#4

“I need to get some perspective on these words before I write them down”
From the song, All We Are
On the album, Dreaming Out Loud

OneRepublic is a band with an interesting layered story. Who would have thought that MySpace could propel a band into charting #1 for weeks all across North America? Pretty impressive. Ryan Tedder’s been around the block in the music industry for a while so it’s good to see him come into his own. I was impressed with their singles before their album released so i was eagerly anticipating their November 20th release date. Boldly, OneRepublic promised on their MySpace blog:

“We can GUARANTEE you this album is not a “you’ll only like a few songs” kinda album. We’ve spent the last 3 years working on this thing to ensure tracks 1-12 are the single “best” songs we could squeeze onto a CD, and we are on a mission to make “albums” worth buying again….not just singles. ”

I can appreciate that. Well, first listen through, i wasn’t completely confident in their claim. Though, I am now. I think it took me a few listen throughs for various reasons. One is that if i arranged the track listing of the CD, i wouldn’t put the song “Say (All I Need)” as the first track. The first half of the song is pretty mellow and slow. Usually first tracks (especially on debut albums) have a strong hook to keep listeners interested. But the song has an incredible instrumental rise if you stick with it. Interestingly enough, “Say (All I Need)” is now one of my preferred songs on the album. See, just gotta give it a chance!

But anyway, the lyric up there is from my favorite track, “All We Are.” Here’s some FYI about me. For every thank-you card, birthday card, encouragement card, note, letter, etc that I write to others, I have a journal where I’ve kept a copy of what i’ve written to you for myself. So if you have.. say a birthday card from me, then that means i have a record of what i wrote you exactly. I’ve done this for many years now and it’s helped me in various ways.

I always want to mean what i say. Unfortunately, a lot of times i speak too soon with my tongue. But I tend to have more control over my written communication to others because of this idea of tracking what i write to others. I don’t want to write something to someone for the sake of doing so. So as I keep a record of what i’ve written to people, it’s a reminder to only write things i genuinely mean (that will hopefully endure time). Not to say relationships or situations won’t change etc, but i don’t want to look back to a birthday card from 2003 and think, “Shoot, did i really mean that?” And it also keeps me from being repetitive. Amongst other things.

I don’t like reading things that i feel are disingenuous. So i’ve learned to be more careful and selective in what i write. For example, i think a common and maybe even natural sign-off for most people is to write, “Love, place name here.” In cards, letters, emails, etc. But i never use “Love, Steph” unless i actually mean it. Now, what that “love-comma” entails is for another time, it may mean different things/degrees to different people. But this is just one example to throw out there. Some perspective on these words before i write them down.