred pirate companion. A small monkey is an acceptable substitute, unless it flings its feces at people. Then it is an awesome substitute.

-Dental hygiene is not a priority. However, should there be occasion, strong rum or saltwater may be used as mouthwash. Anything “minty fresh” is strictly forbidden.

It’s commonly referred to as the “Choco Taco,” but referred to by many as “manna from heaven,” so before you knock it, allow me to take a deep breath and suggest at the top of my lungs that if you’ve never actually eaten one of these epic little tacos… BABY, YOU HAVEN’T LIVED!

I cleverly refer to it as “the best thing ever.”

Choco Taco is a brand of dessert food resembling a taco, consisting of a taco shell-like waffle cone, reduced-fat vanilla ice cream, artificially flavored fudge, peanuts, and a milk chocolate coating. The product was invented in Philadelphia in the 1980′s by the Jack and Jill Ice Cream Company but was introduced nationwide by Good Humor-Breyers in 1996 as “America’s coolest taco” at the Supermarket Industry Convention in Chicago, Illinois.

Sweet.

The “Choco Taco” is marketed under both the Good Humor and Klondike brands, with the Good Humor version marketed as “The Original Ice Cream Taco.” Both brands are owned by the same ice cream conglomerate, Good Humor-Breyers, a unit of Unilever, based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In 1998, Unilever introduced the Choco Taco to Italy with the name Taco Algida.

Noted.

In 1999, the company improved the product, incorporating a shell which stayed crispier, and introduced new packaging. The same year, the company introduced a Klondike Cookies & Cream Choco Taco, containing cookies and cream ice cream and covered with cookie pieces. Choco Tacos have also been sold at Taco Bell restaurants.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Okay look, all I’m trying to say is that these things are AMAZING!

HIGH FIVES ALL AROUND.

And in reality, the whole point of this entry is to publicly proclaim my love for Choco Tacos from here to eternity.

Whew… I feel better about things already.

6

I always love decoding the sneaky secret messages hidden in Taylor’s written lyrics, so naturally the day Speak Now came out, I played the whole thing from top to bottom as I added up the capital letters per each song’s set of lyrics.

As track 8 came to a close and the album switched over to track 9 (a breathtaking song called Enchanted and one of my favorites on the entire record), something began to feel curiously “familiar.”

I couldn’t put my finger on it. Why did the song feel so personal? Why was it ringing a bell? Perhaps it was merely the word “wonderstruck” that indeed struck a sweet chord, but before the second chorus hit, I’d already added up the letters:

A-D-A

And then it hit me like a freight train. I didn’t even need to find that last letter “M.” A colorful swirl of memories flashed before my eyes as it all added up. My jaw hit the floor.

The track is absolutely gorgeous and I’m so tremendously honored that Taylor would write such an elegant song and thereby offer a gracious nod in my direction. Needless to say, I was lost for words and utterly smitten. I couldn’t stop smiling.

I figured such an eloquent gesture should be reciprocated by the most polite, heartfelt and respectful response I could possibly muster. It’s no secret that I’m a bit shy, so naturally music was the most articulate way of attempting such a sincere endeavor. How does one respond to such a personal outpouring of emotion and sentiment? I tossed and turned over that one.

They say “timing is everything” and that brings us to now. Today is Valentine’s Day.

And thus, here is my reply…

Listen to the song here:
http://owlcitymusic.com/vday

Dearest Taylor,

I’ll be the first to admit I’m a rather shy boy and since music is the most eloquent form of communication I can muster, I decided to record something for you — as sort of a “reply” to the breathtaking song on your current record. This is what I wanted so badly to tell you in person but could never quite put into words:

Love,
Adam

An insomniac by definition, I was the kid who fell asleep LAST during slumber parties, not because I wasn’t worn out from the given Saturday’s well-organized neighborhood Nerf war, but because I was naturally cursed with the inability to sleep. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember and the grass stains on my knees never guaranteed me a sound night’s sleep as a kid. Perhaps this was a positive thing during elementary birthday party overnighters because that meant I was always the maestro plotting malicious pranks to play on my sleeping buddies, and was thus never the victim of such antics.

It’s a funny thing. Even now I often find myself wide awake staring at the ceiling, and when the Ambien runs out, it seems as though all I do is toss and turn. However, a wry irony lurks within such sleepless nights by which my restlessness ultimately becomes the fuel for all sorts of dreams — consciously wakeful though they may be.

For instance, music.

Last night I was inflicted with a classic case of intense artistic inspiration fed by cold, sterile insomnia. Such a conceptual thought contains so much irony, one might require a tetanus shot. Despite any such treatment, the ailment is altogether chronic and incurable BUT it may be the very reason by which I’ve unearthed such elusive, yet stunning beauty within such malady.

It’s rather a simple system:

01. I wake up.
02. I go about my day.
03. Everyone goes to bed and I’m not tired.
04. The hour grows very late and I deliberately climb into bed.
05. I toss and turn.
06. My mind wanders and suddenly I’m inspired.
07. I run to the studio.
08. The sun comes up.
09. My eyes finally grow heavy and I stumble back to my room.
10. I doze off for perhaps two or three hours.

It’s a vicious cycle, but one I sincerely would not trade for the world. I admit it seems paradoxical for a pacifist such as myself to be in favor of such incongruity, but for what it’s worth, I am of the opinion that most of what has been created, envisioned and conceived over the course of my short career is largely due to this conundrum.

It is during such nights when sleep and I cannot bring ourselves to meet that I am most inspired to dream, discover, explore, create and imagine. So it isn’t all bad.

By the same idea, the alluring light at the end of the tunnel can often flicker and burst forth into a hideous freight train hurtling in my direction.

Some nights I close my eyes and drift off somewhere between dreams and reality — into subconscious territory where I’m not exactly wide awake, but I’m not sleeping like a rock either. It’s a middle ground, mid-doze, between consciousness and slumber, an abstract reverie where I can see, hear and feel everything around me but cannot control what happens. During THESE nights I must prepare for anything because there is no telling what can happen.

Sometimes I’m yanked back into reality by the most nightmarish threads of illusion, dreadful night terrors that leave me out of breath with a lead hammer pounding inside my chest. Sometimes I feel myself fighting out of fear, clawing my way through a veneer of restless sleep that covers me like a film, yet I cannot manage to slice my way through the thin layer of leathery nightmare. Sometimes I wake up missing an old girlfriend, gripped in a painful swirl of miserable heartache — as if old wounds were suddenly reopened and I’d been through the terrible break-up all over again.

Of course this is all very unpleasant information and is thus, a rather depressing note to end a blog entry on.

However, I delight in the mere fact that being a dreamer often exempts me from the rules of reality and her consequences, be they good or bad — and I love how dreams propel the mind of an artist into imagining what the world might be like if such dreams were in fact reality. It’s a compelling thought and it keeps me on my toes. I love that.

All this to say — when my heavy lids finally surrender to the weight of any given day’s worth of living, breathing, working, doing and being, I savor the moment with a vigorous (though slightly reticent) taste in my mouth because, as I’ve mentioned before, there’s truly no telling what might happen. You must be ready for anything.

Reality is a lovely place but I wouldn’t want to live there.

I’m a huge fan of Telefon Tel Aviv and the work of Josh Eustis and the late Charles Cooper have influenced me to no end.

I used the Korg MonoPoly plug-in for the Boards of Canada-esque pad and did all the sequencing in Live. I really love the stock compressor and the eight band EQ that comes with Ableton. It’s always easy to be critical of stock plug-ins, but to my ears, these are some of the greats.

I made this a few nights ago:

Minus the clubby kick drum during the second half, everything was made with YMCK‘s free plug-in. I snuck in a mash-up of an old synth riff from a song I wrote called I’ll Meet You There from one of my earlier records. One for the critics.

I grew up in the late 80′s/early 90′s and naturally chalked up about a billion hours playing epic video games via legendary original Nintendo console. In retrospect, despite my inability to recall the objectives of fifty percent of the games I played, there was always one part of each of them that never left me.

The music.

I’m a huge fan of Japanese chiptune wizards YMCK and I recently downloaded their aforementioned AU/VST compatible Magical 8bit Plug to experiment with during long flights and airport layovers. The thing is seriously amazing — not to mention REALLY fun.

Okay take a deep breath:

The NES board supported a total of five sound channels. These included two pulse wave channels of variable duty cycle (12.5%, 25%, 50% and 75%), with a volume control of sixteen levels and hardware pitch bending supporting frequencies ranging from 54 Hz to 28 kHz. Additional channels included one fixed-volume triangle wave channel supporting frequencies from 27 Hz to 56 kHz, one sixteen-volume level white noise channel supporting two modes (by adjusting inputs on a linear feedback shift register) at sixteen preprogrammed frequencies and one differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM) channel with six bits of range, using 1-bit delta encoding at sixteen preprogrammed sample rates from 4.2 kHz to 33.5 kHz. This final channel was also capable of playing standard pulse-code modulation (PCM) sound by writing individual 7-bit values at timed intervals.

Basically there wasn’t much to work with back in the day. These systems were unique in that they marked a period in the technological development of game audio in which dedicated hardware sub-systems or sound chips were used to create sound. It was after this period that video game audio progressed onwards to sample playback and wavetable synthesis techniques, replacing the dedicated sound chip-based techniques that had been used previously to synthesise sounds in real time.

The original Ricoh 2A03:

I’ve heard it said before that having too many tools can ironically limit one’s creativity, and henceforth I find it amazing how innovative early video game composers had to be. If they wanted a kick or a snare drum, they virtually had to make it out of a bit of white noise or some other waveform. If they wanted a pad or a crash or a bass, they had to make them by hand. Whether you enjoy it or not, the way this type of music was made via this particular artistic palette was pretty visionary given the limited amount of “tools” that were available via this specific circuit.

YMCK did an incredible job.

The Magical 8-bit Plug-in:

I can’t get over how amazing it sounds. I’ve yet to stumble across an 8-bit circuit emulator that sounds half as authentic. The triangle waveform even has that classic high frequency overtone and YMCK’s white noise is a lot harsher than that of most synths. Pure vintage.

So nostalgic.

Makes me wanna dig around on eBay for an old NES and bust out all the old classics.

For me, it’s the part of making records that takes longest. The 11th hour requires extreme micro-attention to detail and though it’s often the most stressful and fatiguing piece of the process, it’s during the final finishing brush stokes that dreams finally bloom and come alive. Only then can you disregard perfectionism (or merely attempt to) long enough to take a step back and immerse yourself in what’s been created. You started with a blank canvas, a bare tonal palette, an empty session with no tracks, no melodies, no structure, no arrangement… and after the final mix is agreeably abandoned, you take the deepest, most satisfying breath in a long time and it’s the most fulfilling feeling in the world. You poured yourself 1000% into something, slaved away at it day and night, and finally hung up your brushes with a humble sense of pride.

Origination. Development. Construction. Completion. Resolution.

Art.

A friend and I were conversing about the creation and production of making a new record from scratch and the “artist” in the said conversation was referred to as an eccentric, unorthodox architect.

“You’ve singlehandedly designed and constructed an entire skyscraper. You started with nothing and built an enormous building from the ground up. You know every crack in the floor, every wrinkle in the wallpaper, every gap in the floorboards. You know what color each wall in every room needs to be. You know the exact hue of lime green the pipes under the kitchen cabinet should be painted. You can hire people to come in and help you work on this building, but only you understand how it should look when it’s finished. You designed it, you created it, and no one understands your vision better than you do.”

Such a statement is, in my opinion, the highest form of compliment an artist could ever receive.

When one writes, produces, engineers and mixes everything from the ground up, it’s easy to lose sight of the finish line when creating fifteen new songs from scratch, but ironically, this “blurred vision” is often the beauty of the whole endeavor. It’s often during this sense of pleasant disorientation that music detaches itself from the walls of the limited creative mind and begins constructing itself, BY ITSELF. This, to me, is the MOST exciting part because, in a sense, all you have to do is be there to capture it.

All this to say — I’m 99% finished with fifteen new songs. It’s been a long six months of blood, sweat and tears, but here in the 11th hour it’s become even more obvious to me that making records — or rather creating something from nothing is the one thing in this life I’m MOST passionate about. There’s truly nothing I’d rather be doing.

One of my best friends:

Tube-Tech CL1B compressor:

Really excited about this record and it’s a hefty one! Most Pro Tools sessions weigh in at seventy tracks or more and some mixes have eight separate hi-hat tracks alone. There are often three or more different kick drum samples, each compressed and EQ’ed to glue together nicely like puzzle pieces. Four different lead synth lines play the same melody, all mixed and matched to form “one solitary” line. To me, mixing is the art of fine detail and compromise, though in my case, broad stokes is often the secret because it’s the micro-details that can kill you.

Another best friend:

Avalon 747 sp:

By the same idea, the 11th hour is often the most exciting. Minus the handfuls of ripped-out hair, this part of making records means listening to mixes in the car, through iPod earbuds, laptop speakers, mono radios, ghetto blasters, etc. By the time the mix is finally right, I’ve heard the song so many times, I’m ready to hurl. But this of course, is all good stuff and part of the journey that takes you over the finish line.

I’m so very excited about this new album. Much time was spent imagining, daydreaming, exploring and discovering, and I believe the result is that much more dreamy.

When all is said and done, I think I’m most excited to hang up the brushes, take a deep breath and whisper,

“Thank You. Thank you, dear God, for allowing me to do this. I am so undeserving, and thus, so very humbled.”

Let’s talk about curling for a minute.

Perhaps an elusive subject to many folks, the topic of which I speak is above and beyond what girls do to their straight hair with a heated rod. That, of course, is a curling IRON.

The kind of curling I refer to, dear readers, is of a far more slippery concept.

By definition, curling is a game played on ice (particularly favored by Scotland and Canada), in which large, polished circular stones with iron handles are slid across an icy surface toward a predetermined mark. The ancient Scottish sport has been called a hybrid of bowling and chess on ice, but perhaps the closest analogy is shuffleboard. Members of a team use brooms to SWEEP the surface of the ice in the path of the 42-pound granite stone (the best of which come from a single quarry in Scotland) to control its speed and direction. Each player on the team throws two stones during an “end,” which is sort of like an inning in baseball. The team with the most points after 8 or 10 ends wins the match. Did I mention you can knock your opponents’ stones out of contention? The name “curling” comes from the Old English verb “to curr,” or growl. There is a fair amount of shouting during games, as team members urge each other on while sweeping the ice in front of the stone.

Example:

Curler 1: “COME ON, YOU HOSER! HURRY UP AND SWEEP FASTER!”
Curler 2: “TAKE OFF, YOU KNOB! I’M SWEEPING AS FAST AS I CAN, EH!”

Just for a moment, let’s pretend that you are super into curling. You are not merely a weekend warrior or a fan who shows up to rousing, rustic curling matches every six months or so, you are OBSESSED with it. You play it, you watch it, you talk about it, you dwell on it, you feed on it, you live and breathe it. You wear t-shirts that read, “Whenever I’m Not Curling, I Wish I Was Curling”, or “CURLING > LIFE” in big, brash typeface, all too reminiscent of those overbearing 90′s And1 shirts the cool kids in elementary school used to wear.

Curling is what you do, therefore curling is who you are.

You are a curler.

You curl.

Now, all this being said and understood, what would you say (hypothetically speaking of course) if someone were to invite you, say, “to a Sufjan Stevens show?”

Naturally you would laugh in their face (not because you don’t like Sufjan, quite the contrary) and shout at the top of your lungs, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME, DUDE? I’LL TOTALLY BE CURLING THAT NIGHT!”

To which your friend would display a look of bewildered horror at your raucous remark and promptly walk away muttering something about how psychotic you are.

Another example:

What would you say if you found yourself called to the stand at a federal court trial, looking bored and “elsewhere” enough to invoke an off-the-record demand by an irritated judge, something to the effect of, “Excuse me, but I’m going to have to ask you to pay more attention to what’s going on here. You seem extremely inattentive and heedless to everything that’s been said thus far. What, may I ask, weighs so heavily on your mind that it obviously requires more of your attention than that of present matters?”

To which you would stand up with your fist in the air and scream with the fire of a thousand suns, “CURLING!”

Yet another example:

What would your response be, say, if you were sitting in a particularly uncomfortable chair at a baby shower, dragged along by your significant other, forced to celebrate the joyous occasion of some elated woman you don’t even know, let alone plan to become friends with. The feigned semi-interest (or rather, discernible annoyance) in your eyes quickly becomes obvious to your sweetheart who shoots murderous looks in your direction throughout the evening, and then, in a moment of private secrecy, hisses in your ear, “What are you doing?? This is important! The LEAST you could do is act interested! Where, may I ask, would you rather be??”

To which you would let out a thunderous lionhearted roar, leap onto the nearest table and proclaim to the heavens, “I’D RATHER BE CURLING!!!!!!”

Beginning to see a pattern? Keep all of this in the back of your mind.

Now pretend you are me.

You live in Minnesota (yet again, hypothetical speaking), which is always a stone’s throw from Canada, however you choose to fold the map. You live in a place where kids ride snowmobiles and four-wheelers (with chains around the tires) to school. Carhart jackets, American flag decals and lutefisk are everywhere you look. You don’t follow hockey, but you enjoy cheering for a good game now and then (mostly for the fighting) and you boast a vague understanding of the rules involved. Your uncle is bald on the top of his head but still has a ponytail. Your older brother hauls around a $3,000 mountain bike atop his $500 car. You switch from “heat” to “A/C” in the same afternoon. Your definition of “traffic jam” is nine cars waiting to go around a tractor. You think The Red Green Show is hilarious. The neighbors hate it when you talk to your plants because you use a megaphone. You put a new engine in your car but forgot to take the old one out, so now your car goes 500 MPH. You understand why it’s prohibited to throw most things off the top of the Empire State Building, but seriously, what’s wrong with little bits of cheese?

Do you see where I’m going with this? Am I making myself clear?

If your answer to such questions is “No”, or “Not really, to be honest”, or “Wait, can you repeat the question?”, or “What on earth are you TALKING about??”, then pretend this:

Pretend you keep a blog. You’re a blogger. You blog.

Pretend you had a ridiculously limited grasp of what curling actually was (aside from playing Nagano Winter Olympics for Nintendo 64 in 1998) until you looked it up on Wikipedia.

Now pretend you wrote a blog about curling that made absolutely no sense to anyone, including yourself; you merely wrote it because you adore writing.

Now pretend you have zero idea of how to close the aforementioned blog because your topic is starting to tangent and run-on sentences run amok!

Now pretend the more you think about curling, the more hilarious it becomes to you, and as a result, the more hot chocolate geysers out of your mouth whenever you attempt to stifle an impending snort of laughter.

Now pretend you’re hungry and run to the kitchen and make a sandwich!

And finally, while you thoughtfully eat that sandwich and pace around on the linoleum in your new Christmas socks (pair 6 of 45), image what a perfect ignoramus you’d look if ever you were to take up the ostentatious sport of curling.

Now, stop pretending you are me and have a good, long hearty laugh (but be careful not to choke).

Haha. HAHAHA!

I rest my case.

Good curling, everyone!

Smack in the center of a thriving 1899 farmstead, the house of my youth (and the youth of many others) stands proudly like a lone reed. I find solace in the womblike warmth of its downy plume, and yet, beyond such friendly familiar features, an assortment of peculiarities lurk therein. Might I assume that any 112 year old home is bound to house its fair share of oddities, and of course, my folks’ humble abode is no exception — for it is crammed full of curiosities.

I took a photo of one of them:

A face.

A curious likeness. Of what? A spook? A skull? An owl? An upside-down tooth?

Be it creepy or otherwise, this face in the woodwork has been there for as long as I can remember, and strangely enough, I don’t recall ever being frightened of it as a boy. Perhaps I missed some sort of horrible Hollywood “brainwash boat” because our family never had TV reception and as a result, I was far more apt to deem the average peculiarity “interesting” as opposed to “creepy.” A rather befitting principle.

Several weeks ago I received a letter in the mail from an old friend, and along with it, a stuffed owl. My dad peered over my shoulder and quipped, “The owls sure do come out of the woodwork these days.”

To which I chuckled and replied, “You know Pops, I have a feeling we’ve been living with one right under our noses this whole time.”

After an exhausting dose of perfect penmanship, I submitted my application, convinced my buddy Eric to put in a good word for me, and found myself grinning from ear-to-ear as my boss shook me firmly by the hand and said, “Welcome aboard, son.”

Long famous for its advertising slogan, “Where there’s a helpful smile in every aisle”, Hy-Vee was my shot at polishing my pearly whites and ultimately cashing in a hard-earned paycheck every other Friday.

Whatever bundle of emotions may be rekindled, everyone recalls his or her first position of employment. I fixed my hair in the rear-view mirror and sauntered through the big double doors in my new black Dickies and clean shirt and tie. Consequently, I was put in charge of an extensively frosty, frigid, frozen food section, complete with cavernous walk-in freezer secretly hidden behind quasi-important “Employee’s Only” plastic swinging pair of saloon doors. My appointed weapon of choice was a box-cutter, more commonly referred to as the razor blade.

I stocked shelves.

As a sixteen-year-old dyspeptic with a taste for philately, it was a potent shot of realism… you know, first job and everything, but I enjoyed it. The store had an antediluvian intercom system by which the shift manager on duty would occasionally pick up the horn and squawk “Adam, check please.” Such a strident summons commanded that I drop whatever I happened to be doing (naturally of great importance) and trudge cheerfully to the front of the store as newly humiliated “substitute cashier” until I was at last deemed unneeded. The idea wasn’t so bad, but once the goodies started flowing down the conveyor in my direction, it soon became strenuous. Of course, I haven’t a thing in the word against cashier work (as Mike Rowe eloquently puts it, “It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it…) but it’s no secret that I was not an uninhibited “people-person” in high school. I am an introvert, a melancholy, and back in high school it was tenfold. I barely knew how to count change, and on top of such astronomical awkwardness, it was a swelteringly torrid affair. You see, my job description required me to wear a heavy jacket and gloves due to the amount of time spent in, and trips taken to/fro the aforementioned walk-in freezer. Thus, when I’d grudgingly appear at the front end to help “check,” I was already sweating my socks off. More than anything, I craved the delicious words, “Okay Adam, you can go back now.”

Aside from the grammatically incorrect name tag template (applicable to any greenhorn prior to crossing the twelve-month mark), I was in fact a Hy-Vee employee for just shy of two years. I needn’t mention the vast assortment of uproarious comments and one-liners made by customers over the word FROZEN located directly under my name. Real knee-slappers, they were.

For reasons across the board, we all have our good and bad days, but hate is far too strong a word with which to paint a picture of my time at Hy-Vee. Never did I cultivate an intense dislike for my job, though I’ll confess I did eventually harbor a “disinclination” for all things green and grocery. This is NOT to say that I was ungrateful for the task I was given, nor was I unappreciative in any way; it would have been downright churlish to complain — I was merely bitten by a creative bug.

I yearned for something a bit more, shall we say, imaginative, expressive, inspired, innovative, experimental, artistic, visionary and subjective, by which to look back upon and bear witness to passionate forms of forward movement. Progression! Advancement! Betterment! I knew from where my passions formed and hatched, but outside of school and work, they weren’t much use to me on a purely empirical level. Carting about cardboard boxes of Cool Whip, TV dinners and frozen peas, while necessary, hardly quenched my primal thirst for artistry. This is about the time I began making music with a Belgian digital audio workstation called FL Studio, or dilettante-termed, “Fruity Loops.”

Enter the greatest thing that ever happened to me:

As such, I served my time and retired from the great, grandiloquent grocery business with the utmost of gentlemanly eloquence and grace.

Now, before any of us jump to weird conclusions, it must publicly be made known that I was NOT a devious employee! Had I EVER telephoned in ill, it was due entirely to good old-fashioned malady that hence gave rise to sincere, unfeigned ailment. Pure and simple. However, had a crafty notion sprung upon me like a wired mousetrap (hypothetically speaking, of course), such an irreproachable story hitherto, indeed may have closed with an altogether different denouement.

Thus follows:

THE TOP TEN RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME EXCUSES FOR CALLING IN TO WORK:

01. “I was spit on by a venomous snake.”

10. “Hello, I’ve used all of my sick days and I’m calling in dead.”

All chuckles aside, let’s remember where we are. Should you, dearest reader, at this very moment, happen to be a respectfully dissatisfied employee like I was, perhaps with a touch of discouragement, longing for the chance to do something fueled by passion — may I offer you as much sympathy as I can possibly muster. I’ve certainly been there.

All this to say — hang in there. The future is bright, and by all means, it’s beautiful. There’s really no telling what tomorrow may bring.

Pour yourselves another eggnog ’cause without you, I don’t know where I would be.

Merry comfy cozy Christmas!

From,
Owl City

Merry Christmas (and a pair of cowboy boots),

Adam

Pops snowplowing like nobody’s business:

Snowy Mr. Owl:

Always winter but never Christmas:

Bedroom blanket:

Hibernating Mr. Air Conditioner:

Epic:

Fight to get out:

Tired:

Taking the Toro for a walk:

Freshly powdered:

Put your hands in the air:

Overalls:

Titanic:

You’re doing it right:

Ice water:

Dangerous weapons:

Narnia:

Arctic catharsis:

The Everest of all snowbanks:

In from the cold:

Behold the bizarre, oafy animatronic beast which effortlessly carries massive amounts of weight, climbs hills of cement bricks, runs on ice, and leaps over strips of tape on the floor. Pretty amazing.

Real:

Parody:

Ha.

I’m a guy. Perhaps it’s the masculine lowbrow appreciation for lame amusement in me that thinks this is so hilarious. Everyone shrieks and says, “Yuck, those are creepy!” and of course they ARE, but no matter who you are or what you secretly admit is funny, suppressing tidal waves of laughter is twice as difficult when everyone else in the coffee shop is staring over their lattes at you with confused looks on their faces. Minus the mouthful of scalding coffee I spit all over my laptop, I feel pretty good about it.

Among other robots, Boston Dynamics has created PETMAN, an anthropomorphic robot for testing equipment, RISE, a robot that climbs vertical surfaces, and SquishBot, a shape-changing chemical robot that moves through tight spaces.

Haha… yeah.

I must openly admit that the quizzical, mystified, diverted, blog-writing, evil genius in me harbors a dorky (and rather weird) secret appreciation for extraterrestrial beings. This is not an unhealthy intrigue, I assure you. For instance, I cannot watch E.T. and feel anything but disgusting by the time those dudes in creepy chemical radiation suits capture the poor shriveled little prune and plot how they’re going to study it or torture it, or whatever. Maybe it’s the idea of those nasty suction cups stuck all over Elliott that turns my stomach, but regardless, I can never really finish my popcorn. Perhaps it’s the sort of film best watched on VHS deep in the eerie musty basement of some odd distant relative’s house (an obscure second cousin twice removed or something), sitting uncomfortably on a stained orange vinyl couch simply to get the full queasy effect. Perhaps the nauseating hum of a broken flickering florescent light overhead is required to shed some sallow yellow light on the subject to really “put you in the mood.” Yuck. I could go on forever about how awful it would be for anyone to watch E.T. in his or her second cousin’s moldy basement for a billion stupid reasons, but that is not the point.

WHAT IS THE POINT?

The point of all this is to cleverly segue/shipwreck one school of thought into another and ultimately talk about aliens from an entirely different angle. An awesome angle, not a gross angle.

When you ask kids about aliens, they shriek and scream BIG SPACE WIERDOS! even though, hypothetically speaking, aliens are merely organisms from other planets/galaxies of which we humans have yet to explore or even discover. I’m in the middle of reading Perelandra by C.S. Lewis (book two in the Space Trilogy) and his vivid portrayal of aliens, to me, paints a much more compelling picture of extraterrestrials as opposed to the nasty stomach aches I always get after attempting to watch E.T.

Child: MOMMY, A BIG FAT THING THAT SHOOTS GREEN EWIE STUFF IS IN BIG BROTHER’S COMPUTAH AND IT WOOKS WIKE A ALIEN!!!1!!!

Big Brother (yelling): IT’S A BOOMER FROM L4D2!

Child: What’s a boomeh?!

Speculatively, should aliens actually appear any less hideous and revolting than E.T. (which I suspect is impossible), I gather there may be some of us humans who would think differently of the stereotypical 1950′s melodramatic opinion of extraterrestrial abduction. Let’s forget about the pods from Invasion of the Body Snatchers for a moment and wonder what it would take, say, for someone who actually WANTED to be abducted by aliens.

Well, dear friends, you’ve stumbled into the right place.

If you are indeed interested in getting abducted by aliens and are actively pursuing a potential opportunity, there are some things you need to know. Obviously extraterrestrial beings do not travel billions of light-years across infinite chasms of endless universe to abduct any old bloke; they have requirements or “essential qualities” that subjects of attention must clearly meet. Unfortunately, certain of us humanoids are more likely to get abducted than others (for reasons unknown to us), and quite bluntly, you may or may not fall into a given popular category. Not only do aliens need a darn good reason to choose you, you just need to be in the right place at the right time.

Let’s talk about those of us who are most likely to be abducted.

There are certain types of folks out there who are seemingly more attractive to aliens than others. We have no idea why, but this is the way it is. For example, young children are usually more likely to be abducted than the elderly. Why is that? Here are some obvious reasons:

-Children are innately willing to cooperate with aliens. Aliens are “crazy” and “cool.” Decrepit grandparents often resemble extraterrestrials. I don’t know a single little kid who wouldn’t jump at the chance to “take old Uncle Earl’s spaceship for a spin.”

-Small children tend to carry Skittles, rocks, and crayons around in their pockets. Clearly fascinating stuff to aliens.

If you are NOT a child and are still interested in being abducted, fear not. There are certain groups of Homo sapiens, regardless of age, that aliens remain eager to study. These groups include:

Poets
Musicians
Beliebers
Mathematicians
People who look like Harry Potter characters
Grand master chess players
Video gamers
Collectors of odd items (like vintage sleeping bags or iron ostrich eggs)
College professors
Hobos
Really fat people in VW Bugs
Middle aged men (or women) who resemble Harrison Ford
Financial advisors
Super violent female soccer players
Smokers (of any kind)
Evil medical practitioners of proctology
The guy who drives the snowplow
Used car dealers
MySpace stalkers
Pizza delivery boys
Shopping cart wranglers
Crime fighters
Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch
Punk rockers
Small business owners (without earthquake insurance)
Reasonably talented arsonists
Speed metal drummers
Farmers
Attractive female dental hygienists
Smurfs
Kids who cheat on tests
Basketball players over seven feet tall
Politicians
Disgruntled US Postal Service employees
Neighborhood dad garage bands
Magicians
Really pretty girls
The guy at the beach with the metal detector
Monster truck rally enthusiasts
Clergymen
Barefoot NFL kickers
Medical students
Kenny G
Cruise ship captains
People who put ketchup on everything
John Wayne fans
NASCAR drivers
People with July birthdays
Scuba divers
Teenagers who wear shorts all winter
Baristas
Rodeo clowns
Hot Topic employees

This is by no means a definitive list. If you do not fall into one or more of these categories, there is still hope for you. Please take note of the following areas and times of day in which extraterrestrials are likely to snatch you:

-Dark areas. Aliens love to hover over obscure or peculiar places. Corn fields, rural wetlands, botanical gardens, drainage ditches, abandoned warehouses, gravel roads, wildlife reservations, country churches, overgrown cemeteries, rustic camping grounds, deserted construction sites, sewage reservoirs, discontinued logging areas, wind farms, etc. For this reason, the brilliance and luster of large cities often make them the least likely of places from which to be abducted.

-Trailer parks. Aliens are reluctant to abduct people from structures that are attached to the earth, possibly having something to do with aliens being nomadic travelers themselves. Whatever the reason, if you are truly serious about becoming an abductee, you need to sell your four-bedroom home and move into a trailer house as soon as possible.

-Prime locations for human selection are large forests, open countryside, remote islands, mountaintops, deep canyons, and vast deserts. While many of these places have significant amounts of sunlight during the day, nightfall creates the perfect environment for abduction. Watch the sky. The more stars you can see in the sky, the more likely it is that you are in an attractive area. Depending on your location, the darkest time of night will vary. Generally, you should not expect noticeable alien activity between the hours of midnight and 4 am.

A few things to remember:

-When you enter your predetermined dark location, bring a flashlight along. If you trip and injure yourself, it could weaken your appeal. It is more time efficient NOT to have to repair a human subject before studying it. Bring something to eat as well because there is no way to be sure exactly when the aliens will show up, if at all. Scientific studies indicate that humans carrying/eating sandwiches have been chosen more regularly than others (the sandwich bag is usually left behind). Taco Bell employees have also been known to disappear into restrooms and never come out again (although scientists are unsure if this has any direct correlation to alien activity or not).

-Make sure you go alone. Extraterrestrials are withdrawn beings and will NOT risk a chance of being sighted and/or photographed as a result of hovering too closely to a group of humanoids gazing at the stars with their arms open. Abductees are always carefully studied and chosen on a one-by-one basis to ensure optimal selection. You should sit, lie or stand by yourself in a remote area and allow the aliens to get a good look at you if/before they should choose to nab you. On rare occasions, a human is selected with good intention but is subsequently hurled back to earth after a few minutes of first impressions aboard the alien spacecraft (causing serious injury and/or death). As a potential abductee, you MUST regard this as an occupational hazard and accept the risks involved. You CANNOT be hesitant or timid. Aliens don’t want crybabies. Extraterrestrials don’t abduct wimps.

-Be yourself. Don’t look too anxious to be taken away. Don’t make your desire for transport obvious. Aliens are not stupid; if you seem too eager, they’ll assume you’re a spy. Don’t wear dark sunglasses. Don’t wear an alien costume or carry a glittery sign begging to be chosen. Costumes are insulting and you must respect their right to choose. When you arrive at your predetermined location, pass the time without appearing impatient but do not appear too idle or the aliens may assume you’re expecting them and will subsequently pass over with no indication. Appear semi-occupied. Whistle to yourself, read a book, listen to your iPod, play golf on your cell phone, whittle sticks with your pocketknife, play Solitaire (if there is enough moonlight), crochet an afghan, softly hum the Alphabet Song, twirl your mustache, do cartwheels or pushups. All abductees are at least seemingly unsuspecting.

-Should you happen to notice a coherent monochromatic light, tractor beam, electromagnetic laser effusion, stimulated emission of photons, or all of the above, RUN. Aliens love the thrill of the chase. Put up a fight, look angry, lash out, act like you don’t want to go with them, shout things like “YOU’LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!” or “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!” or simply “BLEAHHHHH!!!!” This alone makes you an attractive candidate.

Tips to ensure a successful abduction:

-Above all, be open to new experiences. This is perhaps the most overlooked aspect of alien abduction. Simply having an open mind can make a person more accepting to the various probes and experiments that aliens conduct. Extraterrestrials need humans willing to look at things from a different perspective or the abduction process will not be a win-win situation for anyone.

-Talk casually with your friends/family (or to yourself in the mirror) about your interest in aliens, your desire to be an ambassador for the human race, your suspicion that extraterrestrials are superior, et cetera. Alien spies are everywhere; if they pick up on your conversations, you’re likely to get at least a UFO sighting. Drop subtle hints. This is known as announcing your candidacy. It can take a number of forms — casual conversation over a plate of sushi, or the purchase of abduction literature for example. It is imperative that this is done correctly. Don’t be too eager or too apathetic, for at either extreme, you risk attracting the wrong alien.

-Acquire some interesting or unusual characteristics — like juggling, salsa dancing, javelin throwing, or dentistry for instance. Occasionally otherworldly visitors do not come to Earth for human selection, vengeance, or even experimental purposes — but for entertainment. Some visitors are often the insubordinate children of aristocratic alien dictators out on secret joyrides in their parents’ spacecraft. They are not interested in the mundane human cliche. They want to see backflips, double-jointed thumbs, mullets, and champion hot dog eaters.

If you consider this advice, you have a good chance of being abducted. There is however, no guarantee.

Good luck to you.









“Hey mom, there’s something in the back room
Hope it’s not the creatures from above”

-Tom DeLonge

“If ever there is a tomorrow when we’re not together, there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart, I’ll always be with you.”

-Winnie the Pooh

Perhaps the most compelling quote ever credited to a portly cartoon bear. The book in my hands was tied to a long story that involved myself and the person who gave it to me. It took years to unfold, yet as I sat there thinking about it, a montage of memories flashed before my eyes and something inside began to hurt.

It was then that I caught myself subconsciously wishing things were the way I wanted them rather than the way they were meant to be. But then of course, I immediately gave it a second thought and realized what an ABSURD thing that was to be thinking and I scolded myself. Though I rarely intend to, sometimes I wish things had turned out differently… because I can’t help but wonder.

I used to know a girl who had a beautiful way of looking at the world around her. She saw the splendor and charm in everything, moment by moment, from the mundane to the wondrous. Once we sat in an empty parking lot and she showed me a page from an old astronomy textbook that depicted our planet, our solar system, our galaxy, and beyond. She pointed at the Earth, the planets, the “everything else,” and wondered aloud.

“Look how tiny we are compared to everything around us…”

So often I scornfully catch myself wishing for things I don’t have, or at least things I don’t have any right wishing for. Sometimes I wonder who I would’ve been, had past journeys been steered down different roads and headed in completely different directions. Sometimes wondering can get you into trouble because it’s often the case that you find yourself, by some mysterious form of inherent rationale, believing that you, or your life, would’ve somehow been better off, had things turned out differently. Perhaps that’s trite and pessimistic but I suppose this way of thinking is more common than we tend to gather or even realize. I try to remind myself how blessed I am to have what I have: friends, family, passions, and ultimately, a Savior.

I am immensely grateful for the life I’ve been given and for the opportunities I’ve been allowed to seize. I am altogether undeserving, and thus, so very humbled.

It’s been five years since I walked the halls of OHS, yet as I wandered around the empty building before soundcheck, I was hit full in the face by an avalanche of memories — some good, some bittersweet.

We were called the Huskies.

It was an explosive evening, the kind I’ll never forget (and I’m not referring to the aftermath of too many helpings of baked beans). The sea of familiar faces made it a scary show for me (despite it being Halloween night) for the same reason that plagues many musicians whereby performing for those he/she personally knows is often more nerve-racking than playing in front of strangers. Rather ironic. Regardless, it was an absolute honor to have the chance to play a show in my hometown and I really can’t say enough wonderful things about the place. People often ask me to describe it and I just laugh and say, “It’s kinda like the Shire.”

In high school I was painfully shy and by default, a total nobody. I remember trudging through entire school days without opening my mouth once to say a word to anybody. What a simpleton I was. I wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone, I’d retire to the computer lab by myself during lunch instead of eating with everyone else, and I could’ve counted the number of friends I had on one hand. Although I’ll gladly admit I didn’t put in as much as I should’ve back then, I can certainly vouch for that bittersweet feeling one gets when he/she looks back on the past and wishes more time had been taken to appreciate its beauty. I’ll bet I missed out on a lot more during that time than I even realize. Quite a valuable lesson that can take a long time to learn.

This year, as Halloween night rolled around, it was a surreal feeling to find myself back in the place I’d spent four years of my life in, and yet see it in a new way. My buddy Matt Thiessen was gracious enough to start off the evening by performing forty five minutes of awesome. Such a wonderful guy.

OHS, I owe ya big time.

Go Huskies.

By definition, Deep Regret is the acute anxiety or inevitable apprehension trigged in the average male by the sudden or unexpected appearance of an immensely beautiful girl he innately knows is way out of his league. This girl is so gorgeous, so exquisite, so stunning, he becomes instantly enamored beyond mental functionality and can barely keep his eyes from popping out of his head, let alone bring himself to speak to her. Her beauty and elegance, her feminine mystique are so intoxicating, so staggering, his knees involuntarily go weak, he becomes unreasonably inarticulate, and as a result, just stands there like a n00b with his jaw on the sidewalk. Naturally, she takes zero notice of him and doesn’t even acknowledge his existence as she gracefully strolls away out of sight, and ultimately out of this life forever. It’s not a conscious thing on her part; she’s not being discourteous or mean by any stretch of the imagination, she’s just that sweet, innocent and utterly charming. She simply has no idea.

Okay. Never for a second have I pretended to have the ever-elusive female charm all figured out, but I can certainly speak for the impending inhibitions that we shy males must deal with. I’d tried to give this crazy phenomena a suitable title for a long time until Pete finally hit the nail on the head. Deep Regret refers to the irresistible longing a boy has to approach and speak to his dream girl even though he cannot physically or emotionally make himself do it. He is trapped in inner turmoil. Stricken by quiet chaos. Utterly helpless. Paralyzed. Despite the inner machine gun spray of stinging desperation, he watches her walk away and spends that night staring at the ceiling wondering WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED had he found the strength to fight back the nerves long enough to say hello. His chance is lost, she is gone, yet he still replays the scene in his head, wishing he wasn’t such a jellyfish around pretty girls. Who knows what might’ve happened? He kicks himself. The wondering alone could choke a moose.

That, dear friends, is Deep Regret.

We opened for John Mayer in Houston a few months ago. Myself and good pal/monitor engineer Micah were hoofing down the quarter mile stretch from the venue to the bus after soundcheck. The sidewalk led us around the perimeter of the grounds before intersecting with a long line of fans waiting to get into the show. We were minding our own business, talking about nothing in particular when suddenly, it happened. I glanced off to my right and my heart literally stopped dead.

It was electric. It all happened in slow motion. There in front of us was a group of girls in their early/mid-twenties, walking and chatting amongst themselves on their way to the show. One of them turned to say something to her friend and I almost had a heart attack. I literally, physically couldn’t breathe. Everything about her was gorgeous. Her eyes, her smile, the way her hair fell across her face, the way she laughed, the way she walked. I was immediately struck by the Stupid Hammer as my frozen charisma melted all over the sidewalk and I stood there gaping like a ridiculous imbecile.

Allow me to pause for a moment simply to clarify that this was NOT a beastly, primal, overly-rugged masculine emotion that took hold of me. I did NOT slobber all over myself via lewd desire like some impudent, lustful, arrogant bro. I did NOT jump up and down and inwardly scream “Woah, that girl is hot!” because it is my personal opinion that the word “hot” has been weighed down by so many repulsive, disrespectful connotations (all thanks to modern media), that it has ultimately become a rather derogatory adjective with which to describe such pure and blameless beauty. It has a devious way of cheapening it and that tends to bug me. Deep Regret and the stunning quality of such unpolluted beauty is far too exquisite and innocent to be associated with such brash crudeness.

Whew. Glad that’s all cleared up.

She was beautiful. Actually, beautiful doesn’t even touch how graceful this woman was. I was utterly smitten. My mouth went dry and my heart beat around inside my chest like a dull jackhammer as the butterflies in my stomach strapped on rusty ice skates and raged in thunderous fury. My malfunctioning mental faculties shuddered and turned over a few times like a cold engine in a winter morning before promptly shutting down. It was the first time in my life I’d truly felt stunned by beauty.

I was speechless. She was Cinderella.

As I stood there incapacitated, she glided by and continued on down the sidewalk, just being totally sweet and innocent. We never made eye contact, she didn’t happen to look up or notice me. She had no idea I was even there. I instantly knew what had happened because it hit me like an iron bell in an empty church.

DEEP REGRET STRIKES AGAIN.

This is where I tell everyone how I’ve never fancied myself a terribly romantic person, and just like anyone, I have my fair share of rough edges. However, during this particular scenario in Houston, had I kept my wits about me and somehow found the nerve to approach Cinderella, I suspect I would’ve merely blabbered a load of silly rubbish via a doomed attempt of acting “cool” or “outgoing” or “fun,” only to fail miserably. Of course, I still wonder what would’ve happened. Alas, the world continues to turn, life continues to endure, and Deep Regret continues to strike like a viper.

Despite all of this, there is hope, endless amounts of the stuff, and that’s my favorite part.

This is where I swallow an overdose of optimism, leap out of my chair with my fist in the air, and shout from the rooftops at the top of my lungs, “Life must go on!” for this I truly know:

She is out there. My Cinderella. She is real. She exists. I pray for her constantly. May God satisfy the desires of her heart, draw her close, consume her. May He claim her passions, her identity, her refuge, her hopes, her strengths and weaknesses, every fiber of her being. May she treasure and cherish her Savior more than anything of this world and cling to His will with every ounce of her stamina. By all that she is, does, and strives to be, may He draw near to her and she to Him.

A mental scene is suddenly vivid. The midday sun beats down on a dirty saloon town. A showdown is taking place in the middle of a sweltering dusty street. Back to back, Deep Regret and I pace off as the clinks of our spurs split the deafening silence. At any moment, we’ll whirl around and face each other, gun metal blazing like fire. Our shots will ring through the empty buildings, shatter glass storefront windows, and only one will walk away alive.

At present, the sunset deepens in the dusk and we are still pacing, Deep Regret and I. Muscles tensed, senses alert, counting, waiting, ready to lunge for each other’s throats like wild animals. Though it hasn’t happened yet, the moment will surely arrive when faith and fear collide like a double train wreck and that’s when I’ll spin around and pull the trigger with such deft aim and vehement resolve, a silver bullet will rip through the air and I won’t even have to stand there and watch it spiral in slow motion… because I’ll already know… I won’t miss.

That’s the cool Wyatt Erp version.

Perhaps the Cary Grant version is a bit more refined. Perhaps I’ll be wearing a crisp tuxedo when I meet her (highly unlikely). I shall approach Her Highness, bow, and graciously introduce myself. She’ll offer me her royal hand, reveal her name to me, and we shall chat pleasantly whilst swirling around a ballroom of dreamy splendor. Our friendship will grow and blossom, and neither of us will ever have to write silly (and rather verbose) blogs explaining what Deep Regret is because it’ll just feel right and perhaps even meant to be.

It’s a cozy thought. Yet one I prefer to casually think about over long flights to Japan rather than wish upon a star right this second.

Time. There is much time left and lots of life seasons. There is much to see, to do, and to be.

I am a happy clam. I must take it all in, give thanks for it, and treasure reality with a heart crammed full of content as life continues to play out day-by-day. Should I do simply that, I shall finally rest assured knowing the next time Deep Regret rears its ugly head, I’ll be waiting with semi-smug confidence, ready to act swiftly.

I’ll gladly admit, beginning a blog entry with the words, “I remember when I got my first computer” is ten to one, the nerdiest way to begin any entry of any kind, but when the things in life you are most passionate about involve computers from stem to stern, I suppose it’s somewhat permissible. Computers aren’t like bikes or cars or wisdom teeth, and it’s terribly awkward to talk about your first computer as if it were something as sacred as your first kiss, but regardless, the REAL issue of this entry has little to do with my first computer itself, for it goes much “deeper,” shall we say.

I was a sophomore in high school. I mowed more lawns that you could shake a fist at. I saved up months and months of allowance for a mighty, magnificent, glorious computing machine. After finally placing my online order, a handful of boxes showed up on my doorstep and I hugged the UPS guy with such a powerful mixture of gratitude and gratefulness, he begged to be released before hurtling back to the safety of his truck. I waved goodbye before ripping into the boxes like a ravenous wolf.

It was a Dell Dimension 2350 series desktop, complete with Windows XP, 1.80 GHz Intel Pentium 4 and 256MB of ram. It sounded like Dad’s diesel when I turned it on. I was in love.

The discovery of the novel ability to burn CD’s was instantaneous. Smokey Bear would not have been a happy camper, for my bedroom swiftly became a blazing wildfire of flaming infernal madness (in a really fun way). I burned CD’s to play in the stereo in the kitchen, for the Pioneer in my car, for the sweet Discman via long family vacations, for the little boombox on the bathroom counter — you name it, I burned it. I became a walking pyromaniac, a firebug, a reasonably talented arsonist, and nothing could singe the big silly smile off my face.

The whole point of unloading all this rubbish is because something came into my life around this time that completely changed everything.

A chair.

Ahhh, I can practically see your eyebrows raise in bewildered confusion.

A chair? Really? Come on. Look at that thing. It’s… it’s… a dumb chair.

Well, dear friends, this is the part of the blog where I describe how ordinary this chair was… to everyone but me. (Dramatic music)

It should strike you as no surprise to learn that I was not an incredibly verbose person as a sophomore. I was a rather shy lad and I wasn’t born with a silver tongue, nor the ability to speak with ridiculous amounts of eloquence. Sneakiness, maybe. Eloquence, none. That being said, my list of friends was not particularly long as a 10th grader with a sweet new computer. I began using a sequencing program called FL Studio and it literally changed my life. That however, is a lengthy story for another day. The main point is that the wide, windy world of computing became fascinating to a kid who suddenly saw an old Dell as a way of creating dreams and becoming lost in them. The artistry and imagination of creating music “in the box” immediately hit home with me (permission given to the “analog crowd” to shudder with an acceptable icy disgust) and I was in seventh heaven.

I had it set up in the basement on an old wooden desk I found rotting away in the depths of my parent’s 1899 Victorian farmhouse. But I had nowhere to sit! I was not blessed with thighs of steel to crouch for hours, nor an upside down five-gallon bucket to seat myself upon. If ever there was a pickle, I’d gotten myself into one.

Enter the chair. (Hero music)

My buddy Mike is a really nice guy, the sort of guy who thinks of others long before himself. I remember the day Mike came over hauling a well-loved blue vinyl office chair he’d snatched up at a garage sale for twenty-five cents. A steal.

I took one look at it and went into orbit.

I had everything a boy could possibly ask for and much, much more. The days flowed comfortably by like rivers of honey. I sat in the chair. I spun in the chair. I rolled around in the chair. I spilled Mountain Dew all over myself and the chair. I made lifelong memories that would soon be forgotten in the chair. That piece of furniture and I were inseparable. We shared that sweet and ever-magical bond between boy and chair.

Before I conclude this blog entry with “…and they lived happily ever after”, I am pleased to take a deep, suspenseful breath and announce that THE CHAIR LIVES ON! (80′s glam metal)

I sit in the chair. I spin in the chair. I spill Mountain Dew all over myself and the chair. The chair and I have become best of friends and we look forward to making memories we won’t remember in two weeks. In fact, the more I type these words and the longer I sit here and think about it, the purpose of this blog entry is actually designed to serve as a device for formally introducing you, the greedy reader, to one of man’s best (and frequently overlooked) friends. The chair.

However, this particular chair is not just “any chair,” mind you; it’s not just any old piece of used furniture. It is the lord of all chairs and has been my friend through many dangers. I grew so fond of this chair so quickly, it suddenly became apparent to me that a formal name/alias was necessary for it. It needed to be important, distinguished, regal, impressive, noble, original, stately, imperial, majestic, dignified, kingly, and totally awesome.

Thus, after long bouts of heavy contemplating, it was known henceforth as, The Chair. (Imperial March)

Internet Friends, I’d like you to meet, The Chair:

The Chair, meet my wonderful Internet Friends.

Whew, I feel better about things already!

Not for anything special, just for fun.

I’m twenty four years old, yet something about this song makes me bawl like a baby. The way the melodies and lyrics swirl together is so poignant and beautiful. If I were to count on one hand, the number of songs that have ever deeply moved me, this one would take the cake. Last night I probably spent more time actually crying at the piano than I did recording it. Such are the secret confessions of a shy boy from Minnesota.

Entitled In Christ Alone, written by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend.

In Christ alone, my hope is found


He is my light, my strength, my song


This cornerstone, this solid ground


Firm through the fiercest drought and storm


What heights of love, what depths of peace


When fears are stilled, when strivings cease


My comforter, my all-in-all


Here in the love of Christ I stand

No guilt in life, no fear in death


This is the power of Christ in me


From life’s first cry to final breath


Jesus commands my destiny


No power of hell, no scheme of man


Can ever pluck me from His hand


Till He returns or calls me home


Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand



As I’m so often reminded what a priceless gift my life is, I ache with everything in me to make it count, so that when I finally cross the finish line, I’ll hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

To me, there is no greater reward.

Of course, all of this weighs heavily on the spiritual scale, so allow me to be completely honest and say none of it is intended to be “crammed down the throat,” if you will. That is not my intention. This is what I wholeheartedly believe, and to that belief, I remain steadfast until He returns or calls me home.

One thing is certain:

When He comes for His own, He will have no trouble recognizing me… because my banner will be clear.

Sweatshirt weather doesn’t last forever in Minnesota and before you know it, it’s time to dig the winter coats out of mothballs and grimace through the raging bitter elements. However, I’m determined to make the best of autumn this year before the flakes start falling.

A true sign of autumn. An elementary school crossing guard in traditional garb:

This is where I describe how well things are going in the studio, and by extension, how excited I am to release new music out into the world like turning over a butterfly net full of vibrant Monarchs. It can be tough to fall asleep when I’m off the road, spending my days and nights at home working on new material. Believe it or not, it takes a few weeks to get used to the stillness of an empty bedroom versus the muffled roar of a bus generator and the distant rumble of tires on pavement. When I’m home, I shave off a lot of hours staring at the ceiling thinking about whatever song I’m working on at the moment, what direction it’s headed in, or what kind of emotional chords it should strike. It’s often the case that mere brainstorming gives me just as many goosebumps as playing back the final mastered WAV, because “it’s all in there” so to speak and I can hear it long before I create it. I love how music does that to you. It has the power to make the artist completely alive before he/she ever sits down to create it. Like fire and ice, it’s where vision and inspiration collide, and that’s where the real beauty originates.

Alfred Hitchcock was quoted as saying the following:

“Once the screenplay is finished, I’d just as soon not make the film at all. I have a strongly visual mind. I visualize a picture right down to the final cuts. I write all this out in the greatest detail in the script and then I don’t look at the script while I’m shooting. I know it all by heart, just as an orchestra conductor needs not look at the score. When you finish the script, the film is perfect. But in shooting it you lose perhaps forty percent of your original conception.”

Granted, I’m just a simple Minnesota boy, far from a legendary British filmmaker, but something about what he says rings like a bell to me. The imagining of a given piece of work is nearly as beautiful as the product of such labor. If only we could share these imaginings with others, that would be a fascinating thing. If I could upload the DREAM or VISION of a new Owl City record for you to download, now that would be something. If this was possible, there would suddenly be no limits, no boundaries or borders. It would span the senses and go far deeper than any of us could imagine. A band could release an album and it could take us places in our minds as though we were actually there in the middle of it. It would be a dream itself, and at risk of sounding super cheesy, it would almost be an experience. An interesting thought better saved for a rainy day.

Regardless, there’s something wonderful about locking the doors, turning off the lights and settling into a room surrounded by all sorts of instruments and gear just waiting to be switched on, operated, played, manipulated, maneuvered, you name it. Ironically this atmosphere is often all the inspiration one needs to create an entire song, at least instrumentally speaking, and not even think twice about it. Sounds, chords, melodies, tones, textures, all spark the imagination and I could probably write an instrumental record every year for the rest of my life, piece of cake. The possibilities are endless and the river of inspiration never seems to run dry. For me, lyrics take a bit more work, but it goes without saying that the result of daydreaming and/or pulling from inspiration is incredibly worth the effort, should it ever become defined as merely that.

As it stands, I’m about three quarters of the way finished with a new collection of songs and I couldn’t be more excited about them. A lot of people have asked what I planned to do at the outset of this record, namely whether I’d record it in a corporate studio or stick to the basement (or “bat cave” in layman’s terms), and I opted for the latter. Somehow I feel as though a ticking clock would rush me into thinking I had to make everything perfect FIVE MINUTES AGO, and suddenly the idea of making a new record reminded me of when I used to load package trucks for UPS.

Work.

Then again, I always seem to forget how much work it takes to make an entire record from scratch, and when you do everything yourself (aside from having it mastered), the process claims a lot of your time and energy as well. But as I told my mother a few nights ago, “Hey, as long as I can just make music and buy groceries, I’ll be the happiest boy in the world until the day I die.”

We’re in the home stretch now. My buddy Matt Thiessen weighed in on the album and there are a few other collaborations in the works as well. There’s a few different ways to play out a subsequent record and from day one, I wanted none of them to leave me in a “sophomore slump.” It would be a disservice to put out a new album that sounded way too similar to anything I’ve done in the past, yet there’s always the risk of changing a bit too much. Thus, there are a few places on the new record that step outside the Owl Box for a moment before returning, and I’m really excited about the idea of exploring new territory within those moments because it’ll be something I’ve never done before. Naturally, this is no reason to stand up and scream, “Owl City has changed its sound!” because of course, there’s nothing more surprising than when a band releases a record that sounds absolutely nothing like their past works, so naturally I shan’t stray too far from familiar borders. But I can think of several places on the record where we’ll go down a rabbit hole or two before returning to the city. To me, there’s nothing more exciting than when the mind has the freedom to explore, discover, and imagine — and that’s exactly what I plan to do.

A list of instruments and gear featured on the album via photographs:


Gratuitous wall of guitars:

The consequence of playing drums has its repercussions:

Juno G and Voyager:

Stress Disorder:

This has nothing to do with music. My dad put Christmas lights in my fake living room tree. Good work, Pops:

More guitars:

Take it easy on the gooseneck:

And finally, who can resist the recreation of a classic?

So there you have it.

The long and short of it is, I’m plugging away on the new record, things are going swimmingly and I couldn’t be MORE excited for you to hear the new music.

I might describe it as rather “orchestral” at present. It’s a very dynamic, polished effort. The soft parts are quiet and cozy, the loud parts are thunderous and powerful, and a river of wind sweeps you off your feet and carries you between worlds of both. The lyrics are abstract at times, simple and honest at other times. It’s a dreamy endeavor, coated with an ethereal veneer and flavored with a faint hint of melancholy. The tracks seem to glue together. Lots of string quartets, 1/16 arps, delayed enveloped synths, a bit of brass, huge drums, wide claps, dreamed-out vocal harmonies, unison saw leads, sequenced field recordings, desert dry kick drums, oceans of reverb.

The future is bright, and by all means, it’s beautiful.

“I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out,” I replied.

The class inwardly chuckled as a mutual sense of “deep understanding” enveloped the room.

Hockey is a big deal in Minnesota. And not just Minnesota! As a product of the late 80′s, I spent way too many hours playing Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey for Nintento 64, and of course, it was the best thing ever.

I love hockey and I’ve traced the long line of bread crumbs left by my maternal lineage all the way back to Canada, so perhaps it’s just in my blood.

To me, hockey is a lot like ballet, except there’s no music, no choreography, and the dancers wear tempered blades on their feet and punch each other in the faces. Even though it probably makes a lot more sense than I give it credit for, I for one, have never really understood the phenomena. I must admit however, something about being a goalie looks rather invigorating. I occasionally stand in front of the mirror and can’t help but secretly wonder what I’d look like all decked out and dressed to the nines in sweet hockey garb.

Thus follows:

THE TOP TEN RIDICULOUSLY COOL ADVANTAGES OF BEING A HOCKEY GOALTENDER

01. Bigger stick.
02. Bruises really bring out the color in your eyes.
03. Goaltenders are often given cool, inventive nicknames like “Eddie.”
04. Helmet allows an ideal excuse to be Darth Vader for Halloween.
05. Padding gives the impression that one is incredibly buff, when in reality, one is a skinny rake handle.
06. Hook all you want; they send everyone else to the box.
07. You can casually check out the good looking ladies rinkside without them even knowing.
08. Detroit Red Wing goalies look like Santa Claus; can earn extra money during the holidays.
09. Coach keeps calling you “Skippy” because he can’t remember (or pronounce) your real name.
10. Crazed fans hurl Hostess Ding Dongs and certificates for mental health services toward the net.

I can’t quite put my finger on it but hockey embodies the sort of mystery I’m attracted to. Perhaps it’s due largely to the fact that I frequent hockey games and cheer at the top of my lungs because I have no idea what’s going on, but also because I always feel a little more familiar with the sport and all its mysteries whenever I attempt to explain it to my 97 year old grandmother each time I visit her.

Grandma:
Adam, what’s the “hockey” the whippersnappers are watching on the TV?

Me:
Hockey is a game used to interrupt ice rink fights. Once the fight is interrupted, the game participants skate around in circles hitting each other with sticks until two or more get angry enough to resume the fight. Unlike boxing, the gloves worn are usually removed, and unlike professional wrestling, hockey occurs on ice.

Grandma:
So “hockey” is not when you skip class?

Me:
No, that’s “hooky” and they stopped calling it that in the late 70′s.

Grandma:
Say what?

Me:
Hockey is a human phenomena often resulting when a small group of people stay out in the cold weather too long and decide the best way they could possibly spend their time would be to grab a hooked stick and start chasing a flat, round, frozen rubber object around a sheet of ice, and make up rules to make the whole thing appear credible. They find some poor, naive chap and con him into standing between the pipes to shoot the puck at him under the pretense that he is “protecting the net.” The game inherently evokes anger amongst its players, which can often only be relieved by momentarily pausing the game so that two players can attempt to punch each other as frequently as possible. It is difficult to watch on TV due to the impossible task of seeing the puck, even in HD.

Grandma:
That sounds ridiculous.

Me:
Yeah.

“It isn’t the way it used to be,” said one leaf to the other.

“No,” the other leaf answered. “So many of us have fallen off tonight we’re almost the only ones left on our branch.”

“You never know who’s going to go next,” said the first leaf. “Even when it was warm and the sun shone, a storm or a cloudburst would come sometimes and many leaves were torn off, though they were still very young. You never know who’s going to go next.”

“The sun seldom shines now,” sighed the second leaf, “and when it does, it gives no warmth. We must have warmth again.”

“Can it be true,” said the first leaf, “can it really be true, that others come to take our places when we’re gone, and after them still others, and more and more?”

“It really is true,” whispered the second leaf. “We can’t even begin to imagine it, it’s beyond our powers.”

“It makes me very sad,” added the first leaf.

They were silent a while.

Then the first leaf said quietly to itself, “Why must we fall?”

The second leaf asked, “What happens to us when we have fallen?”

“We sink down.”

“What is under us?”

The first leaf answered, “I don’t know. Some say one thing, some another, but nobody knows.”

The second leaf asked, “Do we feel anything, do we know anything about ourselves when we’re down there?”

The first leaf answered, “Who knows? Not one of all those down there has ever come back to tell us about it.”

They were silent again. Then the first leaf said tenderly to the other, “Don’t worry so much about it, you’re trembling!”

“That’s nothing,” the second leaf answered, “I tremble at the least thing now. I don’t feel so sure of my hold as I used to.”

“Let’s not talk any more about such things,” said the first leaf.

The other replied, “No, we’ll let it be. But — what else shall we talk about?” It was silent, but went on after a little while. “Which of us will go first?”

“There’s still plenty of time to worry about that,” the other leaf said reassuringly. “Lets remember how beautiful it was, how wonderful, when the sun came out and shone so warmly that we thought we’d burst with life. Do you remember? And the morning dew and the mild and splendid nights…”

“Now the nights are dreadful,” the second leaf complained, “and there is no end to them.”

“We shouldn’t complain,” said the first leaf gently. “We’ve outlived many, many others.”

“Have I changed much?” asked the second leaf shyly.

“Not in the least,” the first leaf said. “You think so only because I’ve gotton to be so yellow and ugly. But it’s different in your case.”

“You’re fooling me,” the second leaf said.

“No, really,” the first leaf answered eagerly, “believe me, you’re as lovely as the day you were born! Here and there may be a little yellow spot. But it’s hardly noticeable and makes you only more beautiful, believe me.”

“Thanks,” whispered the second leaf, quite touched. I don’t believe you, not altogether, but I thank you because you’re so kind. You’ve always been so kind to me. I’m just beginning to understand how kind you are.

“Hush,” said the other leaf, and kept silent itself, for it was too troubled to talk anymore.

Then they were both silent. Hours passed.

A moist wind blew, cold and hostile through the treetops.

“Ah, now,” said the second leaf, “I…” Then it’s voice broke off. It was torn from it’s place and spun down.

Winter had come.

From “Bambi, a Life in the Woods” by Felix Salten, written in 1923.

Rather sad but undeniably beautiful.

That’s how you feel when you run into a significant other you haven’t seen in a long time. A bitter avalanche of icy memories plows into your chest at breakneck speed, stealing the very breath from your lungs. Gasping for air, there’s really no use fighting it; the blow is instantaneous and it’s overpowering. Your eyes land on this person, your heart immediately stops dead, your knees go weak and you internally panic. You force yourself to walk over, but before either of you say hello, you’ve already got an endless amount of things you secretly want to say and an equally lengthy list of questions you wish you could ask.

What affection the two of you once shared was absolutely beautiful, consequently rendering any unanticipated meetings thereafter twice as awkward. But as everyone always reminded you, life has a way of operating, God has a mysterious way of working, and sometimes things change without a moment’s warning. Even after it was all said and done, it’s still hard to imagine how things could’ve ever evolved from “always” to “never” in what seemed like a single dramatic heartbeat.

Months and months later, you run into this particular person unexpectedly and the realization hits you like a brick wall. The pain is still there. It’s almost as painful as the night you said goodbye. Enough time has passed to con you into thinking you’ve begun to heal, and of course you probably have, but then you see this person and suddenly those old familiar aches begin to hurt all over again. You were finally beginning to mend after what happened, the relationship withered and ended, however dramatically, but the moment you lock eyes with this person you once shared so many dreams with, your stomach turns and a bitter taste fills your mouth. You can barely breathe. Half of you aches for things to be the way they once were, the other half longs to forget the whole thing ever happened. Regardless of your role in the conclusion of the relationship, it left you shattered and bringing it up after all this time would only pour another dose of potent heartbreak for both of you.

So there you are, standing face-to-face, unsure of what to say aside from the typical small talk jabber. A myriad of emotions swirl through both your heads but they only make former lovers more confused. Maybe you hug an awkward I-haven’t-seen-you-in-forever gesture, but that familiar mixed scent of perfume and cologne makes it even more impossible to know how to act, brief as the impending conversation inevitably will be. You just can’t stop thinking “things will never be the way they used to be” and that’s what hurts most. You both know where your identities lie, Who ultimately claims your hearts and where your fortresses are… and those things are truly what matter most, but this unforeseen meeting is still severely painful and there’s no denying that. It keeps you both awake for nights.

As healing as it is, you can only drive around at night listening to The Swiss Army Romance so many times.

This is me being honest. I tossed and turned a lot last week. I thought about someone so much it was unhealthy.

So here’s hoping I fall asleep easier tonight if I send a simple message out into the void:

Girl,

I still care about you. I think about you all the time. I’m praying for you constantly. I want so badly to know you’re being taken care of. I wish you the best in life, not because you’ll surely find it, but because you deserve it. You deserve so much.

Adam

Beyond the gates, beyond the blue, everyone is waiting. I’ll bet some don’t even know what for. Maybe they’re waiting because that’s all they’ve ever known, waiting for something to happen… anything at all. Some are content, some are entirely discontent. Some love waiting because it gives them something to hang on to, something to keep the gears turning in their minds. Some are tired of waiting because they don’t know what’s beyond the gates but they’re still curious as to what’s out there, they’re still searching for something. Maybe some are so busy waiting, they forget what indescribable beauty is right there in front of them.

If you sift through as many airports as I do, you’ll agree the process becomes formulaic and dull pretty fast. Sometimes you’d just as soon forget where you are and where you’re going for a moment because, “if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all.” Waiting for a delayed flight is just as tiresome in Copenhagen as it is in Shanghai, Dallas, Manila or Perth, but that’s no reason to wish the time away. Sometimes I long to fast forward five to ten hours at a time so I could JUST GET THERE ALREADY, and that’s when I realize the ability would be nice, but it’s not a daydream I’m proud of. The last thing I want to do is wish my life away, be it a device to eclipse exhaustion, fatigue, apathy or otherwise. These days are FAR too valuable and I cannot plan which one will be my last. With that outlook, each day, hour and minute is suddenly VERY precious. I must be thankful even for the dull moments because the reality is that I could pass into eternity tonight, next week, six months from now or in fifty years. I need to appreciate the time I’ve been given because that time is not something I can count on. It will elapse at some point and when I look back at the life I’ve just lived, what will I think of it? I don’t want to cross the finish line and feel the tiniest hint of disappointment.

It’s easy to plan. It’s not hard to expect. It’s easy to intend things to fall into place, give or take some heartache along the way.

My plans are common. I want to work hard, immerse myself in what I’m most passionate about. I want to create art, send a message of hope out into the world, I want to inspire others. Most of all, I long to draw a pure reflection of what I’m living for and Who claims my life, my strength, and my all. I want to meet a lovely girl, win her heart, fall in love and get married. I want to start a family someday, have a good retirement, play a little golf, take my grandkids fishing, THEN maybe I’ll be into the idea of my days being numbered. Of course I’m being a bit facetious. Sometimes I’d just as soon put the idea of death as far from me as possible, but of course, I am not the one to decide when my time is up. I can’t keep it at bay with a ten foot pole. An appointment book has been made and my appointments WILL BE KEPT whether I like it or not. The beauty is that I don’t have to be afraid.

What gets me is the way my knees dig into the back of the seat in front of me when the bird finally crests the clouds. It keeps me awake and that’s when I can’t help but wonder where the girl sitting next to me is from, what sort of book the guy two rows ahead is reading, or if the pretty flight attendant with the pony tail has anyone waiting for her back home, wherever that is.

And then the plane lands and I’m out of there. Sometimes I’m walking away, glad to be back on the ground, but wishing I would’ve found a deeper appreciation for the journey itself, rather than focusing only on the destination.

And then in the hotel room, sometimes I stare into the mirror and it’s like I’m looking into the eyes of a familiar stranger. Not in a sad or lonely way, just from a thoughtful, pensive angle. Who is that person? What is he thinking? What is he holding on to? Where does he put his trust? Where is his refuge? What is he really living for?

Sometimes it’s a friendly reminder… sometimes it’s a sobering reality check.

That’s when I realize I’m tired of waiting. I’m so sick of wishing I was there already. I’d rather look around and not have to squint to see the beauty that literally lies everywhere.

Just for a second, forget your weekend plans, forget what’s in the books, forget your date on Friday night, forget how crazy the world is and how you just want to be there already. Things can change in a split-second and sometimes you have no idea what you’ve got until it’s gone. Sometimes life is not about the destination, but about the journey designed to take you there.

Whether things are happy or life is hard, there is SUCH divine beauty all around, and I suppose in a manner of speaking, “the trick is to see it.”

A Switchfoot lyric appropriately comes to mind:

“This is your life, are you who you want to be?”

There was a time when I could fly. I swear it.
Perhaps, If I think hard enough for a moment, I can even tell you the year.
My room was on the ground floor at the rear of the house.
My bed faced a window.
Night after night I lay on my bed and willed myself to fly.
It was hard work, I call tell you.
Sometimes I lay perfectly still for an hour before I felt
    my body rising from the bed.
I rose slowly, slowly until I floated three or four feet
    above the floor.
Then, with a kind of swimming motion, I propelled myself
    toward the window.
Outside, I rose higher and higher, above the pasture fence,
    above the clothesline, above the dark, haunted trees
    beyond the pasture.
And, all the time, I heard the music of flutes.
It seemed the wind made this music.
And sometimes there were voices singing.

-Alden Nowlan

Picnic Boat

Sunday night and the park policemen tell each other it
    is dark as a stack of black cats on Lake Michigan.
A big picnic boat comes home to Chicago from the peach
    farms of Saugatuck.
Hundreds of electric bulbs break the night’s darkness, a
    flock of red and yellow birds with wings at a standstill.
Running along the deck railings are festoons and leaping
    in curves are loops of light from prow and stern
    to the tall smokestacks.
Over the hoarse crunch of waves at my pier comes a
    hoarse answer in the rhythmic oompa of the brasses
    playing a Polish folk-song for the home-comers.

-Carl Sandburg

Bats

A bat is born
Naked and blind and pale
His mother makes a pocket of her tail
And catches him. He clings
to her long fur
By his thumbs and toes and teeth.
And then the mother dances through the night
Doubling and looping,
Soaring, somersaulting-
Her baby hangs on
underneath.
All night, in happiness,
She hunts and flies.
Her high sharp cries
Like shining needlepoints of sound
Go out into the night and
echoing back,
Tell her what they have touched.
She hears how far it is,
how big it is,
which way it’s going:
She lives by hearing.
The mother eats the moths and gnats
she catches
In full flight, In full flight.
The mother drinks the water of the pond,
She skims across,
Her baby hangs on tight.
Her baby drinks the milk she makes him.
In moonlight or starlight,
In midair
Their single shadow,
printed on the moon
Or fluttering across the stars,
Whirls on all night.
At daybreak,
the tired mother flaps home to her rafter
The others all are there.
They hang themselves up by their toes,
They wrap themselves in their brown wings.
Bunched upside down, they sleep in air.
Their sharp ears,
Their sharp teeth
Their quick sharp faces
Are dull and slow and mild.
All the bright day, as the mother sleeps,
She folds her wings about her sleeping child.

-Randall Jarrell

Maybe he locks the house, backs out the driveway, puts his favorite record on and makes for the interstate. It’s 1:39 AM so there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do even if there was a good enough reason to stop for. The cops are clustered in the shadows by the freeway picking up speeders, so he drives through town 10 mph over the limit and doesn’t even check the mirrors. He takes the corners sharp. The windows are down, the air hangs heavy on the scent of damp earth and wet streets from the summer drizzle that blanketed the city an hour ago. The steady pitter-patter on his bedroom skylight complimented the weight of insomnia so well, it kept him wide awake all night and that’s what got him thinking in the first place. He’d fought it off as best he could, but once the splintered painful memories began working their way into his mind, he was a goner. Driving is still the only way he knows how to choke back the lump in his throat. The pain has become familiar but that doesn’t mean it hurts any less.

He’s lonely and he knows it.

Maybe she slides the patio door closed as quietly as she can, steps through the damp backyard toward her sleeping car (parked a little too close to the curb) and steals away into the night. She puts the sunroof back and lets the wind whip through her hair as the headlights drill holes into the misty blackness ahead. She’ll be the first to admit some nights are worse than others, but it’s nights like these that make it hardest to breathe. It’s not that she’s crushed about the past, she was heartbroken at first and that’s a given, but enough time has passed to allow her to heal and she’s only beginning to breathe easier again. Unfortunately, certain memories set off tidal waves of heartache, and once the right thought hits her, it’s like a snowflake that starts an avalanche. Bitter memories come rushing in so fast, she starts drowning and it doesn’t matter how hard she kicks and struggles, everything reminds her of the way things used to be… or rather how bitterly they ended. It’s early Friday morning and most of her friends have to be up at 6:30 AM so there’s nobody to call, and a good chance that any sent texts will be left unanswered until lunch break later that afternoon. But that’s alright; she doesn’t really feel like talking anyway. She just needs to drive.

These people are strangers. They’ve never met before. Neither has any idea the other exists.

Maybe he lives in a small town an hour south of the city and whenever he feels like this, he heads north. Something about the silhouetted skyline framed by the dirty windshield is comforting to him. It gives him an easy target to shoot for, a goal to work towards, something to think about at least, anything to keep his mind from wandering into unpleasant territory. The darkness feels good. The chilly midnight air gushing in through the windows makes him shiver but not enough to roll them back up. The occasional pair of headlights summit the hillside ahead and eventually turn into an irregular stream as countryside slowly turns to suburban outskirt. He takes an exit and heads west on a frontage road.

Maybe she lives by herself in a cozy apartment a few miles east of the city and whenever she feels like this, she makes a beeline for a secret place only she knows about. It’s actually not all that secret, it’s really just a cute little lakeside park with a few picnic benches, a playground with swings, and a sandy beach. She’s been there several times before and always drives home feeling a bit more resolved and determined to move on. When things are bad, swinging is her remedy. Since she was a little girl, swinging the hours away always helped to take the sting out of loneliness. Swinging made everything right, or at least helped the endeavor, and it was always as if the troubles seemed to sort themselves out after hours on the swing set. Tonight she knows she needs to swing for a long time, so she parks the car well away from the wash of streetlights and tiptoes through the shadowy parking lot, still warm from the afternoon sun.

Maybe the frontage road twists and turns, rises and falls, winds through the hills and eventually takes him over the suburban border, a threshold where the sea of residential homesteads turn into pure untainted forest. Had he switched the song or checked his phone, he might have missed the sign that pointed the way to a little lakeside park two miles ahead.

Maybe the park is pitch black, lit only by a garden lamp post surrounded by a fog of insects. She feels her way down the cool concrete sidewalk toward the swings and smiles at the sudden sensation of sand between her toes. It’s a breezy night, her favorite kind of breezy, chilly enough to make her glad she’d worn a sweatshirt. Freshwater waves fizz as they roll up onto the beach and soak into the sand. She lets the wind brush her hair down around her neck as her eyes slowly grow used to the darkness. She settles into a swing and pumps her legs. The starry canopy pulses overhead.

Maybe his headlights sweep across the parking lot but never land on the lone parked car hidden in the shadows. He turns the ignition off and just sits there with his eyes closed for a moment, listening to the ticking of the engine and the wind rushing through the leaves above. He has no idea where he is or why he ended up here, he’d just stopped here because he felt like it. The sound of water somewhere out in the darkness reaches his ears.

Maybe she’s utterly lost in dreams and beauty and reverie, swept up in wonder, marvel, the lush scent of forest, lake and recent rainfall, just swinging, swinging her troubles away. Maybe she doesn’t even hear him coming — after all, he’s in bare feet too. He steps off the sidewalk into the sand and his car keys slip from his hand. Maybe the sudden jangle shatters the peaceful silence and she can’t help but gasp as she snaps out of dreamy distraction.

Maybe her gasp startles him and he whirls around to see a pretty girl on the playground swings peering back at him, just as surprised as he is.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” he stammers. “I didn’t know anyone was out here!”

Maybe they squint through the darkness at each other for a moment, unsure of what to say.

“Oh, that’s alright,” she finally replies. “This beach doesn’t exactly belong to me.”

Maybe he decides he should at least start things off on the right foot and say hello. They both exchange shy hellos and laugh nervously. He apologizes for bothering her and starts heading back toward the parking lot, but she stops him. She hesitates, but can’t help asking how he wound up out here in the middle of the night. He pauses and tells her he honestly has no idea, he just had to get out of the house and after a lot of driving, this is where he ended up. She tells him, if there ever was the perfect place to escape to, this place was it. He takes a good look around and can’t help but agree with her.

Maybe he can’t seem to gracefully say goodnight and leave, and maybe she can’t help but point out the obvious — that there’s an empty swing beside her.

Maybe the two of them start swinging and the hours go by. Who knows what they talk about or what either of them secretly think.

Maybe neither of them can find the right words to explain it, but somehow, by some unexplainable process, old wounds slowly begin to heal. Maybe things happen, maybe security is felt, maybe vulnerability makes a sudden appearance and with it, an avalanche of sincerity, honesty, kindness, compassion, empathy, understanding and warmth. Maybe the painful past, for both of them, miraculously begins to flicker and slowly fade.

Maybe they feel a connection between them, and not only is it completely unexpected, it’s absolutely beautiful.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking things like this really do happen, two people really do meet this way and scenarios like these really do result in happy endings. But then again, I’m a wishful thinker so what do I know about romance? I don’t always wish I was involved in such dreamy scenarios as I imagine, perhaps I’m not cut out for something quite as cinematic, but regardless, I’d be a liar if I said I’ve never thought about them.

What if things like this really do happen? Maybe they happen all the time. Or maybe moments like these NEVER happen and the daydream itself is stretched so thin, it’s become cliche and should be deemed ridiculous.

Can two people, hurting for the same reasons, randomly meet by accident at 2 AM and each feel some innate sense of “knowing” that the search is over? Maybe they’re not even searching at all, maybe they’re both trying to stay as far away from the mere idea of falling in love as possible, all because of past heartbreak and how messed up it left each of them. It doesn’t matter who these hopeless romantics are or where they came from, the point is that they meet, and suddenly the old familiar pain of past shipwrecked relationships disappears. The old aches suddenly vanish. They’re made for each other and they know it.

I suppose it all boils down to whether or not you believe in love, luck, accidents or miracles, but all things aside, what if one of the two characters in such a conceptual story was you? What if you’d been through more heartache than you could stand, and the second you met the love of your life, you didn’t even have to think twice?

You just knew.

It’s an age-old daydream, but however improbable, I’ll be the first to admit I like to think such stories are not so impossible.

This world is crazy. So what if scenarios like these are crazy enough to be real? What if they’re so crazy… months and years go by — and suddenly that night on the beach flashes before their eyes as they gaze at each other, all dressed up, really only half listening to the pastor’s words.

The church is packed.

Maybe it’s so crazy, she peers at him from behind her veil, blinking back tears of joy… and he can’t help but smile back at her and mouth the words:

The more I think about it, the more I’ll bet things like this happen all the time and none of us know about it.

Right now I’m lounging in room 1007 at the Hilton Waikiki in Honolulu. My bare feet are propped up on the desk and the refreshing Pacific sea breeze is gushing in through the open glass patio door, whipping my hair unto an untamed rats nest. Fallin’ For You by Colbie Caillat continues to flow from my laptop speakers on repeat, and despite the fact that I injudiciously neglected to bring along a pair of swimming trunks, I am in seventh heaven.

In the endearing words of little David himself, “Is this real life?”

I grew up in a small town by the name of Owatonna (Oh-wah-tawn-ah) in south central Minnesota. For a shy Midwest boy, the ocean was basically a fairy tale. It was deemed practically unreachable for someone with no means, no good reasons and no funds to pull a good enough excuse out of thin air to justify the two-day road trip in either direction. I had no seaside relatives residing on either coast, no beachy colleges or universities I was tempted to register for, and thus, for a kid with zero money and no time to steal away, I was shipwrecked in the Midwest. I spent the majority of high school gazing out the window imagining if/when I’d ever be lucky enough to finally visit the big blue. I played Wave Race 64 for hours on end, devoured dense literature on shipwreck histories and nonfiction recounts of early sailing expeditions, ocean discoveries and autobiographies penned by famous ship captains. I also absorbed Jacques Cousteau documentaries like nobody’s business.

Nobody at school was surprised when my nickname soon became “Sea Urchin.”

I’d seen water before, of course. The northeastern half of Minnesota borders Lake Superior which I’d visited a handful of times on family vacations, and yeah, it’s a mighty gorgeous lake (covering 31,000 square miles and the largest freshwater lake in the world), but I wanted to stroll down miles of white sandy beach, run into the breaking surf, feel the waves rush over my feverish footsies, smell the balmy breeze, taste the saltwater in the air, worry about the nightmarish unseen Portuguese Men-of-War wrapping inconspicuous tentacles around my ankles and tugging me down into the depths like that huge sea monster outside the Mines of Moria. None of this is really possible in Minnesota.

I grew up daydreaming about the ocean. I have no idea why, it just happened that way and I never thought twice about it. Be it unreasonably peculiar or otherwise, I find the ocean and all its contents more inspiring than anything else out there, besides music of course.

Fast forward to June of 2008.

I was so blown away, I could barely catch my breath as I rolled up my skinny jeans and waded knee-deep out into the midnight surf on a quiet moonlit beach in Fairfield, Connecticut. I couldn’t even believe it. The Titanic itself sailed and tragically sunk in this thing. It was an ethereal moment of comprehension for me because the ocean and I had finally brought ourselves to meet for the first time in twenty two years. It was a delightful convergence and the pleasure was, by all means, mine.

Fast forward two years later and here I am at present, in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean on a tropical island, in a lavish hotel room eighty feet above Waikiki Beach itself. Much like the wonderstruck emotion that washed over me back in Fairfield, the sense of awe is invigorating. Hawaii is like Dolphin Park from Wave Race 64 but in REAL LIFE… and I am so inspired, so stirred, so excited to experience, explore and discover, all I can do this evening is occasionally run out onto the patio, lean over the railing and shout an explosive, inarticulate “happy noise” at the top of my lungs which sounds something like “OoOoOoOoOAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

Needless to say, the view from my perch leaves me both thrilled and thankful to be here.

However, despite the breathtaking grandeur, I am surrounded by the most magnificent paradise conceivable and yet, I have a slight dilemma.

I burn.

Allow me to elaborate.

I have naturally medium brown hair with a hint of auburn (inherited from my dear mother) and that being said, it’s no surprise that my complexion also draws similar parallels to hers. My bequeathed coloring may be better described as “fair enough” rather than simply “fair.” Factor in a sweltering tropical Waikiki Beach crammed with ripped surfer bros and exquisitely bronzed sunbathers, and we have ourselves an equation that doesn’t quite add up. Enter the scrawny, ghostly white kid with rolled up skinny jeans (what kinda stupid imbecile actually forgets his Spongebob shorts back in Minnesota??) and we have ourselves a downright unsolvable mathematical equation.

Ladies and gentleman, I failed a pre-algebra community course in college, a non-credited class required merely to advance into Algebra 101. I vividly recall receiving my freshly graded final exam (slathered in red ink check marks) and cowering in primal fear as my professor climbed atop my desk and towered over me like Gandalf the Grey, bellowing YOU SHALL NOT PASS! in my face.

There’s something about Hawaii I can’t quite put my finger on. Perhaps it’s the limitless swirling world of blue skies, puffy white clouds, lush rainforests and misty mountains, breezy palm trees and miles of endless sandy beach in all directions. Maybe it’s the innumerable oceanside cabana restaurants boasting any variety of “cajun” or “tropical” morsel you can imagine. I’m not entirely sure what it is, but aside from the semi-lengthy flight to/from the island chain (on which I am inevitably seated in either seat “B” or “E” between two humungous fat guys who claim both arm rests on either border), Hawaii is both tremendously and unequivocally breathtaking. Well worth every agonizing minute spent at 35,000 feet.

To pleasantly sum up the mystique, charm and splendor that is Hawaii, I’ll put it this way:

There’s so much beauty around me, no matter where I point my camera, I can’t fit it all in.

That’s a tough question to tackle and I rarely have thick enough shoulder pads to counterattack with a touchdown answer because so much of what I find inspiring is drawn from such a vast assortment of situations, scenarios, environments, daydreams, even things that go bump in the night. I suppose it’s appropriate to answer the question with yet another question and simply ask “inspires me to do what?” and then of course it comes down to one’s own interpretation of the word “inspiration” and now we find ourselves sitting on the dock of the bay prying open a whole new can of worms.

To make it easy, forget the worms. Those things are disgusting anyway.

If someone put a gun to my forehead and demanded specifics, I’d probably splutter the following:

Literature

01. Watership Down by Richard Adams
02. The Fledgling by Jane Langton
03. Airborn by Kenneth Oppel
04. The Guardians of Ga’Hoole by Kathryn Lasky
05. The Lost Shipwreck of Paul by Robert Cornuke
06. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C O’Brien
07. Rascal by Sterling North
08. Rachel’s Tears by Darrell Scott
09. Fire Bringer by David Clement-Davies
10. Monster by Frank Peretti

Film

01. The Awful Truth (1937) directed by Leo McCarey
02. How To Steal a Million (1966) directed by William Wyler
03. Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) directed by Frank Capra
04. Flushed Away (2006) directed by David Bowers and Sam Fell
05. The Terminal (2004) directed by Steven Spielberg
06. Watership Down (1978) directed by Martin Rosen
07. Rebecca (1940) directed by Alfred Hitchcock
08. 12 Angry Men (1957) directed by Sidney Lumet
09. Cast Away (2001) directed by Robert Zemeckis
10. The Majestic (2000) directed by Frank Darabont

Recording

01. The Campfire Headphase by Boards of Canada
02. The Marionette and the Music Box by Unwed Sailor
03. Eingya by Helios
04. Fahrenheit Fair Enough by Telefon Tel Aviv
05. Systems/Layers by Rachel’s
06. From Here We Go Sublime by The Field
07. Maybe They Will Sing For Us Tomorrow by Hammock
08. When I Live By the Garden and the Sea by Eluvium
09. The Tired Sounds Of by Stars of the Lid
10. Float by Peter Broderick

It’s fun to make lists but allow me to take a step beyond the idea of material-specific THINGS that inspire…

For instance, I unmistakably enjoy a great deal of post-rock and ambient music. Be it ironic or otherwise that a large part of the music I create finds its way into the pop realm and ultimately into the ever-evolving catalog known as electronica, but regardless, there’s something about recorded music without the presence of vocals that raises the hairs on my neck and truly, genuinely inspires me. I close my eyes, forget all about my surroundings and drift away to “somewhere else” where things are exactly as I imagine them, often superimposed and washed in a very “idealist” light. By definition, I am an escapist, which is to say, I enjoy thinking about what the world would be like if it were different… better than it currently is. It’s no surprise that I often wonder what things would be like if I myself were different as well. The thought is an intriguing one and furthermore, I find that by listening to material that neither suggests nor blatantly tells me how to think or feel… well, suddenly I can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. In that moment, dreams are no longer hovering discouragingly out of reach, but instead are made real and vivid, floating right above my head. That’s an invigorating feeling.

You know how you toss and turn at night and suddenly you’re a “director” watching your own life play out via mental movies projected onto the back of your eyelids? Things are exactly as you imagine them and are often “perfect” in the sense that situations, scenarios, environments, relationships, you name it, because you are “directing” them, are just right, ideal, wonderful, surreal, or too good to be true.

I love that.

When I fall asleep mid-scene and wake up the next morning, those imaginings are still with me and they inspire me not only to take hold of how beautiful those projections from the night before were, but almost play them out as if they really were the way I imagined them, projections of MYSELF especially.

To put it simply, sometimes I imagine myself as a better person than I really am and that alone inspires me to actually attempt the endeavor. I am FAR from perfect and that’s reason enough to shake off whatever vanity, gratification or unhealthy self-importance I inevitably collect throughout life and instead seek humility, patience, virtue, morality and the utmost of integrity. I desire a steadfast, stalwart and committed life, and somehow by occasionally imagining that “life” as a true reality in full color, I am inspired to tackle the job with more vigor than I ever have before.

Some say “the trouble with life is that there’s no background music.”

What if you could create your own? What would it sound like in your imagination? What would your life really look like if you could set it up like a scene and shoot it?

It goes without saying that materialism is fleeting and will inevitably come and go but what if the things that inspire you actually have effects beyond the way you write if you’re an author, the way you strum if you’re a musician, the way you see the world through lenses if you’re a photographer, the way you paint the page if you’re an artist…

The sky really is the limit.

Life is such a beautiful gift and I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t got it figured out in the least. But the more days go by and the more I turn around and look back on them, the more I realize I have no interest in living for myself and that my focus is far better fixed on things unseen. I realize I’m being a bit ambiguous but it shouldn’t be all that hard to put together.

A familiar way to sum it up may be this:

I am not my own
For I have been made new
Please don’t let me go
I desperately need You

Life is in fact a tremendous journey and I believe everyone deserves the chance to start over.

That, dear friends, is unequivocally inspiring to me.

I toured Japan last autumn with Mae. Their drummer Jake was recalling the time he got a kidney stone and said something like “Man, it hurt so bad I just collapsed on the ground crying.” I remember secretly thinking “Wow, those things really hurt that bad?” Naturally, I’d heard grapevine stories about kidney stones but they were uncommon freak accidents, old wives’ tales, the sort of thing other people’s dads got, and therefore were nothing to really worry about.

Little did I know I was a ticking time bomb.

Six months after sympathetically chuckling along with Jake and his kidney stone fairy tale, I found myself relaxing on the customary disgusting green room couch in a venue in St. Louis. Somebody said something hilarious and I burst out laughing. Moments later I felt a slight “twinge” in my lower back and thought nothing of it until it grew from “probably just a pulled muscle or something” into a hideous, raging MONSTER. The conversation Jake and I had in Tokyo flashed before my eyes as I immediately followed suit and collapsed on the ground crying. Big surprise. His description was both remarkably and painfully accurate in every subtle nuance and detail.

The pain was unbelievably agonizing, easily the worst of my life. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t sing, I couldn’t play Nintendo, I couldn’t even breathe. All I could do was involuntarily writhe around on the floor holding my lower back while everyone else peered down at me with horrified looks on their faces. Between tsunamis of agony, I passed in and out of consciousness like nobody’s business. At one point I vaguely remember somebody casually walking in, taking one look at me and saying “Yuck… what’s the matter with him?”

That was in January.

Two weeks ago I was in studio mixing a new track when I felt an all too familiar twinge. This time I didn’t even hesitate. I immediately dropped everything, sprinted to my car and raced myself to the emergency room at 30 mph over the speed limit. I’d learned my lesson the first time. When disaster strikes, you don’t just gulp a handful of ibuprofen, sprawl on the couch and wait out the storm; you get your handsome little self to the nearest emergency room and ultimately an IV full of morphine. The pain is that unendurable. It’s debilitating. It’s paralyzing. You don’t mess around with kidney stones.

Upon hearing of my recent escapade, commercial pilot, kidney stone survivor, and one of my old pals Dan Clark had this to say about the cantankerous little demons:

“Kidney stones! Just one of many great memories from Owatonna. There’s nothing that’s quite like the experience of rolling around on a stainless steel emergency table being hustled through the medicinal smelling Owatonna hospital, convinced that your body has betrayed you and will shortly split open. Aaahhh, the memories! Especially the part when I was begging for drugs, but sadly they said I couldn’t have anything because it will shut-down all my normal body functions and then the stone would not continue its glorious tour through all of my most cherished passages. Instead, they gave me an IV bag of fluid to increase the pain. Sure, THEY said is was to keep the stone moving through, but we all knew it was because they’re sick, psychotic, evil people. If they gave me anything it was probably a placebo because I’m convinced that it had absolutely no effect. Anyway, the birth of my 2 millimeter stone was such a joy… like Adam my labor pains lasted about 6 hours and then stopped instantly. No slow reduction of pain, just “YEOWWWW!” and then nothing. I thought “I must have just died; I no longer feel a thing.” Then they caught the stone, analyzed it and confirmed that as a rule pilots need to drink more water, altitude increases ones dehydration. At least it wasn’t a chemical or metabolic imbalance in my case, just cut out the coffee and drink more water. So far, I haven’t had the repeated pleasure.

I don’t really have any more insight other than if you’re traveling a lot, reduce your caffeine intake and increase clear fluids. I had one doctor ask, “Do you have a bathroom on the airplane?” I said “yes”, and he asked why I didn’t drink more water and just use the lav. I told him, “I didn’t want to crawl over all the passengers to get to the lav. It would be embarrassing”. He looked at me with that condescending, over-the-reading-glasses look, and asked if it would be less embarrassing than grabbing my private parts rolling around on a stainless steel gurney for 6 hours trying to find a comfortable position. I guess the question sort of answered itself.”

Wretched things. I wouldn’t wish a kidney stone on my worst enemy.

Like Dan, I don’t have much brilliant advice to offer anyone except to say this:

Should you ever become blessed with a magical stone of your own and ultimately find yourself writhing around on the floor in immense torment, you may indeed find solace in the following famous words:

Silver coins, gum wrappers, car keys, sequins, fingernail clippers, marbles, medallions, wedding rings, silverware, hood ornaments, you get the idea. For obvious reasons, I was stricken with the need to change my diapers immediately upon viewing The Bean at Millennium Park in Chicago. Perhaps I am part crow for I indeed bear an uncanny resemblance to “Poe the Crow” (although I do not choose to reside in a Methodist church tower) from 1964 Newbery Honor award-winning Rascal by Sterling North. Should you happen to find yourself rooting around your public library shelves for a quality read, might I suggest it.

I am getting off the subject. Pardon the pleonastic goose chase.

I was recently in Wal Mart at 3 AM (buying ice cream sandwiches) and was hoofing past the Electronics section when a shiny CD with an astronaut on the cover happened to catch my eye. I’m the sort of crow who must drop everything whenever something seizes his attention (much like the impetuous Jeremy from Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien) and consequently, I’ve been called absentminded on more than one occasion. My sweet mother says I have a one-track mind which, while plausible, I find mighty arguable because the Cave In Pro Tools session had well over seventy tracks.

Having lived through the 70′s and 80′s, she must at least give me the benefit of the doubt and agree that I posses an eight-track mind at minimum. A stimulating argument better saved for a rainy day.

Bedazzled, I dropped my box of ice cream sandwiches and snatched up the CD.

Excitedly, I jumped up and down and let out a shrill involuntary asphyxiated scream of merriment that unfortunately attracted several flustered night-stock employees. I was overcome with secret jealousy by the swift appearance of several handlebar mustaches and mullets. After assuring them I was just fine and didn’t need an ambulance, I excitedly returned to the album, turned it over in my grubby hands and lo and behold, printed between a pair of freshly squeezed parentheses, was my name.

DUN DUN DUN.

I could barely hold back the subsequent thunderous throaty crescendo of euphoria as I felt a huge stupid smile wash across my big baby face.

I remixed a song called I Woke Up In a Car. A Something Corporate fan since high school, it was one of those surreal moments for me. I’m sure you know the kind. I chuckled inwardly as the bespectacled cashier peered expressionlessly over her Coke-bottles at me and scanned the CD at the checkout. I gave the bored looking door-greeter-person a grin and a thumbs up as I took my leave and gracefully withdrew from the premises.

After a few turkey trot strides and a brief Texas two-step, I strode my way through the empty parking lot washed in lamp and moonlight like a hometown baseball night game. I’ve always loved parking lots at night. Something about them seem so summery and heartwarming.

I hurled the ice cream sandwiches into the passenger seat, violently tore off the CD plastic wrapping, clawed at the spine label for several anguished moments (before finishing the job with a car key) and finally crammed the disc into the player. It was marvelous. I ended up eating half the ice cream sandwiches on the way home.

The scenario was a pleasant one. Another one of those little moments that make me wholeheartedly grateful for being allowed to do what I’m most passionate about. At 24, I feel tremendously fortunate to look back on the crowded clusters of these kinds of surreal moments that have swiftly added up over the course of the past few years. Some if not most of my wildest dreams have come true and needless to say, I am astonished, even incredulous. This brick wall of realization hits me in the face often and with such tremendous force that I remain, at minimum and by all means, unequivocally thankful. In other words, Praise the LORD.

An eloquent line penned by George Strait:

“Life’s not the breaths you take but the moments that take your breath away.”

Well said, George.

“I wonder what he’s up to,” Pops muttered to himself.

After scraping dog crap out of his lawn mower tire treads on numerous occasions, Dad pretty well knew most of the dogs in the neighborhood and he certainly wasn’t familiar with this one. Did the Carlson’s get a new dog? Did a rabid raccoon bite Doodles? Who in the world was this new canine blundering about like an ignoramus? And furthermore, what was he up to?

So many questions.

With a steel grip on the wheel and a sharp eye on the trundling beast, Dad rumbled down the street and began turning into the driveway. Suddenly as if a gun had gone off, something spooked the dog into a frenzy and it exploded into a full run, making a beeline through my parent’s grassy front yard. Hot on the chase, Dad goosed the engine, raced the truck into the driveway (spraying gravel everywhere) and caught a brief glimpse of the pooch as it dove behind a row of shrubs at a place where the corner of the house meets the sun porch.

He turned the ignition off, slammed the door, crunched across the gravel, and crept toward the suspicious shrubbery with undetected stealth and sneakiness.

My dad is a hero to me. He’s basically Sherlock Holmes meets MacGyver meets the greatest father in the entire world. He’s encouraged me time and again and has always been a far greater role model and influence a boy could ever hope for. He loves the Lord Jesus with all his heart, soul, strength and mind and I can’t even describe how honored I’d be if I were to end up as good of a man as he is someday. On top of all that, there isn’t a broken thing in the world he can’t fix, a problem he cannot solve, nor a mystery he can’t unravel. Whenever I have engine trouble, I pull over, heave up the hood, roll up my sleeves and make a lot of noise so everyone around thinks I actually know what I’m doing. Whenever Dad has car trouble (even at 70 mph on the interstate) he DOESN’T EVEN SLOW DOWN. He puts a brick on the gas pedal, swings his legs out the window, scrambles down the hood like a human fly, somehow gets the thing open, tampers with a bunch of junk inside, and gracefully returns to the safety of the cab before the truck drifts off the shoulder and slams into the ditch. Pure Chuck Norris. He does it all the time and Mom is so used to it, she just yawns and cranks up the oldie’s station until he gets back.

In the present situation however, Dad was feeling his pulse begin to quicken. Having read The Hound of the Baskervilles a number of times, he was well aware of such monstrous, unpredictable beasts that lurk out there, so naturally there was no harm in being too careful.

He drew a deep breath.

Ready for a brutal throwdown should the ravenous carnivore decide to lunge, Pops gently peeled back a few leafy limbs and beheld a sight he didn’t quite expect…

A fawn.

A cute baby deer.

Who knew where this big guy came from or where his mother was, but old Dad being the kindly gentleman he is, allowed Bambi to reside in the safety and comfort of the cozy nook behind his bushes. The fawn hid/slept during the day and came out at night to chomp on leaves, grass and who knows what else. All-in-all he was great company for my parents. Mom loved the little deer and Dad couldn’t help but crack a wry smile as he continued to scrape out the mower tire treads with an old screwdriver.

And of course, my pal Dennis and I had someone to hang with.

Cute.

Then one summer evening, something very strange occurred. Mom was loading the dishwasher and happened to peer through the blinds into the back yard just in time to see Bambi hurriedly hoofing across the lawn to meet a strange deer. It took her a moment to realize who it was.

His mother.

Filled with boundless joy and relief after finding her long lost fawn, mother and Bambi jumped for joy, touched noses and frolicked down the tree-lined driveway toward the woods from whence they came. As they bounded away, Bambi turned and gazed across the field toward my folks’ old house as if to bid a fond and final farewell. Mom smiled as the twilight deepened and the two silhouetted deer, reunited at last, pranced away through the prairie grass under the light of the misty moon, and finally disappeared out of sight.

It was a heartwarming scene.

Yeah.

A quote my high school teacher used to pound relentlessly into our innocent little heads. They say hindsight is 20/20 but unfortunately my safety glasses are fogging up and thus, I continue to squint, wistfully peering into the salad days of yore. Perhaps that’s why I got such a bad grade in that class.

The phrase begs to be argued with but I suspect it does contain an oily blob of semi-truth floating somewhere near the surface. To a greater degree however, I believe the real gold medal goes to creativity. DING DING. Creativity to me, is like an egg salad sandwich. It’s loaded with cholesterol. Fortunately, creativity and I have been lucky enough to join hands and strike down evil with the mighty sword of teamwork and the hammer of “not-bickering.”

I spend a lot of time in studio. It’s kind of what I do.

I eat, I sleep, I studio.

I lurk in the shadows, deep underground. Sealed doors, low lighting, acoustic treatment on the walls, carpet underfoot, bookshelves lined with boxed copies of recording/sequencing software, guitars, synths, amps, pedals, cables everywhere, a cool twirly computer chair with up/down lever thingy. I am a crab and this is my shell. Both prime real estate and perfect habitat for the evergreen creative seeds that must germinate and eventually bloom. Pardon me while I heave a contented sigh of coziness.

Ahhhh… the studio. I find solace within the womblike warmth of its downy plume.

I’ve never pretended to be a good mechanic (although I do occasionally wrench my back) and I’ve never considered myself a grease monkey (despite the names I was called in 2nd grade) but I’d be a liar if I ever denied my love for tools. Music tools, that is.

I got my greedy crabby pinchers on a slew of UAD powered plug-ins a few weeks ago and they’ve been blowing my socks off. I literally march around the house barefoot.

DISCLAIMER:
Some of the language below (sourced from the UAD manual) is pretty dense, so if you’re the sort of person with little or no intestinal fortitude, I highly suggest you make an egg salad sandwich and go do something REALLY insane… like pick some of the hairs out of the nasty yak’s milk in your fridge. K thanks.

Where was I?

Ah yes.

Some of my faves:

Empirical Labs EL7 FATSO:

A truly overweight beast of a compressor/tape simulator with no immediate intention of dieting. I’m always coming up with new ways of using this obese burger. Pair this with the Cranesong Pheonix and you’ll have so much analog intake, you’ll be changing into a fresh pair of Huggies in a hurry. Heavy on the CPU, but mighty worth it.

“The FATSO (Full Analog Tape Simulator and Optimizer) is designed to musically integrate frequencies and transients and increase the apparent volume of your source material in the same way classic analog equipment does. It achieves this through an ingenious design and a creative feature set, giving users the ability to impart the wonderfully warm and pleasing sonic characteristics of magnetic recording tape and class A transformer and tube circuits.”

Roland RE-201 Space Echo:

A true classic. FOH engineer Adam Jackson and this unit are good pals. They speak the same language and it always amazes me how they can perform dreamy magical wizardry with such supernatural deftness and dexterity. The result is absolutely breathtaking, and I’m not referring to the ramifications of consuming cheap gas station BBQ hot wings either…

“In 1973, Roland created the Space Echo system that utilized multiple play heads to create warm, highly adjustable echo effects, which added wonderful tape character and chaos to performances and recordings. UA’s RE-201 Space Echo faithfully retains all the controls and features of the original, such as the Mode Selector for various head combinations, Repeat Rate for fine timing control, and Intensity which sets repeat count and allows the unit to achieve self-oscillation. The all-important Echo/Normal “Dub” switch is retained for muting, as well as the simple tone controls. Last but certainly not least, the atmospheric shimmer of the Space Echo’s spring reverb is faithfully captured, putting this fantastic plug-in on par with the original unit as a tool of infinite creativity.”

Neve 1081 EQ:

The tastiest EQ I’ve ever laid ears on. Pure ear candy. Makes the rustiest chunk of audio shine like a deep-buffed chrome hot rod hood ornament. I wish my own ear drums had a 3 dB high shelf boost at 15k using this love boat.

“The Neve 1081 channel module was first produced in 1972 by Neve, and was used to provide the mic/line amp and EQ sections in consoles such as the Neve 8048. The Neve 1081 channel module is a four-band EQ with high and low cut filters. The 1081 features two parametric midrange bands, with “Hi-Q” selections for tighter boosts or cuts. Both the high and low shelf filters have selectable frequencies and may be switched to bell filters. Other features include a –20 to +10 dB input gain control, phase reverse, and EQ bypass.”

Trident A-Range EQ:

Not your average chewing gum. A legendary EQ more fantastic than any fairy tale story book. Only thirteen consoles ever made, one of which Elliot Smith bought himself. Plus it’s PURPLE.

“The original Trident A-Range desk holds near-mythic status in the professional recording industry, and is arguably the best loved of the classic Trident console designs. Particularly noted for its fantastic preamps and the unique band interactions of its colorful EQ section, the Malcolm Toft / Trident-designed A-Range console has made an indelible impact on the sound of record making. During the “Golden Years” of rock, the A-Range was employed to record some truly great records — David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, Lou Reed’s Transformer and Queen’s Sheer Heart Attack, to name a few — helping to solidify this console’s reputation forever.”

Fairchild 670:

The deluxe club sandwich of all compressors. It has everything on it AND fries on the side. It’s a… it’s a complex Freudian hallucination having something to do with my mother and I don’t know why it has wings, but it has very lovely legs and it’s a very nice tiny person and, what am I saying! I don’t know who my mother was; I’m an orphan and I’ve never taken drugs because I missed the sixties… I was an accountant.

“In the annals of compressor history, the products produced by Fairchild are some of the best built and most highly prized on the vintage market. The most famous Fairchild products produced were the 660 and 670 compressor/limiters, which are famous for their fantastic sound quality. The stereo Fairchild 670 is probably the “Holy Grail” of compressors in studio gear esoterica, not only because of its price (known to fetch $30,000 and beyond on the vintage market), but also its extreme rareness and the difficulties in maintaining such a unit. With its 14 transformers, 20 vacuum tubes, 6 rack-space encompassing girth and weighing in at 65 pounds, the Fairchild 670 is truly the heavyweight champion of compression.

Originating from the early 1950’s, the design of the 670 uses a single push-pull stage of amplification with an extremely high control voltage. The Fairchild 670 is a variable-mu tube limiter. Variable-mu limiters are unique in that they use tubes for gain reduction, and not just as amplifiers. The audio path is quite simple, and compression happens directly in the audio path, rather than sending out to a separate compression circuit.

The unit can be used as a limiter or compressor, depending upon personal taste and program material. It can go from a 2:1 ratio as a compressor to a peak limiter with a 30:1 ratio. The unit can also be adjusted to operate anywhere between these two extremes using the Threshold and DC Bias controls.”

Moog Multimode Filter:

Epic lowpass/highpass/bandpass filter. This genie will grant you three sweet wishes and cook you breakfast while it’s at it. I literally can’t tell the difference between this sly fox and the filter on my Voyageur, and Moog themselves claim they can’t either. I’m convinced.

“The new UAD Moog Multimode Filter, which delivers the first truly analog-sounding VCF (voltage controlled filter) emulation made for mixing, performing, creating, or destroying. The Moog Multimode Filter is a ‘digital-only’ tabletop filter set that combines the best of Bob Moog’s classic designs with select features from his final Voyager instrument. UA modeled the analog behavior of the historical 4-pole ladder filter conceived by the world’s most recognizable electronic instrument maker right down to the self-oscillation, saturation and nonlinearities of its analog counterpart. As the name suggests, the heart of the Moog Multimode Filter is the switchable Lowpass, Highpass and Bandpass filter that allows Moog’s signature self-oscillation and extreme resonance in any of the three modes, bringing a new level of sophistication to Moog filter designs of the past.”

Manley Massive Passive EQ:

Woah, look at all those… n00bz… I mean knobs.

“The two-channel, four-band Manley Massive Passive tube EQ utilizes design strengths from choice console, parametric, graphic, and Pultec EQs — delivering a fundamentally different sounding EQ that is beyond compare. The incredibly natural, organic results of the Manley design method — evidenced on albums such as Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Amon Tobin’s Foley Room and Tori Amos’ A Piano: The Collection — demonstrate how the Massive Passive’s natural treatment of a signal lends itself to both radical tonal shaping as well as delicate vocal shading or subtle mastering enhancement.

“Passive” refers specifically to the tone shaping elements of the equalizer, which use only resistors, inductors, and capacitors to create all frequency changes. The Massive Passive utilizes older parallel concepts rather than non-interactive series designs as defined by George Massenburg’s original parametric EQ. The Frequency controls intentionally interact with one another, as do the Gain and Bandwidth controls. While this may result in the appearance of some unorthodox knob positions, it is specifically these band interdependencies between all bell, shelf and cut filters that allow for the Massive Passive’s natural and organic sound.”

Teletronix LA-2A:

O CRAP, I JUST SPILLED PIZZA SAUCE ALL OVER MY PANTS!

“Audio professionals passionate about their compressors revere the LA-2A. The original was immediately acknowledged for its natural compression characteristics. A unique electro-optical attenuator system allows instantaneous gain reduction with no increase in harmonic distortion – an accomplishment at the time, still appreciated today.”

And of course, I’d be a lost boy indeed without my quiver of hard and soft shell synth weaponry.

Korg MS-20:

One of my favorite soft synths. Korg hit a Hank Aaron homer with this one.

Whew.

I realize this is all rather exhausting reading material for any demographic other than the average gearhead such as myself.

Thus, if you’ve made it this far, one or both of the following may apply to you:

A. You have a deep-rooted interest in the fine mechanics of musical craftsmanship.
B. You need a job.

I find it amazing how gear itself often provides all the inspiration one needs to write an entire record.

This methodical madness is, in short, a true exemplification of creativity at its finest.

Me likey.

Heh heh.

Upon arriving that afternoon, I was covertly whisked side-stage into the gym equipment room before anybody saw me. In one corner stood a colorful stack of those hellish gymnasium “scooters” I remembered so vividly from my elementary years. Whoever assumed it was a smart idea to manufacture four-wheeled pieces of hard plastic for wildly rambunctious rug rats to misuse, is way beyond me. I was overcome with nostalgia as painful memories flashed before my eyes in six different colors.

Suddenly I was yanked back to reality by the sound of five-hundred voices singing out words I knew all too well.

From the darkness, I peered through a slightly open door to survey the affair. The kiddies had filed into the gym and were assembled in various rows determined by grade from Kindergarten to 5th. Teachers flanked either side, occasionally shooting forbidding glares at any troublemaker who dare cause a rumpus. The kids sat crossed-legged on the floor, singing along at the top of their lungs as Fireflies roared out of a well-used PA system and the music video played across an enormous projection screen. I lurked backstage in the shadows absolutely wonderstruck as I listened to the students sing every word to a song I never imagined being heard by ANYONE, let alone sung by an entire school. It was a sobering moment and words cannot truly describe it. It gave me a most extraordinary feeling and I’d be a lying snake if I were to deny the glisten in my eye as the song came to a close and the singing died down.

It was time.

I took a deep breath, and with a huge grin, strode out from my hiding place with both arms raised over my head like I’d just made the winning touchdown of the Super Bowl. The whole place went nuts. I felt my hair surge back like wet seaweed as a gargantuan wave of ear-splitting screams hit me like a tsunami. The uproar was titanic. It was obvious that a lot kids were screaming their lungs out NOT because they realized I was “that guy from the music video” but simply because everyone else was. It was hilarious. It was also deafening.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m sorta shy. Actually, I’m ridiculously shy. I’ve never fancied myself a public speaker (high school speech class scared me witless) nor have I ever been an overtly verbose person, but this time it was different. Everything I did and said got a thunderous cheer. My smiling mother waited stage center with a microphone, ready to ask a few gracious questions of me. She inquired what hobbies I had as a kid, what my favorite sports were, what books I loved the most, and most importantly, what inspired me to work hard as an elementary student. During each question the room was perfectly silent, gripped and riveted in attentive stillness. You could’ve heard a pin drop. After each response I gave, the entire assembly went utterly bananas. I’d never witnessed such mayhem. They shrieked, they shouted, they screamed, they squealed, they threw their hands in the air, they flung themselves everywhere. They bounced off the walls, they jumped up and down, they stomped their feet, they ran in crazed circles. The girls did cartwheels, the boys grappled and brawled with each other. It was absolute pandemonium. Weeks later, I can’t help but smile wide when I remember the hysterical scene. It was priceless.

I gave my spiel about how reading has always inspired me, not only to write music, but to look at the world from a wondrous and optimistic perspective. The whole thing went over like a breeze and we all had the time of our lives. I even stood in the double-doorway as the kiddies marched out of the gym and each gave me a high-five. My hand is still healing nicely.

A few weeks later I received twenty-five unbelievably endearing “thank you” notes from a classroom of students at the school. One of them was particularly heartwarming:

A pure and perfect example of the innocence and sincerity every kid embodies. It was especially thoughtful of little Abby to include the last line, “I am so cool.” My cheeks still hurt from smiling.

I drove home that day a happier boy knowing a handful of little kids were blessed by a tune I wrote in my parent’s basement. Little did they know how immensely blessed I was to have been part of their lives in some small way.

To the students and staff of my good old elementary school, thank you for making me feel welcome at your assembly. I had a blast.

And to Abby, blessings upon you, my little friend.

It’s been a year since the release of Ocean Eyes and here I am sitting at my kitchen counter-island-thingy, unable to describe what a marvelous ride the past twelve months has been. I have no words to illustrate the colorful swirl of memories that flash before my eyes but the grin plastered across my face probably paints a pretty obvious picture. I haven’t been able to stop smiling since the day it began.

When I was fourteen years old, my uncle was gracious enough to loan me his guitar — an old acoustic he bought back in 1969. He taught me a handful of basic chords, told me to wipe down the strings after playing, and let me have at it. It was like a dream come true. I thought about it all day, raced home from school, hurled my books across the room, forgot all about my gnarly math homework and played until my fingers hurt. I pounded the same three-chord progressions out relentlessly, I bought a guitar tuner, learned a bunch of MxPx songs and eventually started coming up with little “riffs” of my own. My parents could barely drag me away from that guitar. I was no concert musician but I was learning little by little and I couldn’t get enough of that feeling… whatever it was… that by playing a device made of wood and wires could make me feel so alive. How was it possible? I had no idea but the more I strummed, the more I fell in love.

My uncle would loan me this very guitar, fourteen years after this photo was taken. Little did I know it would be the same guitar I would eventually write and record An Airplane Carried Me to Bed with. Uncle Russ and I circa 1986:

That was how music found me.

Growing up, I never had an innate sense of what it was I wanted to do with my life. Nothing jumped out and bit me on the nose like it apparently does a lot of people, so I coasted along from one thing to the next. I was a quiet kid, never very popular, worked a job I hated, tried my hand at sports but didn’t get very far, got voted one of six “Most Unique Style” in the high school yearbook but that was about it. It’s easy to say I enjoyed listening more than speaking but I enjoyed imagining far more than anything. I gave up skateboarding, mowed lawns one summer, bought a guitar of my own and that was when it all clicked. I suddenly knew I wanted to write, to create, to imagine and to dream via music and I knew it without even thinking.

I never expected it, I never planned on it. It just happened.

I graduated high school and got a full-time job building industrial dehumidifiers. It was intense. To savor what little time I had between work weeks, I wrote and recorded twelve songs. To make a long and faded story relatively short, this is what became of it:

Looking back, I can’t even put into words how surreal it is to finally have the opportunity to haul these dusty old songs up from the basement and out into the sunlight. I never imagined they’d become anything other than lost and forgotten.

But here they are, and they’re all yours if you care to listen.

All this to say, I consider it an immense privilege to have the chance to share the way I see the world with you. Allow me to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for your willingness to listen. I have nothing but gratitude and endless praise to God for the blessings I’ve been given along the way.

There are a lot of songs out there waiting to be caught and written down, a lot of melodies waiting to be recorded and printed to audio, a lot of avenues, directions, genres, collaborations, even whole projects dying to be explored and experimented with.

To quote a classic Tom Hanks line:

“Who knows what the tide could bring?”

I honestly have no idea.

But regardless, the future is bright and by all means, it’s exciting. I’m full of giddy anticipation just thinking about it.

My name is Adam Young. Music is a large part of who I am, but ultimately, it’s merely what I do.

I am a moonlighter.

Perhaps what I’m referring to is not obvious.

What I’m talking about are peas.

For yours truly, growing up just wouldn’t have been the same without those classic family meals involving generous platefuls of the spherical green seeds from many different branches of the the pea family. Green peas, sweet peas, chick peas, frozen peas, black-eyed peas, peas in pods, peas on plates, peas with backpacks, tough peas, sissy peas, peas who climb on rocks, you name it, we ate it.

I’m no Jeff Gordon but what I’m driving at is this:

For me, family dinners have always been quite cozy and (as long as lima beans were not present) relatively consoling as well. Ergo, since much of our food consumption revolved around hardy leguminous Eurasian climbing plants, theoretically speaking, a peabrain could don a pea coat and pull up a chair to a wonderfully disgusting bowl of scalding pea soup and it would in fact be, “all in the family.”

Am I making sense?

Last week a dear friend of mine got married and I was in the wedding. I polished my pearly whites, combed my unkempt hair, borrowed my dad’s dress shoes and made sure I was as well-groomed as any groomsman could ever hope to be.

As an extremely average kid without the lengthiest list of friends in the world, I’ll admit I’ve only attended a handful of weddings in my day. However, I’ve driven home from each of them with such a unique rush of feeling, it’s almost indescribable. You know how you watch a REALLY good movie and leave the theater far more impressed and inspired than you ever expected you’d be? It’s some sort of wildly sentimental atmosphere where solemnity and happiness collide. A heavy-handed seriousness, a sacred significant feeling. I felt like I’d just finished the last page of a good book I never wanted to end. A marvelous marriage it was, and I, tremendously happy for the two who exchanged vows, rings and ultimately hearts.

And what would a marvelous marriage be without food?

A true Fellowship of the Ring:

(From left to right) Paul, Andy, myself, and Tony (the groom). Brother Daniel can be seen giving the groom a well-deserved Heimlich and we mustn’t forget sister Sarah up to something sneaky in the background.

Yeah. Weddings and stuff.

One time I was by myself on a bus somewhere in Wyoming. I had earbuds stuffed in my ears and I was staring out the window listening to music. The bus pulled over and a legit cowboy got on. This guy was for real. Wide brim Stetson, horseback spurs, black snakeskin cowboy boots, enormous stainless steel belt buckle in the shape of Texas, rawhide gloves flapping from one back pocket, tightest jeans I’ve ever seen in my life, and the classic red plaid twilled cowboy button-up. He even had a huge leather holster, but to my dismay, no gun. As he climbed aboard I felt a wave of admiration waft over me like the smell of cow manure and creosote that followed suit.

The little boy in me has always wanted to be a cowboy. This is ironic because being a cowboy is grown man’s work. I turned the thought over in my mind as the bus grumbled back toward the highway. The newly boarded passenger jangled and clanked down the aisle, gripping the seats on either side with hands like iron vices and finally dropping into the seat next to me. I sat up a little straighter and continued looking out the window. The bus was practically empty. There were a million empty seats. Why did he have to sit right beside me? I’m the sort of guy who likes his space but I fought off the twang of dignity and looked at the bright side. Here I was sitting next to a cowboy. A real one. All I could think about were John Wayne quotes from epic westerns.

Suddenly he turned and inspected me.

“So you listen to heavy metal?”

I pulled out one earbud.

“I’m sorry?” I said.

“Heavy metal. Do you listen to it.”

I took a breath.

“Oh, not really. I used to listen to a little bit of hardcore in high school but I’m not so into it anymore. I think it’s talented stuff though.”

He glanced at my iPod and chuckled to himself.

“Is that heavy metal?”

“You mean what I’m listening to right now?”

“Yeah.”

“No, it’s just a band I like.”

“What are they called?”

“Uh, they’re called Unwed Sailor.”

“Are they heavy metal?”

I cleared my throat.

“No, they’re like instrumental, experimental indie. Really catchy stuff.”

“What’s that supposed to mean.”

I shifted my weight.

“They’re really complex, great songs, brilliant writing. Really creative, lots of things going on at once.”

“So you like Nickleback?”

“Oh, not so much. They’re not really my thing I guess.”

“Pantera?”

“Not really.”

“Kiss?”

“No.”

He glared at me. “Why not? You think heavy metal is stupid?”

“I wouldn’t say that, I just, ya know… I don’t know.”

The conversation was becoming awkward but if I thought it was going anywhere to begin with, it suddenly veered off and took a left turn.

“Hey wanna hear a song I wrote?” he asked.

I hesitated.

“You mean, like, you’re gonna sing it for me? Right now?”

“Yeah. Is that weird?”

“I mean, no. But sure, let’s hear it.”

I readied myself. I was on a bus in dusty Wyoming sitting next to a singing cowboy? This was gonna be good.

There weren’t that many passengers aboard the bus to begin with but those that were, ALL rubbernecked around and stared openmouthed as Heavy Metal swung his boots over the empty seat in front of him, threw his head back and began to sing. I can’t even describe what happened next. I could never have prepared myself for what ensued. He didn’t even really sing, he CROWED.

OOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH
WELL I FOUND A SPANISH DOUBLOON IN A COWPIE
SO I WASHED IT OFF WITH THE HOSE, YEAH THE HOSE
THEN I DROVE IN TO TOWN FIXIN TO BUY ME A BREWSKI
BUT THEN I LOST IT, YEAH I LOST IT
I DROPPED IT DOWN A RATHOLE, YEAH A SMELLY RATHOLE
SO THEN I SWUNG BY JOHNSON’S AND ATE ME SOME CELERY
THRUM THRUM DOO DEE DOO HAHAHHA OOOOOAAAAAAAAH

It was deafening. He bellowed at the top of his lungs, finished it off with a loud throaty gurgle and turned to give me the toothiest grin I’d ever seen.

I was incredulous.

You must understand that I don’t pride myself on critically critiquing other people’s music. I feel mean when I catch myself doing that. I try to avoid nitpicking the work of another artist because as we all know, no two minds think exactly alike and what one piece of writing means something to one person may mean something totally different to someone else. I like that. It’s one of the things that categorizes music under ART instead of MATH. I hate math. There’s no formula with music, there’s no right answer. Music > Math.

However, if there ever was a wrong answer, this cowboy’s equation was starting to add up. It was fascinating.

“That was awesome,” I lied through my teeth.

“Yup,” He said.

We sat in awkward silence for a minute as I intently gazed out the window at the world whipping by, trying not to persuade an encore. The bus began to slow as we pulled into town where I was scheduled to get off. Suddenly he tapped me hard on the shoulder.

“Hey, wanna have a thumb war?”

“No thank you,” I said uncomfortably.

“Hey, wanna see where the sow got me?”

“Uh, I think I’m good.”

He pointed a greasy finger at my iPod.

“Hey, can I listen to your Walkman?”

Thankfully we were almost there. I stood up and told him this was my stop. He got up to let me out but one cowboy boot caught on the seat under him and he thrashed about for a second before giving a shout and crashing into the aisle. Everyone stared in stunned silence. After hollering out a string of profanities I wouldn’t even repeat to a salty sailor, he tugged his Stetson back onto his head and called out after me as I made my way toward the exit.

“HEY! LISTEN TO HEAVY METAL!”

I looked back and saw him standing in the middle of the aisle giving me the devil horn’s “rock on” sign and making a fierce face only an Ace Frehley could love. I gave him a wide grin and a thumb’s up and stepped off the bus into the sunshine.

I have all the love in the world for Wyoming but perhaps I’ve gained an insight for why it’s affectionately known as The Cowboy State.

To put it mildly:

I like Wyoming. I like it a lot.

Where do I even begin?

Though it seems like it happened yesterday, an entire year has passed since I put out Ocean Eyes and I cannot begin to tell you how amazed I am due to all that has happened between then and now. A tremendous amount of asphalt has passed under the tires, a lot of miles put on the odometer and a lot of marvelous memories made along the way. It’s an overwhelming, invigorating feeling that can’t even be put into words. I catch myself thinking about the future often and I truly couldn’t be more excited. I’ve been immensely blessed by each and every opportunity I’ve had via Owl City and your endless support only continues to encourage me. I wholeheartedly cannot thank you enough.

Thus far, I’ve been quite a busy bee this summer, hidden away in the cavelike warmth of my basement, working like a mad scientist on the next Owl City record and I absolutely cannot wait for you to hear it. Things are coming together nicely but there’s still a lot of work to be done.

However, there’s something I’d like to share with you in the meantime.

Three and a half years ago, I recorded a collection of songs in my parent’s basement during the bleary-eyed hours of night when sleep and I could not bring ourselves to meet. I was a metalworker, working 6 AM to 4 PM at a warehouse in my little southern Minnesota town. I was writing, creating, thinking, imagining and breathing music with every second I had to spare. Music has always been my dream, but at that point in time, it was merely a feather tossed to the wind. Regardless, my spirits were far from dampened and I created music as fast and as furiously as I could. In my little basement bedroom, I had an old Dell computer, Reason 2.5, a friend’s borrowed Behringer C-1 condenser, a Behringer 8 channel analog mixer and my uncle’s old Alvarez. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing but I was a dreamer and music was my escape so I gave it everything I had. Never expecting my music to be heard anywhere but by my parents through the floorboards above, I wrote for my own ears. I was both artist and audience and I called myself Sky Sailing.

I’ve kept these recordings secret for a long time and they’ve never seen the light of day until now. Long before Owl City was ever a spark of a flame, a lot of blue-collared working days were spent absentmindedly daydreaming about what would ultimately become this collection of songs. From the perfectionist musician’s perspective, a song is never truly “finished” but rather “abandoned” and thus, after a lot of inspiration and reckless experimentation, I emerged from the basement with a 11 song record which I affectionately entitled, An Airplane Carried Me To Bed.

This album is a step into the past, the documented account of a shy boy from Minnesota with more hopes and dreams than he knew what to do with. When you listen to this record, you can hear naivety, innocence, inexperience and the wide-eyed imaginings of a wishful thinker. It’s both light and dark, optimistic and melancholy. Unpolished and dusty, it’s an antique and therefore holds a truly unique and graceful aesthetic within. Though there has always been just one artist behind the music, before there was Owl City there was Sky Sailing and I consider it a great honor to finally find this opportunity to share it with you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

If by chance you ever feel as though you’ve come to know these songs or empathize with the emotions therein, please consider yourself a friend of mine because in a manner of speaking, you know me. As the saying goes, one can truly glimpse the artist through his/her art, and that expression certainly proves faithful in my case. This music is my heart and soul. This is who I am.

With that being said, I am so very glad to meet you.

With all due respect,

Adam Young

]]> http://owlcityblog.com/2010/06/29/a-letter-from-adam-young/feed/ 151 http://owlcityblog.com/2010/06/21/kitchen-mischief/ http://owlcityblog.com/2010/06/21/kitchen-mischief/#comments Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:47:43 +0000 UMG Admin http://owlcityblog.com/?p=31 One time in high school I had a sudden and quite unexpected change of schedule during my 4th period study hall (which I RULED at) and all of a sudden I found myself twirling my salad fingers like a noob in Small Engines class. I still don’t get it.

Yeah, we got to rip apart lawn mowers and wrench on stuff and get grease all over our sweatshirts and blah blah blah. Having never been the small engine type, I was surprisingly okay at it. It was way more fun than Refresher Algebra 3 that’s for sure (which I got a D- in). It’s funny and occasionally horrifying how things that really only happened a few years ago sometimes seem so far away. I remember hanging on the end of a live spark plug like an imbecile while my partner yanked on the pull string so we could “test” it to make sure we got the engine put back together correctly and it still had juice. It did indeed have juice and unfortunately my hair never really grew in the same lush direction after that fateful class period. I could ramble on forever about my sweet Small Engines class at Owatonna High but basically the whole point of me telling you this load of rubbish is so that if/when you have an extremely unfortunate event involving a lawn mower, you’ll know exactly who to talk to. In such a case, all roads (and bike trails) lead to myself, not Rome.

A Small Engines alumni if ever there was one:

On that note, I would like to announce that I spend a lot of time in the kitchen… doing exactly WHAT I’m not entirely sure but that’s not really the point. The point involves raiding the cupboards and cabinets, stealing my OWN food from my OWN fridge, raising Cain (the brother of Able?) and causing a ridiculous amount of mischief. I tend to wear my socks a lot in the kitchen as well… as in… I’m usually that guy who violently kicks off his shoes at the front door because there’s something about fake wooden kitchen linoleum that appears inviting to the feverish socked footsies. For the bookish type, living alone is absolutely heaven and I wouldn’t trade it for the world… probably not even for a wife, at least not until I have the pleasure of meeting and getting to know the lovely girly. Cuz yeah.

Anyway, living alone is wonderful but I WILL say this about it. Whenever I’m up during the wee hours of the night, the only thing that terrifies me about living alone is lying awake in the deafening quiet of my bedroom and hearing the eerie scraping of someone slowly descending the basement stairs only to peek out from my covers and see the girl from The Ring standing in the doorway with her hair in front of her face. OH MAN. Moving on.

Aside from the top secret subterranean cave basement where music and I are always doing that thing we do, this is where I spend a lot of my time:

Yay.

Aside from all of this junk, the past week and I have produced much proverbial fruit together. I went to Office Max yesterday because I needed a flash drive and also because I rule. But mostly because I just needed a flash drive. I was trouncing around the parking lot like a space worm when I looked up from whatever it was I was occupied with and beheld this:

OoOoOoOoOo.

You must understand that if someone drew a line in the sand with a sword, I’d be the first to strut over it and stand on the NERD side rather than, say, the BRO side. What I mean is, I don’t really wear skull caps and 30 pounds of black leather, nor do I often catch myself daydreaming about massive muddy 4×4′s or fist fights or rifles or 12 point bucks or Sturgis or overly choleric biker chicks. Names have been hurled in my direction such as “unfashionable” or “socially inept” and of course the given hurler may have had a darn good point, but regardless, when I saw this motorcycle in the parking lot I had to at least take a photo and wonder what life would be like without Captain Hook. If you’ve ever seen the film starring Robin Williams, you might have a better understanding of what I’m talking about. It’s from 1991, probably not healthy enough to torrent but I’d bet the hair on my legs that there’s a lonely VHS somewhere on the shelf at your public library. I’m also willing to bet that your grandma has a VCR. Mine sure does.

Cool.

My good pal Matt Thiessen from Relient K is coming to visit me this week. We’re gonna work on tunes and eat Applebee’s like it’s our jobs and/or like it’s going out of business. Thankfully it’s not. I can’t wait.

The new tunes are sounding lovely and I’m beyond excited for you to hear them. Without being too revealing, like the Great Mouse Detective that I am, the new record is going to be mighty tasty. Bigger synths, dreamier pads, meatier kick drums, lots of hand programmed glitchy IDM sequences, loads of analog synth, live guitars, live drums, catchy hooks like it’s Muskie season, maybe even a well-placed brass stab somewhere in homage to the genius that is MC Hammer. Got my grubby hands on a bunch of new plug-ins the other day and they’re blowing my MIND. Moog filters, Trident EQ’s, a bunch of CLASSIC Neve stuff, vintage channel strips, SSL compressors/limiters out the wazoo, even a Roland RE-20 Space Echo plug-in. I’ll have the Signal Flow salad sandwich.

Gonna be awesome.

This entry has become lengthy. I must go now.

]]> http://owlcityblog.com/2010/06/21/kitchen-mischief/feed/ 181 http://owlcityblog.com/2010/06/14/dennis-the-deer/ http://owlcityblog.com/2010/06/14/dennis-the-deer/#comments Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:22:36 +0000 UMG Admin http://owlcityblog.com/?p=25 Yesterday, I spent the evening at one of my favorite places in the entire world:

A beautiful old lakeside shipping town in northern Minnesota by the name of Duluth. Perched on the edge of the biggest of the Great Lakes, exploring in and around the port city is like spending a day at the ocean in the heart of the Midwest. A lovely place. A fish can breathe out here.

Minus the inevitable blustery winter that blows in from the lake every December, I would absolutely love to live in Duluth someday. It has such character, such history, such class.

And nearby, there’s a little airport boasting an ironic name:



You’ll be pleased to know that I made a mean taco salad the other night. I’ve never considered myself a master of the culinary arts and my 3rd degree burned pancakes can certainly attest to my incompetence. However I have been known to assemble a luscious taco salad from time to time. And lest we forget the classic recording staple, it’s worth mentioning that an incredible amount of coffee has been guzzled over the past week as well. There again, I’ve never been a hardcore coffee drinker but there’s nothing better than the way a house smells after a fresh pot of coffee has been brewed. It makes me wanna buy school supplies.

Writing is progressing nicely and recording is just around the corner, which brings to mind a truly classic Tom Hanks quote: “The entrance to our store is around the corner and there’s no other way of saying that.”

Caviar is a GARNISH!

Ideas are hatching. Inspiration has been struck. Sneaky plans are being formulated.

I also recently got my grubby hands on an Orange AD30.

Me likey.

In the meantime, I’ve become pals with a white-tailed deer who recently moved into the neighborhood. I heard him rooting around in the bushes the other evening and ran outside to meet him. His name is Dennis. He is my friend.

We frolic day after sunny day in royal abandon, sharing that sweet and every magical bond between boy and deer.

I’m really looking forward to the Fourth of July this year. I’m gonna eat so many hotdogs, it’s not even funny.

Actually, yeah it is.

It’s hilarious.

]]> http://owlcityblog.com/2010/06/14/dennis-the-deer/feed/ 118 http://owlcityblog.com/2010/06/07/gravel-shins/ http://owlcityblog.com/2010/06/07/gravel-shins/#comments Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:15:01 +0000 UMG Admin http://owlcityblog.com/?p=20 Wow.

I can’t even believe it. This is absolutely incredible.

After searching high and low, for what seems like a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I’ve finally found one:

The ARP 2600. A semi-modular analog subtractive audio synthesizer.

A true classic.

There it is sitting in my garage and I still can’t believe it.

Found it under a pile of dusty law books at an old lady’s garage sale yesterday. 25 bucks. I could scarcely believe my eyeballs. Yet there it was in full glory. Ironically, the clouds parted and a heavenly eruption of trumpeting melodies sounded in the deep. I smiled inwardly and reached for my wallet.

After paying the old lady, she was so immensely overjoyed to get rid of “that keyboard thingy” that she graciously threw in her creaky husband’s decrepit set of golf clubs just to close the deal. I’m no golf pro but it goes without saying that any synth nerd on the planet would GLADLY drag home a bag of nasty old golf clubs home for a steal like this.

Tiger Woods would be incredibly jealous:

The old lady’s husband was settled into a frayed lawn chair, overseeing the garage sale with a professional look on his face and a can of root beer in hand. He peered at me through thick glasses and called out across the cluttered garage.

“Those clubs had a lot of use out of ‘em! I used to play a lot… before the accident.”

He then rattled off a load of rubbish about a motorcycle accident he’d had fifteen years ago and the ridiculous amount of scars it left him with. I could tell he loved telling the story to people and he made sure to emphasize how gruesome the whole ordeal was. Apparently, it was so grisly, he still had bits of gravel embedded in his shins.

Perhaps he was feeling some unusual grandfatherly impulse, what with me being the typical grandson’s age and all, but for some unexplainable reason or other, he offered to hike up his pant leg and show me his gravel shins. I graciously declined. He shot me a disapproving look and said to make sure I wear my helmet whenever I ride my motorcycle. I smiled weakly and collected my treasures.

Trudging back to my parked car, I couldn’t believe my good luck. I’d just become the proud owner of an ARP 2600. It was too good to be true. I gently placed the precious vintage synth in the back seat and hurled the clubs into the open trunk.

I couldn’t help giving the old lady and her husband a huge toothy grin and a thumbs up as I drove by. As I continued down the street, I cranked down the window and shouted “WORTH IT” at the top of my lungs.

]]> http://owlcityblog.com/2010/06/07/gravel-shins/feed/ 92 http://owlcityblog.com/2010/06/01/hello-world/ http://owlcityblog.com/2010/06/01/hello-world/#comments Tue, 01 Jun 2010 13:24:16 +0000 UMG Admin http://owlcityblog.com/?p=1 Oh hi.

I may need to hire a prison warden or perhaps a ferocious professional wrestler with a great resume and a long brutal history of showing no mercy. Someone to stand guard outside my front door and make certain that I get lots of things done while I’m lounging at home all summer. In beautiful leafy green Minnesota, the weather couldn’t possibly be nicer, it’s ALWAYS tremendously nice outside, and thus, as a result I am far more distracted than usual. Bikes deserve to be ridden, beaches deserve to be sprawled upon, pizza deserves to be eaten and sauce spilled everywhere, vacations deserve to be taken, next door neighbors’ kiddy pools deserve to be swum in, footballs deserve to be kicked over the house and not stuck in the phone lines. Taco Bell deserves to be visited on a regular basis. Frozen french fries deserve to be cooked in the oven and irresponsibly burned to death. Summer deserves to be fun. And fun deserves to be had.

It rained today. I love the way the air smells right after it rains. I don’t love running around with bare feet outside and stepping on the occasional hapless and ill-fated earthworm, but as unfortunate as it is inauspicious, accidents *do* happen. I am not a malicious boy but my goodness, shouldn’t night crawlers be tucked into bed during the day with their little tasseled sleeping caps on their little heads? What is it with worms and driveways anyway?

Anyways, I’m finally back from tour, the summer has finally arrived and I couldn’t not be a happier camper. Ironically, one of the many things on my list of lengthy things to accomplish over the next few months involves pitching a tent somewhere in the lush northern Minnesota woods, but that comes later. I’ll explain it to you when you’re older.

Upon returning to my wonderful home after NINE long and laborious months of touring the States several times as well as the rest of the planet, I walked through the door and beheld a familiar sight:

I’ve been gone such a long time.

One of the most recent additions is a lovely 1929 rebuilt Steinway “G” grand piano of which I have affectionately named Audrey.

I would like to publicly and openly announce to everyone in the entire world that I have a crush on Audrey.

Also awaiting the Return of the King was a sneaky Gold record:

As well as an equally sneaky Platypus record:



I still can’t even grasp how surreal it is to walk through the house at 2 AM in nothing but… uh, where am I? Is this real life?

The first thing I did when I got home from Europe was plug my laptop STRAIGHT INTO THE WALL. No more power converters/adapters. I ran into the kitchen, threw my stuff everywhere and hurdled over the island for the nearest three-pronged outlet. Nothin’ but net. The moment induced a sweet freeing sense of liberty that can only be likened to something about the feeling you get when you watch a bratty kid throw rocks at the mailman. I don’t think I can make myself any clearer. I then donned on a pair of very very large pair of grey sweatpants (the kind with the scrunchy elastic around the ankles) and wrapped myself in a blanket with a good book.

The next evening I drove over to my wonderful parent’s home to shoot the breeze and catch up with them. We had a campfire outside and it was most cozy. Aside from feeling immensely encouraged to spend some time with them again, I discovered two things:

#1. My dear sweet mom has a trellis on one end of her patio (a trellis is a framework of light wooden bars, chiefly used as a support for fruit trees or climbing plants) and last Christmas, when the climbing plants that are currently climbing all over the thing were nothing more than sparkles… uh, somewhere… in somebody or something’s eye… well, what I mean to say is that, last Christmas my mom entwined twinkly white Christmas lights throughout the boards of the patio trellis and left them there all winter. At night she would switch them on and it made the snowy yard look quite inviting to overweight elderly men in red suits and white beards (this was not the reason behind putting up the aforementioned Christmas lights). Fa la la la, spring finally arrived, the climbing plants started a-climbing, and WHAM! THEY WRAPPED THEMSELVES ALL UP IN MY MOM’S CHRISTMAS LIGHTS HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. This is not a laughing matter, but fortunately the good news is this:

Look how pretty it looks now:

Prime real estate for newly evicted Tinker Bells, no doubt.

#2. This is amazing. Are you ready?

My parent’s have a garden on wheels.

Yeah?

A. GARDEN. ON. WHEELS.

ON WHEEEEEEELZ!!!

While I was somewhere in the UK or Asia or somewhere gnarly, my Pops explained the whole thing to me via unreliable phone service and a frustrating series of dropped calls, but I got the gist of what he described:

“Uh, yeah, it’s sorta like a flower bed, about the size of a mattress, maybe six inches deep or so, filled with dirt. It’s got plants in it and it’s mounted on a big piece of plywood with off-road tires and a push-pull handle thingy on it… ya know what I’m talking about?”

I indeed did.

I mustn’t say anymore about it for fear of ruining such an incredibly idea that can only really be mulled over in one’s mind like a neighbor’s garden hose under a fat kid on a trike.

Look for yourself:

So sweet.

]]> http://owlcityblog.com/2010/06/01/hello-world/feed/ 155 http://owlcityblog.com/2010/01/18/a-sight-for-sore-teeth/ http://owlcityblog.com/2010/01/18/a-sight-for-sore-teeth/#comments Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:44:29 +0000 Adam Young http://owlcityblog.com/?p=2432 Oh hi.

I would like to tell you a story.

Today I went to the dentist.

I don’t particularly love the dentist, but I’m sure you know how it is.

I can officially puff out my muscular barrel chest and confidently tell you that my least favorite part about the whole dentistry thing is actually getting into the stupid car and driving across town only to enter an office building crammed full of people in creepy white lab coats who smile through their teeth (oh yeah) and jab at your juicy gums with all manner of evil looking utensils.

Cool.

Anyways, I shan’t bore you to tears. You’re probably sitting at the kitchen table eating cereal or something, and heaven forbid I bore you so far out of your head that you actually start crying into your Frosty Flakes.

The whole point of this silly blog is simply this.

I walked through the door and was greeted by the below sight.

Ahhh yes. A lamphead reading a newspaper.

I was fortunate enough to capture the scene on yucky cell phone camera film. Or whatever.

Cool, right?

I love you,
Adam

]]> http://owlcityblog.com/2010/01/18/a-sight-for-sore-teeth/feed/ 85 http://owlcityblog.com/2009/09/16/2502/ http://owlcityblog.com/2009/09/16/2502/#comments Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:41:14 +0000 Adam Young http://owlcityblog.com/?p=2502 Dearest friends,

I have a confession to make.

Today I was gazing out a window at the leafy Pennsylvania countryside, pressed against the glass in the back seat of a fifteen passenger van, suspended over a rushing liquid interstate, serenaded by the soothing rumble and whir of tires on pavement… and it was there that I realized something.

It’s been ages since I’ve written to you!

Life has lately done an extraordinary job at turning a shy boy into a busy bee, and thus, for neglecting to keep you up to date with all that is going on in the wide world of Owl City, I am dreadfully sorry.

I miss writing to you.

How are you?! How have you been?! What has happened over the passing days and weeks and months? What beautiful situations/opportunities/scenarios has life thrown your way? What inspires you? What leaves you breathless, overwhelmed, astonished? What lifts you off the ground and dips you waist-deep in grace and amazement?

I hope you are well. My thoughts are with you.

Summer is slowly coming to a close, school has begun, Friday nights are crowded with new friendships, warm sweatshirts, nervous first dates, nighttime driving, stargazing, good company, wide eyes, and lives so full of hope, hearts may burst at any moment.

For me, the past weeks have been a shimmering, brilliant blur. Sometimes I must rub my eyes and shake my head in an attempt to collect my thoughts and get my bearings because every fiber of my being is overwhelmed by awe and wonder. A few weeks ago, I released a record entitled Ocean Eyes and I absolutely cannot believe how well it has been received thus far by those willing to listen. For that, I owe you an endless amount of gratitude.

Thank you. From the bottom of my heart.

As an artist, a wonderful sense of joy, honor and satisfaction abounds as a result of knowing people are willing to listen, respect, admire and appreciate. That feeling is so tremendously pure and satisfying, it is utterly priceless… immeasurable… unparalleled… beyond compare. I suspect a great deal of you know exactly what I’m talking about.

By definition, music is a glimpse of the heart and soul and your appreciation means more to me than you can possibly imagine.

I am thankful for you.

This brings us to now.

Myself and seven of the most wonderful people in existence are currently on the road, swept away on a tour of the United States to uplift and bless as many ears and lives as possible. Matt Decker plays drums and percussion. Breanne Düren (the beautiful voice from The Saltwater Room) sings and plays piano and synth. Laura Musten plays violin. Hannah Schroeder plays cello. Andy Frost strums acoustic guitar and looks after all things onstage. Daniel Jorgensen sells merch, drives the van like a machine and is a better friend than anyone could ask for. Adam Jackson helms front of house and does an outstanding job at managing life on the road. I am incredibly blessed by these people and touring would be impossible without them. Also, without the tremendous help and support of my two wonderful parents as well as my manager Steve Bursky, I would never have made it this far.

If life takes its course and you and I ever happen to be in the same area, I would consider it an honor to see you at a show. The current tour takes Owl City in a slender loop around the country, so perhaps I will see you out there on the road.

The future is promising.

New friends, music, records, shows, tours, videos, merchandise and collaborations are all headed this way and I couldn’t be more excited about what lies ahead.

I absolutely can’t wait for you to be apart of it.

I wake up every morning, hit my knees, and wholeheartedly thank God for allowing me to do what I do. I am endlessly grateful to Him for the time that has been given to me, for allowing me to be apart of people’s lives in some small way, for blessing me in ways that are utterly indescribable. I am left speechless. Breathless. Overwhelmed.

Moments are ever passing, the Earth continues to spin, time wears on, and thus, there is something you need to know:

You encourage me beyond words.
I appreciate you more than I know how to describe.

Grace to you,
Adam

]]> http://owlcityblog.com/2009/09/16/2502/feed/ 56 http://owlcityblog.com/2009/08/23/10-things-that-make-me-happy/ http://owlcityblog.com/2009/08/23/10-things-that-make-me-happy/#comments Sun, 23 Aug 2009 19:56:56 +0000 Adam Young http://owlcityblog.com/?p=2932

01 Music
02 Stargazing
03 Swingsets by the beach
04 Flip flops and designer jeans
05 Blue eyes

06 Driving with the sunroof open
07 Red Bull
08 Bunny tracks ice-cream
09 Sleeping in
10 Fireflies in the twilight

What makes you happy?

]]> http://owlcityblog.com/2009/08/23/10-things-that-make-me-happy/feed/ 345 http://owlcityblog.com/2009/07/14/2532/ http://owlcityblog.com/2009/07/14/2532/#comments Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:11:04 +0000 Adam Young http://owlcityblog.com/?p=2532

Hello everyone

I need to tell you a story.

Several months ago, as the pouring rain beat down on my bedroom skylight and I was lying wide awake, staring blankly at my ceiling (as I so often tend to do), I got up, padded downstairs to the basement, sat down at my computer and began writing music. Nothing in particular, just writing for the love of writing… writing because music is what makes me feel. It allows me to taste the sky and dream in color. After a lot of thought, daydreaming, talking to myself, lukewarm coffee and sleepless nights, I finally finished putting together a collection of songs affectionately entitled “Ocean Eyes”.

I’m from the middle of nowhere in Minnesota you see, so the ocean has always been a curiously dreamy, ethereal, almost romantic thing to me. Over the years I spent a great deal of time with my eyes closed, imagining myself having the most wonderful adventures by the seaside. Doing things one can only do in dusk and glow and midsummer dreams, as if the back of my closed eyelids were a silver screen and I was a sentimental projectionist with hundreds of fanciful reels at hand, all ready to roll. Thus is the reasoning behind the title.

I hope with everything in me that you enjoy the sounds on this record. I hope they reach down from the deep sky, delicately loop their soft silver filaments under your arms and lift you up so high above the city lights and crashing waves that it leaves you breathless and you can see from here to eternity. If by chance you ever feel as though you’ve come to know these songs, please consider yourself a friend of mine because in a manner of speaking, you know me. This music is my heart and soul. This is who I am.

With that being said, I am so very glad to meet you.

It’s been a dreadfully long time since Owl City has released new music and for that, I apologize. I tend to put things off but I am so very grateful to those of you who’ve stayed with me this far. And so, this is where I need to say something…

Thank you.

Thank you from the absolute bottom of my daydreaming, shy, boyish heart.

I’d be nowhere without your support and encouragement.

Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone, so allow me to express my infinite thankfulness.

My appreciation is endless.

Not a day goes by that I don’t thank God for allowing me to do what I do.

I treasure you all.

Yell at me if you see me somewhere,

Adam

]]> http://owlcityblog.com/2009/07/14/2532/feed/ 78 http://owlcityblog.com/2009/05/25/marshmallow-fluff/ http://owlcityblog.com/2009/05/25/marshmallow-fluff/#comments Mon, 25 May 2009 16:10:14 +0000 Adam Young http://owlcityblog.com/?p=2722 Oh hi,

I need to tell you a story.

This morning I put some marshmallow fluff on a piece of toast and ate it. I’ve never experienced marshmallow fluff on a piece of toast before in my entire life. Today was the first time. Ever.

I’ll be honest, I was a bit scared… you know… of what it might taste like? I had no idea what to expect. It could’ve been absolutely revolting or ridiculously amazing. I could’ve been horrendously disgusted to the point of spitting a mouthful of toast and marshmallow fluff everywhere so that my dog would’ve come joyfully running for the half-chewed up bits of food lying strewn about on the linoleum floor… or… I could’ve taken a big, sweet, indulgent bite of marshmallowy fluffy goodness and felt a humungeous smile spread across my face as I grunted and nodded with tasty approval. Who knows what could’ve happened? There was really no way of knowing. It could’ve been heavenly; it could’ve been a disaster.

Regardless of the incredible risk I was about to take, I smoothed my hair, puffed out my chest, picked up that piece of toast slathered in marshmallow fluff, took a bite, and took it like a man…

And now I have only one thing to say.

It. Was. Delicious.

The end!

With all due respect,
Adam :)

]]> http://owlcityblog.com/2009/05/25/marshmallow-fluff/feed/ 40 http://owlcityblog.com/2009/05/22/2842/ http://owlcityblog.com/2009/05/22/2842/#comments Fri, 22 May 2009 16:58:47 +0000 Adam Young http://owlcityblog.com/?p=2842 Nothing Works for Me!
(Richard Lederer)

My first job was working in an orange juice factory but I couldn’t concentrate and got canned.

Then I worked in the woods as a lumberjack but I just couldn’t hack it so they gave me the axe.

After that I tried to be a tailor but I just wasn’t suited for it. Mainly because it was a so-so job, de-pleting and de-pressing.

Next I tried working in a muffler factory but that was super exhausting.

I wanted to be a barber but I just couldn’t cut it.

So then I became a hairdresser but the job was just too cut and dried.

I sold Origami but the business folded.

I attempted to be a deli worker but any way I sliced it, I couldn’t cut the mustard.

I studied a long time to become a doctor but I didn’t have any patients.

Next was a job in a shoe factory; I tried my best but I just didn’t fit in.

I became a Velcro salesman but couldn’t stick with it.

I was a professional fisherman but discovered that I couldn’t live on my net income.

I became a baker but I couldn’t make enough dough.

I tried being a fireman but I got burned out.

I managed to get a good job working for a pool maintenance company but the work was just too draining.

I got a job at a zoo feeding giraffes but I was fired because I just wasn’t up to it.

So then I got a job in a gym but they said I wasn’t fit for the job.

Next, I found being an electrician interesting, but found the work shocking and revolting so they discharged me.

I got a job as a historian until I realized there was no future in it.

I became a transplant surgeon but my heart just wasn’t in it.

I became a tennis pro but it wasn’t my racket. I was too high strung.

I tried being a teacher but I soon loss my principal, my faculties and my class.

I tried being a farmer but I wasn’t outstanding in my field.

Then I was a pilot but I didn’t have the right altitude.

I worked at Starbucks but I had to quit because it was always the same old grind.

So I retired and I found I’m a perfect fit for this job!

<3 Adam

]]> http://owlcityblog.com/2009/05/22/2842/feed/ 42 http://owlcityblog.com/2009/04/26/10-words-that-dont-exist-but-should-part-2/ http://owlcityblog.com/2009/04/26/10-words-that-dont-exist-but-should-part-2/#comments Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:27:20 +0000 Adam Young http://owlcityblog.com/2010/11/08/10-words-that-dont-exist-but-should-part-2/ Accordionated – adj. Being able to drive and refold a road map at the same time.

Aeropalmics – n. The study of wind resistance conducted by holding a cupped hand out the car window.

Mummabolic Chorus – n. When three or more people are singing along to a tune and suddenly discover they are all faking their way through the unintelligible lyrics.

Narcolepulacy – n. The contagious action of yawning, causing everyone in sight to also yawn.

Oreosis – n. The practice of eating the cream center of an Oreo before eating the cookie outsides.

Pajangle – n. Condition of waking up with your pajamas turned 180 degrees.

Prestofrigeration – n. The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly returning to

the refrigerator in hopes that something new will have materialized.

Rignition – n. The embarrassing action of trying to start one’s car with the engine already running.

Sark – n. The marks left on one’s ankle after wearing tube socks all day.

Turfigee and Pedigee – n. The two extreme target points of a rotary lawn sprinkler, TURFIGEE being the safest point at which to walk past, PEDIGEE being the most dangerous.

Tanumbum – n. The sorry side of the Christmas tree that gets placed toward the wall.

Wondracide – v. The act of mangling a piece of soft white bread with a pat of cold butter.

See you on the road!
<3 Adam

]]> http://owlcityblog.com/2009/04/26/10-words-that-dont-exist-but-should-part-2/feed/ 69 http://owlcityblog.com/2009/04/16/10-words-that-dont-exist-but-should/ http://owlcityblog.com/2009/04/16/10-words-that-dont-exist-but-should/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:19:36 +0000 Adam Young http://owlcityblog.com/?p=2882

01. AQUADEXTROUS – adj. Possessing the ability to turn the bathroom faucet on and off with your toes.

02. CARPERPETUATION – n. The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string or a piece of lint at least a dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.

03. DISCONFECT – v. To sterilize a piece of candy you dropped on the floor by blowing on it, assuming this will somehow “remove” all the germs.

04. ELBONICS – n. The actions of two people maneuvering for one armrest in a movie theater (airplane).

05. FRUST – n. The small line of debris that refuses to be swept onto the dust pan and keep backing a person across the room until he finally decides to give up and sweep it under the rug.

06. LACTOMANGULATION – n. Manhandling the “open here” spout on a milk container so badly that one has to resort to the “illegal” side.

07. PEPPIER – n. The waiter at a fancy restaurant whose sole purpose seems to be walking around asking diners if they want ground pepper.

08. PHONESIA – n. The affliction of dialing a phone number and forgetting whom you were calling just as they answer.

09. PUPKUS – n. The moist residue left on a window after a dog presses its nose to it.

10. TELECRASTINATION – n. The act of always letting the phone ring at least twice before you pick it up, even when you’re only six inches away.

:)

Adam

]]> http://owlcityblog.com/2009/04/16/10-words-that-dont-exist-but-should/feed/ 70 http://owlcityblog.com/2009/04/07/helloooooooooo-seattle/ http://owlcityblog.com/2009/04/07/helloooooooooo-seattle/#comments Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:51:49 +0000 Adam Young http://owlcityblog.com/?p=2602 Oh hi!

Believe it or not, I’ve never been to Seattle before. However, two days ago I packed my bags, drove to the airport and waltzed onto an airplane bound for the great woodsy northwest. Two hours later, I stepped off the plane and into beautiful warm, sunny downtown Seattle. I can remember staring out the window and daydreaming about this place during class when I was a freshmen in high school so needless to say, being here for the first time is indeed a bit surreal for me. And from the little I’ve seen of it thus far, I can safely say it’s enchanting. Plus there are MOUNTAINS out here!!! :)

A dog on a ferry!

People in an alley.

I have an intense phobia of needles. This one doesn’t even phase me a bit.

A family atop the Needle.

I took a picture for this couple. The lady called me a cutie…

Hi!

Seattle Aquarium!

Spent the first day in Emerald City at Two Sticks Audio (owned by Jason McGerr of Death Cab For Cutie) recording live strings for the new record. It was absolutely breathtaking.

I’m incredibly excited at how well the new album is coming along and I absolutely can’t wait for you to hear it. There are songs about birds and worms, riding dirt bikes on turnpikes, warm fuzzy sweaters, ice skating across the country, modern dentistry, boys and girls holding hands, sock hops and fox trots, heavy violet eyelids, underwater ferris wheels, frozen floating icebergs, meteor showers, abandoned boxcars, beach umbrellas, armies of fireflies and lightning bugs… you name it!

A waitress smiled at me today and said “Are you from Seattle??” I smiled back and said “No, I’m from Minnesota! Like, that state with all those silly lakes?!” Her eyes grew wide and she said “Well then! You have no idea what good seafood is, am I right?” I wasn’t sure. She hooted and said “You absolutely HAVE to order the crab! The seafood is so wonderful out here… it’s to “fry” for!”… I smiled and laughed. I ordered the crab. She was right.

And OMGSH… some people out here ONLY eat tartar sauce with their french fries!!! This is amazing.

I like Seattle.

Hugs!
Adam

]]> http://owlcityblog.com/2009/04/07/helloooooooooo-seattle/feed/ 58 http://owlcityblog.com/2008/12/13/minnesota-winters/ http://owlcityblog.com/2008/12/13/minnesota-winters/#comments Sat, 13 Dec 2008 20:35:07 +0000 Adam Young http://owlcityblog.com/?p=2652 In southern Minnesota, the frosty month of December in a rural town can mean only one thing: back problems. If you live anywhere north of Iowa, you know this. Once autumn decides to quit fooling around and the weather engine shifts gears from chilly to freezing, a sad sinking feeling inevitably ensues because everyone knows that once the flakes start falling… the backs start aching. Granted, a fresh blanket of fluffy snow draped softly over thickets of evergreens certainly radiates good cheer, but beware: there is an ominous drawback that surely lurks therein. Allow me to elaborate.

We Minnesotans practice something that is affectionately known as shoveling snow. This is a relatively simple concept whereby an extremely unlucky bloke must bend over at the waist, scoop up heaping mounds of dense, heavy, often wet snow lying about on the ground, and move them somewhere else. Repeatedly. Frequently. Regularly. A thousand times over. Such is the case of the typical Minnesota winter. The tool of the trade is a stupid red plastic rectangle screwed onto the end of a wooden stick. NOTE: It is often the case that the common shovel-wielder is equally as dumb as his shovel. We’ve been fortunate enough to capture this one on camera in its natural habitat. See below.

As you can well imagine, those of us residing in the snowy regions of the United States not fortunate enough to own a snow blower or be of any relation to a redneck uncle with a 4×4 and snowplow, must shovel his or her sidewalk or driveway — by hand.

How nice.

Thus, the American Chiropractic Association suggests the following tips for “exercise” of the snow shoveling variety:

* If you must shovel snow, be careful. Listen to weather forecasts so you can rise early and have time to shovel before work.
First of all, shoveling snow is not a simple question of “if you must.” If you live in Minnesota, you must. Second of all, who really has time to wake up early, tune in to the local radio station to note the forecast as slurred by some misinformed, oblivious DJ who doesn’t know how to pronounce semi-big words, and ultimately plan out a “shoveling schedule” accordingly? I’m sorry but if you do this, you’re hilarious.

* Layer clothing to keep your muscles warm and flexible.
Duh.

* Shoveling can strain “de-conditioned” muscles between your shoulders, in your upper back, lower back, buttocks and legs. So, do some warm-up stretching before you grab that shovel!
I don’t know how it works in other northern states, but in Minnesota, winters are pretty notorious for getting down to business. If it’s going to snow, it snows. The flakes fall faster than you can shovel. Your footprints fill in and disappear in seconds. You don’t have time to do jumping jacks and hamstring stretches before you tug on your sister’s Hello Kitty mittens and trudge out to the sidewalk to have at it. You are at war. There is much at stake. You must stay FOCUSED at all times! Remember that thing Mr. Miyagi did with his eyes and his two fingers in The Karate Kid? Yeah, that.

* When you do shovel, push the snow straight ahead. Don’t throw it. Walk it to the snow bank. Avoid sudden twisting and turning motions.
Okay. Whoever contributed this unhelpful tasty tidbit obviously does not know what a real snow bank is. In Minnesota, snow banks are mountainous. They are taller than some trees. They are meaner than Satan. They eat innocent bystanders for lunch. You have to put your heart and soul into your work. In fact, your whole body. You must HURL and FLING and CATAPULT the snow up and over so that those wretched white piles don’t come crashing back down, thus creating more work for yourself. This, by any stretch of the imagination, is not an easy thing to do after you’ve done it a hundred times in repetition.

* Bend your knees to lift when shoveling. Let the muscles of your legs and arms do the work, not your back.
For some reason this brings to mind Kevin Mcallister’s creepy shoveling neighbor from Home Alone. It’s also worth mentioning that Kevin’s older brother Buzz = amazing.

* Take frequent rest breaks to take the strain off your muscles. A fatigued body asks for injury.
And be sure to carefully map out your rest breaks in 15 minute intervals so you can drop everything, clutch a can of Diet Mountain Dew in your big chubby hand and watch blooper clips from Dirty Jobs on YouTube. FAIL.

* Stop if you feel chest pain, or get really tired or have shortness of breath. You may need immediate professional help.
HAHAHA!!!

Must I say it? Unless you live somewhere where they cancel school when it gets cold enough to freeze your tongue to the flag pole in front of your high school, these tips surely do not apply to the hardy folk who see snow removal as a DUTY, not a CHOICE (insert ridiculously funny 80′s theme music here).

So there you have it. If you ever wake up some morning and decide that you’re the perfect outdoorsy, woodsman-of-the-world type who feels like braving a new great unknown: the Minnesota winter… I certainly hope you don’t get “cold feet.” If you do in fact have a snow blower or your dad is in fact a redneck with a cool 4×4 truck and snowplow: never mind. Go drink Mountain Dew and watch TV.

I really hate to brag so I shall leave you with the words of the great William H. Macy because they are, oh so relevant.

“I shovel well. I shovel very well.”

With all due respect,
Dr. Adam R Young

P.S. New Owl City music is being written as we speak… uh, as I type… erm, as you read. Bleah. Never mind.

Reference: http://www.aaachingback.com/snow_shoveling.html

]]> http://owlcityblog.com/2008/12/13/minnesota-winters/feed/ 64 http://owlcityblog.com/2008/06/28/vacations-in-owl-city/ http://owlcityblog.com/2008/06/28/vacations-in-owl-city/#comments Sat, 28 Jun 2008 20:00:21 +0000 Adam Young http://owlcityblog.com/?p=2952 This could very well be the most amazing thing I’ve thought about since I woke up today.

“Chile has been awarded the Guinness World Record for the largest swimming pool on the planet. The gigantic lagoon is located in the resort of San Alfonso del Mar in Algarrobo City, on the southern coast of Chile. The pool is over a kilometer long (3,323 feet), covering 20 acres and containing 250,000 cubic meters of water.”

“The pool took five years to build, cost nearly £1billion and the annual maintenance bill will be £2million. It can harvest, filter and permanently recirculate ocean water by itself.”

“The man-made saltwater lagoon has been attracting huge crowds to the San Alfonso del Mar resort at Algarrobo since it opened last month. Its turquoise waters are so crystal clear that you can see the bottom even in the deep end.”

There’s a pool in Owl City that looks just like this. I’ll send you a plane ticket and you can visit anytime you want. Deal?

<3 Adam

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