stolen!

This is my friend Bryan's blog. It's too good not to share.

I've been doing a blog entry for the past couple of weeks telling the story behind each track on my album, Imperfect Man. This week is 'Empty Handed.'

I've been procrastinating in writing this blog about "Empty Handed." I think I'm afraid of giving too much of myself away. Tipping my hand, so to speak. But then I figured, if the song itself hasn't done that already, then it hasn't done its job.

This song was actually written while I was already in the middle of recording the album. I wrote it in about 2 hours, with very few alterations from the first go-round. Sonically, it was meant to be a nod to John Lennon and Billy Joel, but it sort of became its own thing once we recorded it. The day I wrote it, I was actually going into the studio to record a sort of oddly bluesy song called "Meg," a popular staple of our live shows. After hour upon dreadful hour with the producer, trying and failing to come up with an arrangement that even remotely worked, we decided in our frustration to submit and call it a night. Just when we were wrapping up, as a last ditch effort to salvage at least some small fraction of the day (and some of my dignity), I said, "Hey, I wrote this earlier today, tell me what you think." I then played him "Empty Handed." He stood there in the doorway for a few moments, silent, then said, "That's the song that's going on the album...you wanna try it on the Wurlitzer?" The rest is history.

This song is about my gross ineptitude at relationships. Plain and simple. I know everyone thinks the same thing about their relationship proficiency. I just kinda sold everybody out with this song. We all go out to bars, events, whatever...we all put on our best clothes, our best tans, our best faces, our best game...we all turn the confidence and charm up to 11, and we hit the town. But at our core? We're all insecure, proud, scared people with our arms outstretched in front of us to avoid intimacy by a safe radius. And EVERYONE is full of shit. Everyone thinks they know what they want, and they tell everyone what they want, yet time and again, they turn that very thing down and go for the exact polar opposite, and wonder, "Why does this shit keep happening to me?"

Every girl says they want a nice guy, then they go for the vacuous douchebag because they wanna repair him, all while getting their fix of drama and danger and disrespect in the process. Every guy claims to want an intelligent girl with a warm heart who challenges him; but inevitably and instinctively, they go for the hottest girl in the room, or at least the one showing the most skin, who laughs at everything he says, even if it's just a quote from Tommy Boy screamed loud enough to be heard over the thumping deep house music and raucous cheering coming from the direction of the keg. And why do we do this? Because we both want control. And being in love? You can't control that. No one can. It's blissful and terrifying and soul-crushing and intoxicating, and we are powerless against it. So, like a sunken treasure, everyone wants it, but no one wants to take responsibility for finding and acquiring it. So when it tries to find us, we avoid it like a cancer, then, with blinders on, we childishly blame others for its poor attendance. And then we sit alone and listen to sad music and wonder why, oh why, is love dodging us? Well, you dodge something long enough, eventually it gets the hint.

There are 2 classic stereotypes: guys are assholes, girls are crazy. Both of these things are true. All we can do individually is try our best to break the cycle. I can only speak for myself here, but I'm willing to bet a very large number of people can relate to what I'm about to say. I know myself very, very well. I know myself well enough to know I'll never fully know myself and that I will always have more to learn, accomplish, and fail. I also know that behind all the confidence, I have trust issues, insecurities, and myriad other "so-whats" and excuses that build a protective skin around me any time an emotional attachment begins to fuse me with a member of the finer sex. Then, this other person will sense the challenge, smell the blood in the water, and will do ANYTHING to crack that challenging and bewildering male exterior, but will only stay as long as it remains both challenging and bewildering. The instant the mystique is gone, the second a crack forms in the testosterone-infused armor of our wannabe warrior hearts, that is the same second we become unattractive. Damage is sexy. Being put together is SO, like, lame. So, I keep quiet, to maintain some sense of mystery. I stay partially in shadow. And why, because mystery is sexy? Maybe. Or maybe it's because I'm afraid of being abandoned if I let myself share anything real.

Let me clear up some questions about the chorus. "Tell me a lie, and I won't break your heart." Bluntly, what that lyric means is, go ahead and tell me any lie you want, and my lie in response to that is that I won't break your heart...cuz Lord knows I will. "I will give more than you take." This was also not an accident. I always tend to be the giver in relationships, and rarely take anything in return. Is that because very little is offered in return because I dated a lot of dependent people with no regard for anyone outside of themselves? Perhaps in some cases. Or is it because I give so much in order to set the bar so high that I know no one can match it? That way, I'm safely in control and can guilt someone into believing they were insufficient, when in reality I was pushing them towards the unattainable the whole damn time. Then, no matter how much good I think I had done, you'll still leave feeling like you're left with nothing. And chances are, I planned it that way, consciously or otherwise, sabotaging a good love to avoid the painful risk of it souring over time.

The second verse was based off a conversation I had over some beers with a girl I was with for about 3 years, still standing as my record for my longest relationship. We both took turns running from each other, coming back, so on, sporadically and maniacally contemplating how ready we were to let go of our fears, and settle down into the cul-de-sac with a white picket fence and a practical car. We went on like this for some time until finally, in that moment, I decided that the organized march of practicality was far, far less appealing than the drunken stagger of instability. I hung around for a while, sure, but I always had one invisible eye open, looking for a way out. Eventually, I had a falling out with one of my bandmates, which gave me the perfect excuse to rip my life up from the roots and start over fresh. Goodbye girlfriend. Hello safe but unfulfilling single life, my old compatriot. I then jumped pretty quickly onto the lilypad of my next relationship, which, if you ask those who are close to me, was universally seen as doomed from Jump Street. Maybe that's why I did it. Because it had an expiration date, and I had already weaved my sad little safety net. Did we love each other? Sure. But sometimes love isn't enough. Love creates some very elaborate illusions sometimes, and we are an audience of wide-eyed children, so astounded by its magic that we are blinded to its inherent mischief.

By verse 3, I was fed up with the standard fare. The relationship etiquette, the rulebook, the obligatory apologies, the pathetically wide and simple buckshot of "it's not you, it's me," the copouts, the second, third and fourth chances...if fate says we're designed for each other, then we'll end up together. Cliche? Oh yes. True? Probably not. I don't necessarily believe in the concept of "The One." I believe there are any number of people we COULD be with over the course of our time here. I think we ultimately make the CHOICE to be with one person, because we know we ain't doin any better than that. Some people are settling. Others know they have simply found their perfect partner. Now listen, everyone has had a bad relationship...or a good relationship with a bad breakup. Everyone carries with them the scars of those past battles, and the flashbacks from those battles pop up at the most inopportune times with your new mate. But what I've learned? No one cares about your bullshit. You sad stories, heartbreak, and trust/abandonment issues are not unique. They are all variations on the same hackneyed, self-important theme that makes us human and therefore fallible. We've all been hurt. We've all hurt other people. No one is gonna fix you. And if they say they will, and that's why they're with you, then they're with you for the wrong reasons, and a fiery relationship wreck awaits you just around the bend. Our hope is that we can simply take away from each of those past hurts a lesson...a moral that allows us to enter the next phase of our lives wiser, more adult, more serene, and less inclined to repeat our old offenses...or have the same offenses perpetrated on us.

Yes, we have all had our hurts. Those are the aforementioned "So-Whats." You can either choose to be a victim, and join the much safer Misery Loves Company faction; or you can grow the hell up, throw caution to the wind and try and try again. This song is about my failure to make those choices. My straddling of the commitment fence, avoiding serious coronary injury by simply not moving from that spot until I had an advantage. It was pathetic, childish, and prideful. But I'll be damned if I am going to define myself by that terrible trifecta. My life is not a series of failures. My life is a series of great successes punctuated by failures. Each period, another mistake, another set of consequences; each capital letter following that period, the start of a new, more educated sentence. In my past relationships, I fancied myself as a giver. And maybe I was. But by distracting myself by giving everything, I was able to ignore the fact that I wasn't sharing anything. But this, my friends, is changing. Frankly? It's exhausting to always be suspicious...to always ask questions and smother your life in thick layers of "what-ifs." It is unrewarding and ignorant to never trust, even if your trust was once breached by someone dear to it. Will I screw up again? Very possibly. The odds are certainly good. But I always root for the underdog, which in this case, is me.