Kindest Heart: I Knew You Once, I Loved You Once [Update 1]

This last year of college, I took a music in popular culture class. In that, I learned about this thing called "skiffle rock". "Skiffle rock" was this form of rock in the 1940's that was used to described acoustic music that most anyone could play. It was during the time where a lot of kids started to go out to stores and buy guitars and start bands, in particular in Britain--The Beatles grew out of a former skiffle rock band.

It's hard for me to write simple music. No matter how hard I try, it just comes out weird. But with this record, I am trying to write the most elementary folk songs possible--trying only to use the basic open chords. Between tracking Brian's drums with The Kaleidoscope, Brighter EP we'll be putting out in the fall, studying for finals, studying for my internship, another Sheep Sleep Still record, I have been writing for Kindest Heart: I Knew You Once, I Loved You Once. Yes, it is not under the "Sheep Sleep Still" name...mainly because I thought Kindest Heart was a more fitting title for this project, and skiffle/folk songs.

Currently I am writing between 3 songs, and will be writing plenty more this summer wherever I will be. I am excited to show you something different. I hope you are excited to hear it.

disintegration music

artwork by Crystal Wood

disintegration music

this is my first collection of music that i am releasing that i wrote all by myself.

disintegration music is a compilation of songs that i wrote about one circumstance. all of these tracks have been an extremely cathartic process. when writing these, i never had any intention about putting them into an LP form, let alone sharing them with anyone but who they're about. so please keep in mind that this is a collection of songs put together--it should be approached as you would a "demo, b-sides, rarities, home recordings" type record. i attempted to order the tracks so they would make sense when listening to disintegration music front to back, but please keep in mind these songs and poems were not written to be one cohesive thing. the relation and cohesion that they share with each other is the circumstance that they all discuss.

Again, I recorded all of this myself with just a $250 interface and my macbook pro. So when it doesn't sound leagues close to flawless, and when it sounds messy and unprofessional and what have you--I already told you. I have had no professional training. I have learned what little I know by simply watching and working with Justin Price and Landon Tewers. So please hold comments about that because I already acknowledged the fact. Thanks.

Please know that you might actually hate this. You might hate my voice--I can't sing. You might hate my rap--I can't rap. You might hate my scream--I can't scream. I am already aware of all these so out of courtesy to myself and the fact that I am already aware of these things, you don't not need to point these things I already know out.

In all honestly though, I just encourage you to take about an hour out of your day (if you're interested), pop in a set of headphones, and give disintegration music just one listen through. Because what this record, if nothing else, is genuine, heartbreakingly honest, and a record of a circumstance that almost destroyed me, but did completely changing the direction of my life.

Without further ado, here is disintegration music

Click the proper format below to download Sheep Sleep Still: Disintegration Music

iTUNES ------------ non-iTUNES

bandcamp

about the music:

tracks 1, 3-9, 11-13 were recorded via Apogee ONE interface--"in the studio" style

tracks 10, 2 were improvisational songs--i had a heavy heart, picked up my guitar, pressed record, and that's what came out--recorded entirely live (with Apogee ONE interface).

Read more about the making of disintegration music....

disintegration music (extended blog)

This project started off as 5 songs (3 melodic, 2 spoken word) I was going to give to this girl in November '10...I think because I thought we would probably still be together then and I wanted to take my time for the project.

We stopped seeing each other (technically) mid to early September, so I didn't feel it was right to finish those songs. However, I kept writing them because of how much hurt I was in after the breakup. Three songs from the original 5 song EP did make it on disintegration music though as the original demo recordings I did for them, which are the 2 spoken words on the album, along with "I Still Love You (Long Conversation)", which at that time had a different title. The funny thing about that song is I wrote it while things were going "good" between her and I, but I still felt like a burden on her because of how much I liked her and how much she would some times like me and then reject me, often within the same day.

I wanted this record to be real, and feel real. I recorded this using the latest Logic Express program, that has some absolutely amazing tools on it--in particular to fix a crappy and off pitch voice. Which, more often than not, mine tends to be if I don't practice a song for a good two months or so before actually recording it. The only song I did use pitch correction/auto-tune was "It's Like You Forget It All", not because my voice sounded partically bad on that, but because that was the bad I was going for. A Kanye West 808s and Heartbreaks vibe.

When I was recording vocals for the debut The Kaleidoscope, Brighter EP, I told our producer, Justin Price, that I had written a fantastic acoustic song that past Monday (it was Sunday) and if we could record it. Hesitant, he said yes. So I laid down the acoustic guitar, and then went to lay down vocals. But I couldn't do it. I sounded horrible. I was totally unable to learn my own song in a weeks time. Ricky though, who has been singing since elementary school, learned the song right there on the spot and I swear sang it pitch perfect and to this day I love the way he sang it and that song is still one of my favorite songs I have written.

I say all that as a personal testament to tell you that I know I don't have a good voice. It takes me a while to learn songs to sing them to a listenable quality. Some of the last songs on the record, "Paul Newman Pt1" and "Robert Redford Pt2" I had a week to learn and sing. Vocally, I loathe how they turned out, but I needed to say some things that the first ten songs of the record didn't say. Those last three songs are sort of like an addition. Originally, it was just going to be those first ten songs on the record. But then things not exponentially worse between her and I, I felt like I would be lying if I put this out and it ended on a happy/hopeful note.

It was a very tedious process for me when it came to writing lyrics about an actual event. Generally, what I do when I write a song, is I write the music first, and then write lyrics based around how the music moves. Sometimes the songs end up being about someone, but it is never a conscious effort to do. Like on the TKB ep that I sang and wrote on, none of those songs were actually written about people or situations I knew of. However, when I finished writing them, I realized that 2/4 were actually about people and circumstances I knew of. But for this, I had to make a conscious effort to write about a specific person, and a specific situation. These are extremely straight forward lyrics...at least for myself, and the person I wrote them about. To everyone else they still may seem poetic and sort of open to interpretation--which they most definitely still are, but to me they are much more frank than anything I've written previously.

Ending this project was almost a hurtful process. Sending her a link to the first blog, and a link to download the record, I am absolutely positive she is not even going to listen to it, let alone actually take the time to read the lyrics, or these blogs or even download it. And that really, really hurts...to know that, that is how much someone does not give a damn about you. You spending hours upon hours making a record based off of the situation that you were both in, but they won't even bother to listen to it. I think that's part of the reason I decided to release it to everyone else, so I didn't feel like I just spent so much time for absolutely no good reason because no one will ever actually listen to it all the way through.

I didn't write and record this record so that it would be someone's favorite album and they would love it enough to put it on repeat. My hope is that people can over look all the flaws on it, and listen to it just once as a story. As something real, as something that I am finally starting to conquer and work through.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read these blogs and downloading the record, and hopefully listening to it and experiencing it. Your support means the world to me. Honestly.

“We are here to learn to endure the beams of love"

William Blake once wrote, “We are here to learn to endure the beams of love”. Over this past year, I think I am finally beginning to understand what that means.

It is truly an act of cruelty when someone attacks a friend where they are most vulnerable. It is truly a shame when someone has been so unloved in their life that when someone genuinely loves them, the only thing they know how to do is cut them down and push them away.

Being loved is about as hard as it is to actually love someone. True love is not contained to your favorite Paul Newman or Robert Redford films—true love can’t be contained at all. True love is giving, no matter what. A girl I once loved told me “I don’t understand why you love me, I don’t deserve it”—and she was right—she didn’t deserve it. But that’s the reality and the beauty of agape love: none of us deserve it.

Being undeserving of love, but still being loved, is one of the most fragile yet overwhelmingly powerful feelings that exist in this world. It is something that has the potential to break down walls and to change peoples lives forever—if they let it.

“We are here to learn to endure the beams of love”

I heard someone speaking a few weeks ago, and they were saying that some times people won’t accept love. That no matter how much you or I care about someone, they will reject, push away, and destroy something that shines light into their life. And that is the risk of loving someone with agape love—that in their reality, they don’t want, or otherwise need love.

C.S. Lewis once said "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable".

Being vulnerable is the reality of love. Being vulnerable is how we learn to endure the beams of love, and then eventually, how we learn to love.

A thought crushed my mind one morning, and it was that some people will refuse to be loved. Some people will never learn how to endure the beams of love, and they will lock their heart up until it truly becomes “unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable”.

The people that just wanted to love them become the broken and the forsaken, left with nothing because we gave everything to show them what it means to be loved. We must learn to endure though, we must learn to forgive the fact that, as Lydia says in their song “Now the One You Once Loved Is Leaving” that, “It’s not your fault that no one taught you how…now the one you once loved is leaving”. We can’t hold all the blame to people who, for whatever reason, were never taught how to accept love, and how to return love.

We love from a distance, we love until we forget names and places and dates, we love until we can forgive them, we love realizing that sometimes people will reject it and cut us down for it, we are vulnerable even though we know some people will exploit and belittle us. We survive off of the love our friends--because we’re all in this together.

We love because Love first loved us.

True Love Will Find You in the End (unedited BG News article)

This is the unedited version of my editorial that ran in the BG News today, parts were changed to be put in the newspaper because of the rights that Daniel Johnston's song has. This is what you should've had in your hands today.

People who think holiday’s like Valentines Day and Sweetest Day make people realize how much they wish they were romantically loved don’t know what they’re talking about. People who think holiday’s like Valentines Day makes people feel alone also don’t know what they’re talking about.

The people that feel alone don’t feel alone only when major holidays occur. People who have been hurting the same heart since they were ten don’t need one day a year to remind them how much it hurts to be love someone who decides that you’re not worth their love--need it be a father, mother, brother, sister, former or current romantic partners.

If you feel alone, unloved, neglected, abused—whether it be today, once a year, twice a month, seemingly every day of your life, print and cut out this poem by Daniel Johnston (although I prefer Matthew Good’s cover version better, and then I just recorded my own version of it) and put it somewhere you will constantly see it. I’ve read a lot of poetry and lyrics, and few comfort me like Johnston’s hope of “True love will find you in the end”.

I truly believe that true love will find you and me in the end, if we are truly and earnestly seek it and know how to love ourselves. Lord knows what’s worth having and hurting over in this world if not Love.

“True love will find you in the end

You'll find out just who was your friend

Don't be sad, I know you will,

But don’t give up until

True love will find you in the end

This is a promise with a catch

Only if you're looking can it find you

Cause true love is searching too

But how can it recognize you

Unless you step out into the light

Don't be sad I know you will

But don’t give up until

True love finds you in the end.”

- Daniel Johnston

failure to take my own advice

the start of my junior year I ended a relationship because I knew the girl I was dating was not satisfied with who I was, no matter what I did for her or how good I treated her, because she would always tell me what I was MISSING and what her ex-boyfriends had that I didn't have. The end result of that relationship was so hurtful to me, I told myself that I would not kiss another girl until I knew that she was the person I was going to marry.

My heart and head both agreed that they I did not and could not afford to go through that sort of heartbreak again, and so I would not get involved with someone (again) unless I knew that they were the person I was going to marry. I knew that by doing this, I would avoid so much pain and suffering.

Needless to say, I didn't follow my own advice. I got involved with someone and fell for them too hard too fast and am in a situation that has produced more hurt and tears from me than all of the hurt and tears I've had combined in my life until this point.

Why didn't I take my own advice? As I walked into my apartment after another night of joy, and pain, and longing I thought of what I had told myself and I remembered that this is exactly what I told myself that. Did I not listen to my own advice because I naively thought this would somehow be different? That somehow she would come 'round and see that I was good enough for her and that dating with the intention of marriage is not an awful or a naive thing to do at 22 years old? Did I not take my own advice because I knew that I loved her and I wanted to be there for her and make her feel special and desired and valued, no matter what the cost for myself? Did I think the cost to myself wouldn't be that much? Will anything I ever said or did for her really have an impact in the end? Will this cycle actually end when she leaves or will it just be on pause?

Will she remember that everything I did for her was to show her how valuable she is? Or will she sell herself short--causing everything I did for absolute naught? Will she remember that the only reason I CAN love like this is because of how much I know God loves me? Or will she push that whole idea to the wayside because it's part of something she's not even interested in?

Why was the girl that appreciated me the most in my life the girl who I was the absolute worst boyfriend to? Why did she stick with me for almost 3 years? What made me good enough then, and yet now the past two relationships I've been in are with people who don't even think I'm good enough for them, and I'm in for easily under a year. Will there only be that one girl who thought I was good enough, even as a shitty boyfriend, to be with? Why do I feel like a fix for those two girls, right until something better comes along and then I am forgotten about and dropped like I was never there and like they never felt anything about me.

I am so sick of feeling like a fix. I want to feel valued and loved and appreciated to my core just like how I appreciate this thing that I'm in, even despite all the hurt it has and will cause me (that I hope to finished with one day). I want that to happen SOON. Because I fear so much of falling back in this disgusting routine when she gets back in 6 months. My heart simply can not afford or take more of this hurt. I fear that if I stay in this, I will forget that I SHOULD value myself and that someone DID find me valuable enough to stay with for almost 3 years, and THAT was even when I was an absolutely horrible boyfriend.

I have so many questions and not enough answers and too much unrest and not even calm and too much hurt and not enough love and too much giving and not enough getting. I once was full but I feel I have drained myself empty and every time I look at her I hear her say "I will never date you. I just have a feeling...I would just never date you". No matter what happens...the first girl I ever feel in love with on the spot, the first girl that I would've given anything for, will NEVER date me...no matter what I do. Just writing this paragraph brought my eyes to tears and writing that quote made them stream out.

I hope one day I will be able to look back and reread all of these blogs and think how stupid I sounded because I either

a) gave up on love entirely

or

b) am finally in a healthy and unbelievably blessed and loving relationship

And I will be able to forgive her for all of this hurt and forgive myself for letting all of this hurt happen to myself. I doubt this will be anytime soon, but my God I hope it is sooner rather than later. I can't take so much hurt much longer dear God. I simply can not.

when your world is not stable/love is not convenient

the first semester of my senior year is over, and i am on track to graduate for spring 2011 and watch my world shift yet again.

i am 22 years old, and have gone through what feels to be 22 years of public education/schooling. Always trying to study, pass the tests, do good in the class...that stuff takes up a LOT of your time.

Between shifting schools (elementary, middle, high school, college), my friends have shifted too. At times I've been to blindsided to notice. I have shifted. In college, where I live changed almost every single year. It was not a stable time, there is no real chance to grow roots I feel like, in college, because once you are done you are expected to leave and move onto something else, and then something else. And it seems the only chance I will have to have something "stable" in my life will be when I either a) get a real job or b) get married...or a combination of both.

I don't really like that feeling. Don't get me wrong, I love traveling and stuff, but I like knowing that I am coming back home. And to me, the past four years I haven't really been able to be "home". Even my parents house, which I suppose is still my house, isn't really "home" anymore, as it is where I go only on vacations and whatnots from school.

I miss the feeling I had from elementary to high school of really having a "home". I really and truly do, and I hope to find it again someday.

---------------------------

Last week i sat down the girl I'm in love with and I told her:

"Listen, I know that you never, ever, not in a million years ever planned for a boy to be in love with you like this when you are just a junior in college. I know that you never planned to have such complicated feelings towards me because of it. I know that you never planned to think about a family, or marriage, or maybe even a serious relationship until after grad school. But...here I am. [Name], love is not convenient. And I can honestly tell you I never, ever, imagined I would feel like this about anyone, especially someone who doesn't feel the same to me. But please don't pass up the opportunity for us to at least have a real relationship when you get back--simply because 'now is not the right time'. Sure, maybe you'll never love me, but I know that you've never even tried. And I know that my love for you is genuine and real and selfless and pure. I believe in us, and I have faith that this could be something absolutely amazing. And I KNOW that this love did not come at a convenient time, but I guess love is not the most convenient thing ever..."

I don't know if what I said got through to her on any level. I don't know if she will ever weigh the fact that she KNOWS with her whole right that I would never hurt her or leave her or forsake her and that I adore her on every single level possible, I don't know if she truly wondered if someone else will see her the same way I do.

I almost think that if she did, she would be on the same page as me--telling me that we should wait until she gets back to give this whole thing a fair go--even if she just really likes me right now and I love her.

This love, may very well be the only of its kind to ever step into her life, and I can say that in all honesty for many reasons. But if she denies what this could be because she is simply too scared of what she KNOWS it could be, and that the timing isn't the best, who am I to say otherwise?

I know that if she lets this go because of the inconvenience of the timing in her life, it will be the single greatest tragedy that has (and hopefully will ever) befall my life. Because I know that this could be a simply unbelievable relationship if she would just let go of the fact that this is not when she planned/wanted all of this to happen.

At this point, I honestly don't know the ending. I don't know what she'll choose. I just know that my heart is ready for that next step, and I love her, and I want that next step to be her.

But, I know that a month ago I almost moved on in my life, albeit, that was by simply forgetting that she exists. Again though, here we are. Falling right back into what she said she didn't want from the start. It's all so natural.

I just honestly know, in my heart, that she will end up regretting not giving this a chance because she didn't find this relationship to be convenient and on her time schedule as to where she wanted to be in life. I know that one day I'd be able to move on, and find someone who loves me and I will love them as much if not more than I love this girl right now. But I can't help but wonder if I too will always regret that she didn't give us a chance, and always wonder "what if" she did...