Reflection a year after writing the 4th track from our upcoming EP, the song is titled Tell The Good Lord.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the lyrics to Tell the Good Lord, pretty much since I wrote it. I remember it clearly, I was at one of my old jobs, hiding away in the private office they were daft enough to give me. The song came out all at once, straight from the brain into my notes app in the same 15 minutes it would take for my supervisor to come looking for me. I think it’s common to have a piece of work be presented to you all at once, call it a flow state or what have you, but when I finish a song I’ll usually have a good idea of what it’s about. I could sense themes of self acceptance, there were themes of religious trauma as well, but nothing stood out as being what this one meant to me. I had the thought of rewriting parts of all of it to fit a theme I could put my finger on, but I decided rather to investigate it as an abstraction of myself, a piece of the puzzle I was working on anyway. And this yielded a few results.
I do believe we should all be consuming art on our own, so that we can explore the things that give us visceral, singular reactions. But I think there’s also some value in reporting your findings to those who might want to listen. When I wrote this song, I was in a weird place. I often think back to my religious upbringing to see where I may be biased. I was raised in the Mormon church, and it has affected the way I view organized religion in a pretty lame way. Lately, I’ve been feeling stuck. My depression and anxiety have worsened much over the past few years, and much of my time is spent trying to just survive my own mind, as people I studied with in high school graduate university and move into the corporate landscape. I have been pondering Islam and Buddhism much these days, considering if a new moral code might help me get onto a “straight and narrow” of sorts, but this opens more questions internally. Do I believe in a moral right and wrong? Do I think I would be satisfied to find a new, old book to tell me what to do? Patience has always come very easy to me, discipline, not so much. Will I loathe the way I pail in comparison to monks and religious leaders? Too much to consider, too scary.
I thought for a while it could be about my regularly scheduled interactions with republicans. As we get ready for another round of “Tr*mp’s America” I find myself getting tense around right-wing people again, including most of my family. There’s a line in the second chorus “I’ll stop looking out for deer each time I’m driving to my folks; stop trying to avoid any fate of any kind.” This I believed for a time was in reference to the people I often come face to face with when I go to my parents house, avoiding fate by acting cis and straight in the wake of it being decided that trans people are the problem with our country (and not corporate greed and the 1%.) In this comparison, the deer are the republicans and crashing my van is getting hate crimed in my childhood home.
When I was in high school I was in a car crash that left me with a totaled Camry and a concussion that didn’t really get treated at all, and my memory has been different since that moment. Suddenly, I have a hard time keeping details straight. Suddenly, people have to tell me things more than once. I was still myself but I had no idea who I had been to that point. I was homeschooled for a time, so I was already leagues behind my peers when it came to social cues and knowing how to behave in an everyday setting. The amount of overthinking that comes from this was detrimental to my confidence and my sense of self. Unprocessed trauma and unresolved brain issues would become the icing on the cake. I stopped deeper into my depression and almost broke my sobriety, betraying the deepest part of myself.
I believe my more recent thoughts on this song have been kinder to myself. If I need help with something or to ask for something, I have a bad habit of prefacing my request with the justification of why I need or want something from someone else, why I can’t just be totally self-contained and dependent on myself alone.
This is an unhealthy mindset. We are social creatures and we make friends so we don’t have to isolate within our existence. The people I surround myself with, I care so deeply about, as if they were extensions of myself. I am always happy to help a friend, it is one of the most sincere ways you can show love to someone. Why did I have this knee-jerk response to deny that to the people I care most about? Poppycock. I’m thru with it. I’m here and I love my friends and I’m willing to let them love me back. This is my newfound self-acceptance at play. You can go and tell the white Jesus I grew up with that I’m good. I lived my life the best I could and I’ll keep making the choice to live by what I believe is right. You can go tell your white Jesus that I trust myself to be the same as I always was, regardless of how much I know about my old self. This song means I choose to believe in myself and the love I surround myself with.
It’s fun to dig into things you think and feel and try to dissect them against the timeline of your days. If you’re reading this, thanks for being here and sticking around. Joy Buzzer is a passion project and I hope you can see how much care is put into each part of everything we’re doing. We’re really just getting this party started.
☆ out
Me n my friends ヾ(＾∇＾)
Tell the good lord if I could get all my thoughts on a scale
I still would feel I’m heavier by far
And these new feelings and emotions are intriguing
But I’m not one to learn the meanings of my own scars
I’m no longer in the business of making myself hurt
And getting in my way all afternoon
When the evening comes I feel I’ve wasted all my time
Just another silly reason for me to think I'm doomed
And I stopped worshipping the moon when it’s full and pretty
Learn to love it when it’s half as clear and bright
With the hopes someday that you could do the same thing with me
Treat me like a soft and distant source of light
I could wonder what you’re thinkin
If I cared to be so observant
I could want to learn the way your arms collapse
I could break down with all of that
Would you think me surreptitious if I stopped to take a drag
And tell u all the people I believe I might’ve killed
Would you think of me so vicious how I let them break their bones
And promises broke quicker than the spell
And I stopped lookin out for deer each time I’m driving to my folks
Stop trying to avoid any fate of any kind
If the good lord wants to crash my van tell him he’s got my blessing
Tell him if he’s gonna do it do it right
Tell him send me off to heaven with a stallion
Tell him send a beater cab if it’s to hell
Tell him I could learn the difference tween a chariot and a Pontiac
But most of all, tell the good lord I lived this life s'well
Tell the good lord I tried my best to leave this life s'well
Tell the good lord when I see him I’ll be swell
☆Joy Buzzer 