What Does Switchfoots Been to Hell and Back Again Mean?

The vocal-by-song also includes Switchfoot'south "The Sound (John M. Perkins' Blues)," which has been tapped past Verizon Wireless for its national advertizement campaign for the BlackBerry ® Storm™ 2. Airing now and through Nov. half-dozen during prime time on all the major networks and cable outlets, cheque out the ad online at www.youtube.com or http://wereawakening.blogspot.com.

For all the latest tour dates, Hello Hurricane song previews and much more than, get to www.Switchfoot.com.

SWITCHFOOT

Hello Hurricane

The Songs

by

Jon Foreman

The storms of this life shatter our plans. They tear through our world and destroy our hopes and dreams. They ruin sunny days, flatten the structures we depend on, and shock our earth views. Hello Hurricane is an try to sing into the storm. Hullo Hurricane is a declaration: you lot can't silence my love. My plans will fail, the storms of this life will come, and chaos will disrupt fifty-fifty my best intentions, but my love will not be destroyed. Beneath the sound and the fury in that location is a deeper club nevertheless- deeper than life itself. An society that cannot be shaken by the storms of this life. There is a love stronger than the chaos, running underneath united states- beckoning us to go below the skin-deep externals, beyond the wind, even into the eye of the tempest. How-do-you-do Hurricane, you're non enough- y'all can't silence my love.

I've seen storms in my life. I've fifty-fifty seen them pass through on stage. I've witnessed chaos and noise overtake a song. But later the rain, some of these unsettling musical experiences become my favorite moments: the ones that can't be planned, apposite, or repeated. I've had a few of these unexpected elations upwards in a tiny LA club called Hotel Cafe playing cover tunes with a few of my friends/musical heroes. The organizer of the evenings was none other than friend/hero Tom Morello, the Night Watchman himself who would invite his friends (Slash, Ben Harper, Serj Tankian, Perry Farrell, etc.) to bring together him in the musical festivities. The nights would usually end with a memorable thou finale of cover songs with everyone onstage playing songs that were just partly rehearsed. Nigh the time the results were spectacular- other times we would have to terminate the evening to figure out logistics like who was going to play what and determine what key nosotros were going to be playing in. Information technology was during one of these pauses that Tom said a quote near music that I'll never forget. He said music is like sausage. "Sometimes you desire to enjoy information technology without knowing the details of what goes into information technology."

At that place may be some who desire this type of experience: to enjoy the music of Hello Hurricane without knowing the back-story. Maybe the blood, sweat, and tears brand you a piddling squeamish. I completely understand this sentiment. In that location were stormy, (though necessary) moments during the recording process that were neither graceful nor pretty. This was not an easy record to make; we were fighting to get somewhere we had never been. Looking back at the ground nosotros covered I'chiliad certain that every moment (even the more hard ones) were meaningful to the final push. But information technology certainly was a push… so if you want the shiny new music detached from the labor pains, turn back now! For anybody else, here are a few of the stories backside each song. I'one thousand so honored to have been a part of this tape- to share these experiences with Tim, Chad, Drew, Jerome and everyone else who helped in the struggle for excellence. In many means, these songs are like children to me and I'thou honored to be able to introduce you to them first-hand.

needle and haystack life

The earth begins

with newborn skin

we are right at present

you're a needle daughter

in a haystack world

we are right now

you breathe information technology in

the highs and lows

we telephone call it living

in this needle and haystack life

I've found miracle'due south at that place in your optics

It's no accident nosotros're here tonight

we are once in a lifetime

no, don't let go

don't give up hope

all is forgiven

you breathe it in

the highs and lows

we call it living

all is not lost

all is not lost

go who yous are

it happens one time in a lifetime

"At that place are only ii ways to alive your life. One is as though nothing is a phenomenon. The other is as though everything is a miracle"  – Einstein
Hither's a song that epitomizes the way that nosotros recorded this record, pushing at every stage to reach a higher footing. There are several iterations of this song, each of them with a radically dissimilar approach- a method we never had the fourth dimension for until we built our own studio. One of the reasons nosotros built our own studio was to enable productive experimentation similar this without paying for it past the hour. Nosotros first tracked this tune with a long time friend named Shane Wilson (we did our very first SF tape with Shane). Then we revisited this song again with another friend of ours, Darryl Thorpe (Radiohead, Paul McCartney). For both of these versions the song was cut at half time (rather than the corybantic double-time pace that's on the record). Upon reviewing the listing of songs with Mike Elizondo, "Needle" felt as well similar in tempo and feel to "Yet" (a tune on the final list for the tape). And so it was scrapped from the listing of tunes for the record. Because we recorded more 80 songs for this record, we had a lot of songs to push to the side. Mike's objective input on determining which songs not to work on was invaluable. I had learned to really trust his instincts and agreed whole-heartedly with almost the final list that he had suggested. He was correct that "Needle" and "Withal" on the same record made the tape much sleepier. Yet, "Needle" kept coming back to Tim and I as an important track.

And then we put it aside for a week or ii to see if it would return (the best ones always come back around). I kept coming dorsum to the content of the lyric. All of the concepts behind the song – promise confronting the backdrop of anarchy and meaninglessness, recognizing the value of every human being life -these felt and then existentially motivating. "Needle" felt like a song that I wanted to sing every night. And I felt like it could exist done with an element of the horizon congenital into the song. So, onstage in Vegas we worked up the song in audio-check, recorded the idea into a prison cell telephone, and came back with a fresh direction for the tune.

Drew came upwards with an ingenious idea for a unique guitar tone. Nosotros played the electric guitar through an amp, miked the amp with an audio-visual guitar (in open tuning of the fundamental of the vocal), plugged the audio-visual guitar into some other amp and recorded the signal from that second amp. The result was and so expansive and dramatic I felt like it should get-go the record. So that'south what you hear at the peak: a sweet amalgamation of electric and acoustic madness.

This song makes me recall of arable, overflowing life. The math involved for life to exist possible at all is staggering. Let lone dazzler. love. joy. forgiveness. To concur someone in your arms is to concur a living, breathing miracle. At any age, this life is a souvenir.

mess of me

I am my own disease

I am my own disease

at that place ain't no drug that they can sell

there own't no drug to make me well

there own't no drug

there ain't no drug

it's non plenty

the sickness is myself

I've fabricated a mess of me

I want to go dorsum the rest of me

I've made a mess of me

I want to spend the residuum of my life live

nosotros lock our souls in cages

inside these  prison house cells

it'south hard to free the ones you love

when you can't forgive yourself

I've made a mess of me

I want to reverse this tragedy

I've made a mess of me

I want to spend the rest of my life live

"He non busy existence born is busy dying." – Bob Dylan

"You were born a white man in mid-twentieth century industrial America.  You came into the globe armed to the teeth with an arsenal of weapons. The weapons of privilege, racial privilege, sexual privilege, economic privilege. Yous wanna be a pacifist, information technology'due south not just giving up guns and knives and clubs and fists and angry words, but giving upwardly the weapons of privilege, and going into the world completely disarmed. Try that." – Ammon Hennessy

Lyrically the song is yearning for abundant life to spring from past mistakes. The song attempts to explore the darkest parts of the man creature and transcend them, ascension higher up these gloomy moments to observe true life. If you're Freud, you telephone call these darker urges the death drive. If you lot're St. Paul, you talk about doing the things you don't want to do. Whatever yous call them, these night places destroy us if nosotros leave them unchecked. I experience that tension everyday, betwixt the correct and the wrong, between life and death. And yet there is no easy path to freedom from cocky. It'due south a narrow road and few observe it. We've all thought about the quick ready: that special something/someone that could take the pain abroad. However the problems in my life are much bigger than any temporary solution. We die a picayune everyday- physically, spiritually; we are in sorry shape. Own't no drug to make me well. Ain't no drug that can salvage me from the monster of myself. Ain't no one to blame. But my decision is made. I want to follow this through… I want to spend the rest of my life alive.

This tune has lived several lives all revolving around the guitar claw. Information technology started out every bit a song chosen "I Saw Satan (Fall Like Lightning)" I wrote it a couple years dorsum when I was stealing heavily from scripture. We dragged it into the studio with Charlie Peacock for a week of recording at Big Fish Studios and came out with a really groovy bridge. Then nosotros wrote a new chorus, called the song "There Ain't No Drug" and built the poesy lyrics effectually the new chorus. We made the bridge the chorus after that. (And at this point I was about as lost every bit you, honey reader. These are the limitations of having no limitations!) So we stepped away from this song. We knew it was a great ane, nosotros were only also inside information technology. When we came back to it we realized that we were actually close… we merely needed the final button- so we re-tracked everything at Mike'south place. Tim was the champion of this tune: lifting it from 1 phase to the next, never giving up on the riff. I'm really proud of Tim for pushing through till the final version that concluded up on the record.

your dear is a song

I hear y'all animate in

some other solar day begins

the stars are falling out

my dreams are fading at present, fading out

I've been keeping my optics wide open

I've been keeping my optics wide open

your dearest is a symphony

all around me

running through me

your love is a tune

underneath me

running to me

your dear is a song

the dawn is burn down brilliant

against the city lights

the clouds are glowing now

the moon is blacking out

I've been keeping my listen broad open

I've been keeping my heed broad open

your love is a song

with my eyes broad open

I've got my optics wide open

I've been keeping my hopes unbroken

"But the beauty of Einstein'due south equations, for example, is just every bit real to anyone who's experienced it as the beauty of music. We've learned in the 20th century that the equations that piece of work have inner harmony."  -Edward Witten

"I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance." -Friedrich Nietzsche

"Ultimately, human should not ask what the meaning of his life is, only rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked." -Viktor Frankl
For me, melody is a constant. I am always buzzing with some hook or rhythm or idea… (for example, I've got an idea in my caput at present from when I went surfing a few hours ago). Sometimes I imagine the entire universe as a vocal, or an incredibly elaborate symphony- the sun is setting, at that place's a kid staring at the evening train going by. People are falling in love. Fathers are apologizing to their sons after years of unspoken silence. Children are looking for the approval that only a mother tin requite. I think of life equally an interwoven and interconnected masterpiece. It's similar Lauren Colina and Kierkegaard say- everything furnishings everything.

Alongside these beautiful, pure notes there are elements of horrific dissonance. Parts of the symphony where the musicians are not following the score. To our shame, ours is a globe of slavery, bigotry, and hate. Of Rwanda. Of Darfur. These atonal catastrophes on our Darkwater Planet would destroy the song if they could.  But love is a stronger song. Alongside the noise there is hope. There is forgiveness and joy singing aslope of hatred and despair. The song is still being written. Everyday nosotros choose whether we will submit to the score to sing along with honey.

When I found out nearly the string theory it fabricated a lot of sense. I pictured all the universe vibrating. Some instruments are out of tune. Some are not following the conductor. Simply love conquers a multitude of errors. Your love can cover even the atrocities that I've committed in my ain life, even the times when my actions are horribly out of tune. Yes, even these have been mercifully forgiven and brought into the song.

There are reoccurring themes in my life. Because I write virtually the things I'm wrestling, these themes frequently find themselves in multiple songs. I used fight against this concept. Now I see these songs as interconnected, sequels in a real life documentary. One idea that I'chiliad continually wresting with is the concept that the creator of heavens and earth would love a wreck like myself. This idea has been the seed for a few of my songs, they are a trilogy of sorts: "Allow Your Love Exist Potent," "Your Love is Potent," and "Your Love is a Vocal."

I wrote this song with Mike Elizondo the first day nosotros worked together. The pre-chorus hook was the seed for the rest of it. Mike was great about sitting back and letting me chew on something until I got information technology. Information technology was as though nosotros were looking at the same thing from different vantage points, mine was the micro scope- his the telescope. So he would guide the song from a bird's center view abroad from some of the dangerous places while I was trudging forth with the particulars. I beloved writing with people, yous learn so much about who they are in the procedure. I learned enough from this vocal that I trusted Mike's instincts a lot.

the sound (john one thousand. perkins dejection)

The static comes in slow

You can experience information technology grow

Our stream of conscience flows

Under the streets beneath

The rivers fabricated of sound

Yet running undercover

Runs like a silent alluvion

we run as thick as claret

can you hear it rise

upward from the ground

tin't drown it out

can you hear it now

this is the sound

of a heartbeat

this is the sound

from the discontented mouths

of a haunted nation

nosotros are the voice of breaking

downwards

can you hear me?

this is the sound

of the desperation bound

by our own collision

we are the vox of breaking

down

the static comes alive

beneath the broken skies

john perkins said it right

love is the final fight

let it rise above

rise to a higher place

there is no song

louder than dear

"You tin can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you lot exercise." -Anne Lamott

"When we talk about heaven we talk about all people praising God together. Well, I didn't run into many people downwardly hither that were Christians that were trying to make that happen." -John Perkins
This was the terminal infinitesimal addition to the record. When we were making the terminal list, I showed this song to Tim (he's my get-go line of defence- If it gets past Tim, and then there's a hazard we'll runway it). He was as excited every bit I was. We wanted to accept a song with a steady, relentless pulse on the record and we all knew that this one fit the bill. The chorus was originally much more of a straightforward lyric, perchance too much so. So we redid the chorus and began to rewrite the verse lyrics to match the chorus vibe.

Lyrically, I feel like this song is a corollary of Hello Hurricane. I was reading a volume at the time, Let Justice Gyre Down– it's the autobiography of John Perkins, given to me by a friend of mine. I was struck past Perkins' honesty and humility. He describes the Jim Crow earth of not so very long ago with brutal honesty. We are a haunted nation. Whether we admit it or not, the past runs through our veins. Heed to the streets, they'll tell yous the same. Nosotros can embrace up our racism and bigoted bigotry with excuses and time only the sins of the past cry out from the ground. The undercurrents from our history are always buzzing around our ears. But rise above the constant gnawing of past wrongs is the song of Honey. Love is the reconciliation. The deliberate act of forgiveness. The deliberate human action of moving forrad unencumbered by the past. This is the audio. This is the sound.

enough to let me go

Oh

I'm a wandering soul

I'm still walking the line that leads me domicile

solitary

All I know

I withal got mount to climb

on my ain

on my own

Exercise you love me plenty to let me go?

to allow me follow through

to permit me fall for you

Practice you love me enough to let me become?

Back from the dead of winter

back from the dead and all our leaves are dry out

you're so cute, tonight

back from the dead nosotros went through

dorsum from the dead and both our tongues are tied

you look beautiful tonight

but every seed dies earlier information technology grows

breathe it in

and permit it get

every jiff you take is not your to own

it's not your to hold

Practice you lot love me enough to let me go?

"Where love rules, there is no volition to power; and where ability predominates, there love is lacking. The ane is the shadow of the other." -Carl Jung
"Religion is the highest passion in a human beingness. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further." -Soren Kierkegaard
This one started with the guitar hook I came up with during sound-cheque; nonetheless, most of the song took shape in a hotel room in Australia. I was thinking almost how love (non just lust or codependency that commonly flood the tunes on the airways) really involves quite a chip of faith. There's a lot of letting go involved. Two souls in love is an intricate dance of requite and have. I can be a fairly solitary person from fourth dimension to time. Sure, I love being with people, but I too need time lone. I guess I thrive on the poles. Then this vocal is about the trip the light fantastic toe involved in a relationship the coming together and letting become. The song equates love with animate- pulling in and releasing. Or a seed, for the seed to grow it has to be dropped and cached.

In our barcode media, love is often portrayed as consumption. As consumers in a commercial driven civilization nosotros can begin to view other souls as objects, or potential cures for our deepest fears and insecurities. "Perhaps if I constitute the right lover I would no longer feel this deep existential despair." But of class no human soul could be the Constant Other, the face up that will never go away. Only the infinite can fill that office. Just the silence tin be deafening. Information technology's a fearful thing to be alone. Do yous beloved me enough to let me go? "I can't live without you"- "I would dice if you ever left me"- These are not the songs of beloved, these are the songs of consumption.

free

I've got my back confronting the wall

But I even so hear the bluish sky phone call

The chains that hold me back within

are the prisons of my mind

gratuitous,

come set up me free

downwardly on my knees

I still believe y'all can save me from me

come up set me free

come up prepare me gratis

inside this shell

there's a prison prison cell

I attempt to live the low-cal of day

why would I do what I hate

Only when endeavour to attain above

I only I hurt the ones I dearest

there'due south a pigsty in the neighborhood

where the shadows fall

there's a hole in my eye only my hope

is not in me at all

I had a dream that my chains were cleaved

cleaved, cleaved, broken open

free

"There is no easy walk to liberty anywhere, and many of united states will take to pass through the valley of the shadow of decease again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires… there is no such thing as part freedom." – Nelson Mandela

"People demand freedom of oral communication as a compensation for the freedom of idea which they seldom utilize." -Soren Kierkegaard

I'm pretty certain that I wrote this one in an elevator. Tim says that the seed of it was written past the time the elevator ride was over. I don't retrieve that, I simply wanted to have a song on the tape (and live) that captured a reinterpretation of the blues. From the moment I started playing guitar I was hooked on Led Zeppelin, BB Male monarch, and Hendrix. Wes Montgomery came later. I wanted to have a simple throbbing, pulsing vocal on the record that epitomized the songs I played in Jr. High.

The concept of this song is adequately elementary. I am trapped by myself. I am a man who is divisional by his own lusts and vices, yearning to be free of these hindrances. We are enslaved to our passing desires that are often more than swayed by our environment than our ain volition. Near of what we phone call our "choices" are simply reactions. Free thought is incredibly rare. Who can know the darkest parts inside himself? This unspoken and nameless prison is the bane of the "gratuitous" world, the hole in the neighborhood. We are in the chains of debt, the chains of consumption, enslaved by our lusts, our fears, and our past. The truth will set you costless but it's only slightly less scary than hell and a whole lot harder to get there. At that place is no outer freedom until we have chosen to be free inside.

Lyrically I experience like this vocal is the blood brother of "Mess of Me." Yearning for a life beyond what I have. Hoping for freedom. Still yearning to get there. "I had a dream that my chains were broken… broken open." I'm still running hard for this goal.

hello hurricane

I've been watching the skies

they've been turning claret cherry

non a doubt in my mind anymore

there'southward a storm upwards ahead

hello hurricane

you're not enough

hello hurricane

yous can't silence my love

I've got doors and windows

boarded up

all your dead end fury is

non enough

you can't silence my love

every thing I have I count as loss

everything I accept is stripped away

before I started building

I counted upward these costs

in that location'south nothing left for you to take away

hello hurricane

you can't silence my love

I'm a fighter fighting for control

I'thousand a fighter fighting for my soul

everything inside of me surrenders

y'all can't silence my love

hello hurricane

you tin't silence my honey

"Love does not alter the dearest, it alters itself." -Soren Kierkegaard

"The backer culture of consumption… does non provide meaningful sustenance for big numbers of people." -Cornel Westward
This is a bailiwick affair that I speak of with holy reverence. Having grown up on the East Declension I know immediate of the houses lost, of the dreams turned into nightmares. I take my shoes off and recognize that this is a matter that is honey to our nation, especially of late- with every passing hurricane season. Last yr, with Habitat for Humanity we helped to build a business firm for a woman who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina. The hurricane had taken her metropolis, her house, and her leg. As she relocated to Baton Rouge and learned how to walk as an amputee, her mantra was this: "I walked out of my house and my life in New Orleans on my own legs, I'one thousand going to walk into this one the same way." This is the spirit that I wanted to capture with this song, and moreover with this record. The storms of life might accept my house, my loved ones, or even my life- but they cannot silence my beloved.

Yes, the reactionary impulses of detest, fright, and despair really are defenseless against the storms of this life. And still, this selfless love actually might be stronger than death. Perhaps, the kingdom of the heavens really is at manus, set to give, ready to love. And with this love as my song I will overcome. In surrender to divine beloved I volition observe my strength. "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to dearest some other."

always

this is the kickoff

this is your eye

this is the day you were built-in

this is the sun

these are your lungs

this is the mean solar day yous were born

and I am always yours

these are the scars

deep in your heart

this is the place y'all were born

this is the hole

where most of your soul

comes ripping out

from the places you've been torn

and it is always yours

but I am always yours

hallelujah!

I'm caving in

hallelujah!

I'm in love again

hallelujah!

I'thousand a wretched man

hallelujah!

every breath is a second run a risk

and information technology is always yours

and I am always yours

Everything tin be taken from a man only … the last of the man freedoms – to choose 1'southward attitude in any given gear up of circumstances, to cull one'due south own way." -Viktor Frankl

"Everything alive must die. Every building built to the heaven volition fall. Don't endeavor to tell me my everlasting dear is a lie." -Jeff Tweedy
I am continually searching for pregnant in my life. Why am I hither? Why is at that place then much pain? This common cold, dark stream of sorrow runs through my life. Why does it run alongside of the warm cute waters of joy and beauty? Why exercise the two rivers collide and intertwine? The nighttime and the lite. The death and the life… Well-nigh of my songs become outlets for these questions. The music becomes place for the cognitive racket to chew away at something other than a broken middle or an ulcer. The music becomes a identify to sort through the dark and the light. I love crosswords, sodoku, solitaire- games with a simple victory that allows me the momentary thrill of setting the world right. Just song- writing feels similar a like discipline to me. A puzzle of messages and math, theory and rule, expression and passion.

The lyric of this song attempts to start at the womb and follow a man soul through life. So it begins: the heart beats, the eyes open up, breath floods the lungs for the first time- what incredible experiences! What extraordinary sensations! I wanted to write this from a father's perspective, from the eyes of the male parent of life. Ane look into the optics of his son and the father is smitten for life. The possession that the young baby has over the begetter is complete. Always yours. The second poesy speaks of the hurting. This pain is always with us. We are built-in into a world of hurting, the pain of losing a child, the pain of rejection, of racism, sexism, fears… these experiences rip us to pieces.

Everyone feels pain. I look to those who take been through more hurting than I will ever know for guidance on the subject. The Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Victor Frankl survived several Nazi concentration camps with his life and his hope intact. He lost more than I'll ever know… his wife, his parents, and his family did not survive. His understanding of pain is in direct opposition to our western world that is oftentimes establish running from hurting at all costs. Frankl's  "Case for a Tragic Optimism" speaks of turning suffering into human achievement and optimism in the confront of tragedy. The memories, the pain, the scars, these are yours. Yes, the things that you and I have lost. These are yours and they have significant. No, these could never be The Ultimate Pregnant in our lives, but let these scars drive us towards "turning suffering into human achievement and accomplishment."

The span in the song is the acknowledgment of my own shortcomings. Every bit a human being born into beauty and pain, at that place is a moment of surrender where I lay down my life. This is a costless volitional activeness, a gift, merely as the father'due south love was given to me- this became the response. A uncomplicated surrender to the Space Maker of The Finite acknowledging that I need his love. The meaning in my life is frequently found in surrender rather than mastery.

bullet soul

I want to sing 1 for all the dreamers

I'thousand singing this 1 for the sparks

Hither's one for the friction makers

We are the bleeding hearts

don't care whoever you are

we rising and fall together

our hearts still beat below

you tin can't stand by forever

y'all're a kid with a bullet soul

are you prepare to get?

I want to plow upwardly the radiation

I want to glow in the dark

beloved is the one true innovation

love is the only art

Don't permit 'em blow it apart

we are the children of the scar

I desire to get-go from the beginning

"Imagination decides everything." -Blaise Pascal

"Great things are not accomplished past those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion." -Jack Kerouac

Here'southward the second song that I worked on with Mike. We tracked a lot of it the day after we wrote "Your Love is a Vocal." I wanted to come across what information technology would be like to work on a rock tune with him because I hadn't heard much of his work in that expanse. His passion and knowledge about fuzz tones were an incredible surprise to me. He brought out a song called "Bugman" as a reference (a blur song off of xiii, a more obscure blur record that had some messier pinkerton overtones) and I knew we were on the right track. The demo I had washed was much more subdued and with eclectic instrumentation (more of a cheap dust brothers concept). But he brought out a few Deviever guitar pedals and the song took plough towards the rock side of things.

We are the children of the scar. Our lives flash then quickly before usa… This song was loosely based on a poem that I wrote a few years back. You lot only get i shot with your bullet soul, I desire to make all that I can out of my one shot. Life is non perfect or platonic. Life is full of messy, haemorrhage dreamers. That's where things begin- Broken hearts making a cleaved record. But that's non the end of the story…

yet

all attempts have failed

all my heads are tails

she's got teary eyes

I've got reasons why

I'm losing basis and gaining speed

I've lost myself or most of me

I'm headed for the final precipice

but you oasis't lost me yet

no you haven't lost me yet

I'll sing until my heart caves in

no, you lot haven't lost me yet

these mean solar day laissez passer me by

I dream with open up eyes

nightmares haunt my days

visions blur my nights

I'1000 so confused

what's truthful of simulated

what's fact or fiction after all

I feel like I'thou an apparition's pet

simply you haven't lost me yet

no, yous haven't lost me yet

I'll run until my centre caves in

no, y'all haven't lost me yet

if information technology doesn't break

if it doesn't intermission

if it doesn't suspension

if it doesn't pause your heart it isn't love

if information technology doesn't intermission your heart it'southward not enough

information technology's when you're breaking down

with your insides coming out

that'due south when yous observe out what your heart is made of

and you lot oasis't lost me yet

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your eye will certainly exist wrung and possibly be broken." -CS Lewis

I like old instruments, frequently better than newer versions. It'south hard to depict, feels like old guitars bring a life and a story to the conversation. When you write songs on an former guitar the guitar tends to speak upwards for itself from time to fourth dimension. "Yet" was written on an former National steel guitar that I bought at a pawnshop on tour. It was a finger-picking melody played with a slide and very unlike the version on the record. Tim and I both thought that the folk interpretation of the song didn't really rise to the potential of the melody or the lyric. We spent a day at my house trying to notice the right instrument to carry the song. We tracked the acoustic and electrical guitar that day. We stumbled on the bass intro later.  Nosotros were singing the terminal version of the vocal downwardly and I felt similar the end bit wasn't quite right. It needed a bit more to tell the story. So I wrote a new lyric to go over elevation of the chorus chord changes.

The song is most hope. Hope is ever reaching towards the future, reaching for what has not yet come up to pass. Once the hope is attained, it can no longer exist called hope. Promise isn't the sort of matter you can pull out of your pocket and show off. Hope is a "holding on" of sorts, an expectant conventionalities, a want every bit of withal unfulfilled. I wrote this song from a really dark place, looking for some form of hope. And perchance searching for hope is a form of promise in itself. In that location's a moment of honesty when your mask drops, when y'all can no longer pretend to have it all together. When this pretense is gone you lot exhale in your first real breath. When you are no longer pretending to be something you're non, you're left with a truly honest assessment of the state of affairs. Very little is left,  "Religion, hope, and love remain. Merely the greatest of these is dear."

sing it out

I'm on the run

I'm on the ropes this time

where is my song?

I've lost the song of my soul tonight

sing information technology out

sing it out

take what is left of me

and make it a tune

sing it out

sing out-loud

I can't the words to sing

you'd be my remedy

My song

My song

I'll sing with what'south left of me

where is the sun?

experience like a ghost this fourth dimension

where have you gone?

I need your jiff in my lungs this night

sing information technology out

I'm belongings on

I'm holding on to you

My world is wrong

my world is a lie that'due south come true

and I autumn in honey with the ones that run me through

when all forth all I need is you

sing it out

"Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the smashing puzzle." -Lewis Carroll

"And if you gaze for long into an completeness, the abyss gazes too into you." -Friedrich Nietzsche

at that place'southward a bluebird in my middle that

wants to get out

merely I'chiliad too clever

I only let him out

at nighttime sometimes

when everybody's asleep

-Bukowski
Sometimes I lose the plot. I feel like I'm hopelessly lost underwater, as though I can't effigy out which way is upwards. I know that there'south a song somewhere inside of me but I just can't recollect what it is. I want my life to be the poesy of the Poet himself, I want to sing- to be a melody intertwined with The Melody Himself. But sometimes I'm hopelessly lost, cleaved, spent. I fall in dear with the ones and things that take life and love abroad from me. I need The Song Himself to sing through me. I demand The Word Himself to speak into me.

Here's a song that we worked on maybe more than than whatever of the others. At that place are so many versions of this song. The demo leaned towards Massive Attack. The next version was even darker- tracked with Daryll. About of the elements that we tracked with Daryll made information technology to the final cut (except some incredibly moody drums that we did with him). We kept trying to find a pulse that would exist abiding but wouldn't experience like a chant. The next iteration of the vocal sounded much more than like Sade with a actually memorable bass line that Tim came up with. Simply still, we all felt similar the song was stronger without these superfluous elements. So we used the e'er constructive "mute push" on pretty much everything. The song is singing about itself- struggling for tune, for life, for meaning. Singing about rebirth, the song spends most of its time in the grave and comes to a brilliant glorious terminate, held out until the very end. To match the lyric we saved almost every musical instrument for the end of the vocal. In my opinion, the essence of the vocal was the only affair that survived on the record.

ruby-red optics

what are you waiting for,

the twenty-four hours is gone?

I said I'm waiting for dawn

what are you aiming for

out hither lone?

I said I'm aiming for home

holding on, holding on

with ruddy eyes

What are you looking for?

with carmine eyes

red eyes

all of my days are spent

within this skin

inside this cage that I'm in

nowhere feels safe to me

nowhere feels dwelling

fifty-fifty in crowds I'chiliad alone

holding on, property on

every now and then I meet y'all dreaming

every now and so I see y'all cry

every now and then I see you lot reaching,

reaching for the other side

what are you waiting for?

"Allow us not exist satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough… The hunger for dear is much more than hard to remove than the hunger for bread." -Mother Theresa

"Our churches have done little more than reproduce and radiate this brokenness of our culture… Many congregations do nothing only outsource justice." -John Perkins
So here we are at the finish of the earth. And the offset. Here we are at the dawn of the next generation. Y2K has passed u.s.a. past. MLK, Kennedy, Elvis, Lennon, Cobain, MJ… they accept all left the living. They have left us searching, wondering, hoping… I read the headlines, I scout the news. Iraq, Rwanda, Islamic republic of iran, Darfur, Tibet, Columbine, OKC… Towers falling, mothers, brothers, sisters, fathers… passing from life to death. We're killing i another, destroying each other. Sometimes the land of the earth tin bring a homo to his knees. It could brand you weep. I get angry. I get overwhelmed. I give up… nigh. Sometimes, I notice myself staring into a claret cerise dawn, all the same awake from the night before. Still wondering why this new day has and so much of the old darkness, the old sorrows, the old hatred. I feel so alone. I feel and then alone in this globe of pain.

All my heroes are the ones who ran later on the higher vision, the news that stays new. We've been chasing lesser gods, gods who do not know our names, gods who volition die alongside of us. The kingdom of the heavens does non come up to us in our wealth, it comes to our in our poverty. Our coin, our cognition, our medicine, our sex, our privilege- these are double-edged swords, dependent upon our ain shaking easily for guidance. With our 2 easily nosotros build up and destroy, we hold and break the time to come. My ain hands are shaking. I accomplish for the new 24-hour interval with fright and trembling. I'yard reaching for a bird chosen hope, for the i true song who could bring me abode. I'grand waiting for dawn. I'm dreaming, reaching for the other side.

At the finish of the record there is a reprise that goes back to the first vocal. For me this is a reminder of the repetitive nature of all that we telephone call life. Wonder, surrender, joy, forgiveness, hope- yes, give usa today the daily breadstuff of our moment by moment being. This life is and so fragile- at whatever example i of u.s. could skid beyond this life into the space unknown. Information technology'due south as though every jiff we take has been given to us on loan. We are surrounded by mysteries, miracles, wonders, and tragedies that we will never master. Yes, I volition die one day- of this I am certain. Simply I'm not dead yet! No, tonight there is breath in my lungs- pushing, pulsing, yearning to break gratuitous… I will dream, for dreams are the seeds of what may be. I will wonder, for without wonder, how could life be wonderful? And I will sing.

Yes, until my pending death I will sing. In the face of indifference, I will sing. In the face of adversity, I will sing. I will sing about the pain. I will sing almost the mystery. I will sing of the hope, the cage, the bullet, the wintertime, the dreamer. I volition sing of all of these. I've seen miracles in that location in your optics. It'due south no accident we're hither tonight. We are once in a lifetime.

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Source: https://hmmagazine.com/switchfoot-shares-song-by-song-discussion/

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