I saw that shirt you used to wear
(that we used to share)
and now,
I can't shake the smell of that notebook
we passed back and forth
or the smell of the grass
where we sat
and waited
for the next in line.

Explosion

Yesterday morning, I was messing around with my pedal board and out of nowhere got an idea for a song. In a few hours, it was finished. After listening to it on repeat several times (it's play count at iTunes since yesterday is 18), I opened up a few more GarageBand projects, and ideas just started pouring out. This isn't too unusual, except for the last year or so of my life. My musical experience moved beyond the ambient, indie, folky stuff I had listened to for years, and an explosion happened. I discovered Krautrock. I discovered shoegaze. I discovered psychedelic, free jazz, noise rock, noise pop, post-rock, avant-pop, post-punk, dub reggae, etc., etc. My palette of influences jumped from a major influence list of about five (Radiohead, Bob Dylan, Bon Iver, Wilco, Fleet Foxes) to about thirty (Radiohead, Bob Dylan, Bon Iver, Wilco, Fleet Foxes, Deerhunter, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Grizzly Bear, Charles Mingus, the Flaming Lips, Dirty Projectors, early Pink Floyd, Neutral Milk Hotel, Explosions in the Sky, Can, Scientist, Animal Collective, etc., etc.). And on top of that, I had started expanding my effects pedals, expanding my sonic palette as well. Ideas just leaked out of me. So much was coming out of me, and it was so different, that I felt completely lost. In twelve months, I wrote maybe four songs I was happy with, and I had a thousand other pieces of ideas that would never fit together.
And now, I think the clouds are starting to clear. In the past three weeks, I've had several ideas come together that I am really happy with. Time will tell if the ideas will flesh out like yesterday's song did, but if they don't something else will. That's one of the things I love about music. It always changes. There are songs I wrote four years ago that I'm putting to record now, and they're almost unrecognizable, and I like that.

Wintertime

You know what I hate the most about snow? People complaining about the snow. Snow itself I'm pretty keen on. I don't even mind the poor driving conditions that much. Sure, I may be constantly paranoid of being hit by all the cars, but I can deal with it.
This weekend was essentially a string of four snow days. Friday night, Michelle and I took a late night excursion into the blustery outside, jumping off of swing sets into the thick snow, surfing down icy slides, making snow angels (her, not me), scaling giant parking lot plow mountains, and going to Kroger in the middle of the night to warm up/buy ice cream and mozzarella sticks. Saturday was the same, but more. The city declared it a snow emergency, and we walked down to Big Lots to buy a shovel, taking our time as we did. We stopped on a bunch under an awning and watched the snow come down in droves being chased by snow plow after snow plow, then we went home and watched How I Met Your Mother (in my opinion, the most well-written sitcom on television) and had soup. Sunday was Sunday, and it was good. Then yesterday, South Bend Schools had its second snow day of the year, so Michelle got to stay home, and we had another nice, cozy snow day. Sometimes, when people are cooped up like this for such a long time, they get annoyed with whoever it is their cooped up with. For me, it makes me realize all over again just how killer awesome my wife is.
I'm very much looking forward to the rest of my life.

Tumblr

I started a Tumblr for my "band." Check it.

Musicology/Spiritology

Since I haven't blogged in a while, I think it's worth mentioning that for the past eleven months, I have played on the Vineyard worship team just about every week, with a week off here or there (no joke--I think I've had a max of seven weekends off). The past three months, I have been serving as the worship intern, which as had me working in that realm throughout the week too. Sunday, I had my first non-acoustic show in a long time, and it went swimmingly.

It is things like this that really get me thinking sometimes about just how important music is in my life, and how many different things I thought that meant--like that I should move to Chicago to become a full time musician, for instance. Two years ago, I was absolutely sure that what God wanted for me to do with my talent was to invest in it full time as a profession. A year ago, I was completely sure that I had made a complete mistake. So I moved back, gratefully. A month later, I found myself playing for a worship band--somewhere I never thought I'd go back to--and, surprisingly, enjoying it. As much as I'd criticized worship songs for being shallowly written (both musically and lyrically), I had come to appreciate what I saw as shallowness as simplicity, and I came to appreciate the space offered by that simplicity as freedom. I learned how to praise God again, and I learned to do it from the stage. To tell the truth, playing an instrument is much more natural for me than sitting in a large group and singing along. A lot of times, notes and rhythm say more from me than words do. If you ever catch me praying in solitude, you'll hear me humming rather than whispering. It's a language I sometimes feel like I speak better than English--which has brought up problems of its own when I try to write songs.

There's so much music can say. And lately, my lyrics have been talking about robots and time machines while the music itself just talks about truth, and beauty, and trembling, and aching, and love, and thankfulness.

I hope everyone hears that louder than the words.

I am truly blessed with a wonderful life.

The American Workforce

And so, it came to pass that Nathaniel FitzGerald worked several morning shifts at Bashor Children's Home, waking up at five to make the thirty minute drive that would end at the start of my shift, at six a.m. After the eight hour shift, he then drives twenty of those minutes back to the Vineyard Church to fulfill his internship there, which takes up around two and a half hours a day. He returns home around five thirty to his wife, who he wishes he could see more of, and then tries to be in bed before ten, which never happens.

And, I am tired. So, so, so tired. And that doesn't really bode well when my overall health is significantly affected by my sleep. I called off today because said overall health is a bit less than optimal, and after spending the past two days with a sick resident, I didn't want to risk infecting anyone else. But I'm beginning to rethink my goal of four days a week. It's going to be too hard to keep myself healthy with my current schedule. And with this schedule, being married is the only thing that makes sure I see Michelle anymore. If we were still just dating, I'm pretty sure I'd see her two days a week tops.

She got a teaching job, by the way. So I don't really need to work four Bashor days a week anyway. Maybe I'll take that extra day and spend it on music, or at the Vineyard. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.