gifts from enola

went a whole 'nother tour without a single blog. so what, want to fight about it? I'm pretty sure this is just one more way for me to talk to myself anyways. so lets recap.

tour was good, mostly. except for the torturous amount of gear failure during our time with our brothers in irepress. perseverance. a continued education in what it means to perform. crash course in diesel/vegetable oil mechanics. lots of sweat and truck stops. there were dozens of dying beautiful moths and butterflies at one gas station in the middle of the night. there was a roadrunner that confronted cj and I in the desert. there were chickens thrown in portland. much of it feels unreal, but my beard, bank statements, and back pains remind me of the truth: I lived on a schoolbus for 9 weeks with five dudes. weird, right?

now were back at home, if you can call it that. we returned to harrisonburg, had a few harrisonburg (read: drunk) nights and then some returned to school and the others to the "real world." for the first time in this bands history we are scattered across the state. its different. more importantly, we are writing music and do not plan on taking such a long time to release some of it this time. we are making plans. we are thinking about music differently. we will be playing shows this fall and winter. we will play new things. that being said, after four-ish (? jesus) years of constantly writing, recording, booking, touring, or some combination of the above, this feels like a standstill. one of my best friends told me the other day that she was able to remember what the word "ennui" meant while studying for her GREs by thinking about my life outlook right now. bummer.

you know, when we started doing this people used to come up to us in bars and ask us "man how come yall guys dont have a singer?" and now people on message boards talk about how dissapointing it is that we "went vocal," about how it ruins it for them. the more we hear what we do being called "post-rock," the more determined we are to be anything but. in such a short period of time we have watched what we knew would happen, what happens to every "new" musical subgenre. I'm afraid that one of these days "post-rock" is going to be something like metalcore is right now.

played out, overpopulated, soulless, all out of ideas, all out of ideals. rotting.

its already happening, the wound has been inflicted. theres no stopping it, of course, it has to happen. forests have to burn in order for new ones to grow. in order for us to breathe. on a sinking ship, captains die. rats thrive. david bazans new record is very good, and I think hed be picking up what Im putting down here:

You used to feel like a smoker, shivering in the cold
Waiting outside the bar 'til the opener's over
But now you feel like a drinker, 20 days off the sauce
Down at the liquor store, trying to call your sponsor

You used to feel like the forrest fire burning
But now you feel like a child, throwing tantrums for your turn

You used to sound like a prophet, and everyone wanted to know
How you could tell the truth without losing that soft glow
But now you feel like a salesman, closing another deal
Or some drunk ship captain, raging after the white whale

You used to feel like the forrest fire burning
But now you feel like a child, throwing tantrums and then some
You used to feel like the prodigal returning
But now, now you hate what you made, and you want to watch it burn

that songs called "lost my shape."

this used to be a wide open field, a way of shedding the most basic restriction there was in the american idol frontman fetish culture. funny how things change.

rats took out something like a hundred million civilized human beings back in the day. back when that was over a quarter of the planet.

there are temples elsewhere in the world where rats are fed by holy men, and food that they've touched is considered to be blessed. perspective is a crazy thing.

-nate