but I think I'll blog instead. Who says white boys can't rap? I'm gonna blog before my nightly nap. I haven't really blogged much lately but that doesn't mean I haven't been doing lots of thinking.
For the past 2 weeks or so, I've been really digging a band called O'Brother. They came out with an album called Garden Window a couple weeks ago and on the Tuesday it came out, I was on campus writing a paper and I decided to give it a listen. Needless to say, it's a MAJOR grower of an album and it's coming very near to Brand New "The Devil & God..." and As Cities Burn "Come Now Sleep" territory. Both of those albums have had huge impacts on my growth, musically, spiritually, and intellectually. This one might be one of those.
Once I finish my Paradise Regained paper, I plan on listening to the album a few times with the lyrics in front of me and figuring out what's being said. It's not that the lyrics are hard to hear (I can hear 90% of them fine), it's just that it's hard to figure out what character is speaking at which point. I'm pretty sure it's an album all about the fall of man. I think there are lyrics from current man's character, from Adam's character, and from God's character. It's just the kind of lyrical album I will greatly enjoy working through.
All that to say, there have been two sets of lyrics that have stuck out to me the most. First is the lyrics that got me interested when I heard them play the song "Lay Down" a couple weeks back at the Thrice show. It's a brilliant song, both musically and lyrically. I think it's from the point of view of Adam but I'm not sure. Regardless, the chorus goes "So, Abba Father, are you sleeping, as we toil through your gardens keeping? So I'll lay down and begin to grow, right beneath your garden window."
Throughout the album, there's lots of lines about the idea of laying down and while I haven't been able to specifically nail the meaning beyond a shadow of doubt, I'm pretty sure it's about the death that every Christian has to make. One line in another song is "Lay me in the dirt and I will grow" and I think it's this sort of spiritual death that we all have to choose for ourselves in order to become alive in Christ. This idea of laying down in order to grow has been on my mind a lot lately because I feel like God's been challenging me through it to lay down my hopes, my desires, my preferences, and my sin in order to grow in love and holiness. I'm ever so slowly trying to see what laying down looks like in my relationships with people.
The other set of lyrics that's really stuck out to me a lot amidst the flood of awesome lyrics in the album is found in the song "Cleanse Me." It's got a lot of weighty, thought-provoking stuff in it but in the middle of the song, the singer sings "Well, I could wash my hands to pretend they're clean, or I could purge my lips of spineless speech, but the consequence of knowledge is an eager tongue." He sings this multiple times as the music builds and it's just amazing. Lyrically, the "knowledge" talked about seems, at least to me, to be the knowledge of good and evil that Adam and Eve received upon their disobedient choice to the eat of the fruit of the tree. I think the singer is lamenting that because we are given the choice between good and evil, we'll often choose evil that will come down on our own heads.
I could probably blog all about this album and once I have more time and less things on my mind, I plan on going through the album with a fine tooth comb and maybe I'll even blog about it.
Until then, au revoir.
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