It was cold in my apartment, so I boiled some water for tea. In a few minutes, the steam from the kettle seemed to fill the room. The room had filled up with condensation so fast that it scared me. I looked around the room to see what was the cause. Suddenly, the steam and condensation had vanished, and there he was sitting at the kitchen table: a long, dark figure in a trench coat. With a face of blackness, he peered from underneath the wide brim of his black hat. I had no doubt it was the Devil.
"What are you doing here?" I asked
"You have questions for me." He replied, without visibly moving an inch. His voice paralyzed me with chills.
"Questions?" I asked, not able to say more.
"Yes."
I didn't know what else to say to him. I wasn't sure what questions the Devil was talking about. I had questions? For the Devil? Questions? "Cup of tea?" I asked.
"If you insist," said the Devil.
"Sugar?" I offered. "Milk?"
"Arsenic," Replied the Devil.
"Sorry?"
"Arsenic. I'd like to have Arsenic with my tea, please," said the Devil, showing just a hint of impatience. I started stumbling over my words. Did he want me to poison him? Was this some sort of trick?
"Um... fresh out of Arsenic... b-besides, isn't it poisonous?"
"Not to me. To my palette it's pleasantly sour and sweet. I have it with almost everything I eat," the Devil chuckled.
"Well," I said, laughing from my nerves, "I suppose you are the Devil."
"Indeed," he grumbled. "Black then." I poured his tea and passed it to him, sitting down with my own cup. He sipped the tea into his black void of a face and sighed with satisfaction. "Now, ask me what you've been wanting to ask me, so we can get this over with."
I still didn’t know what to ask. I just wanted him to leave, so I decided not to dance around the issue and cut right to the chase. The words just left my lips; "So why are you… such... a jerk anyway?" I asked him. I surprised myself with my bluntness. It wasn’t really the question I meant to ask.
"I'm not a jerk," he said, keeping surprisingly calm. "Being evil is my job. I have no choice."
"Well why don't you quit?" I asked him, even though I knew it was a probably a stupid question.
The Devil let out a chuckle and rolled his red eyes. "Because it's simply what I do," he said. "Pain and suffering is what I love.”
"So you love things?" I asked.
"For me, hate is my love," he exclaimed.
I swallowed hard. "That makes no sense to me. You know you're pretty m-messed up," I said.
"Thanks, he said with that evil smile again. "I'll take that as a compliment."
"Sure..." I responded, not knowing what else to say. I took a sip of my tea. My hands were shaking. I’m sure the Devil could tell that I was extremely nervous and I just couldn’t seem to find the words I ultimately wanted to ask him. I adjusted my chair and asked the next question that popped into my head, hoping that it was the right one; "Why do you always mess with people's minds?"
"Look, if I wasn't around," he sipped his tea, "everything would be beautiful and wonderful all the time, and eventually you'd begin to lose perspective between good and evil things." he explained. "Without evil, basically there would be no good either. Everything would be neutral and boring."
"I see," I said. "I suppose I can understand that.” Perhaps he was simply humoring me by justifying his actions in this manner but I felt it was a sufficient answer.
"Plus I simply just love to hate," he added with a sinister smirk. His glare made my heart sink to the bottom of my stomach. I felt like I was going to be sick.
"That's an oxymoron," I said.
"Not really. I'm the Devil!" he laughed. His laugh was freaky.
Just then, I was startled by the whistle on my kettle suddenly going off and steam filled the room just like before. Then the room cleared. My heart was pounding but he was gone. Thank God. Man, what a jerk, just showing up all uninvited like that. Ah well. At least the tea was good!
When life looks grim, do you cry, or do you just have to laugh? Sometimes all we can do is laugh in order to cope. After all, laughter IS the best medicine like they say. We can either be ignorant and not care about things, or we can do the opposite and worry until the cows come home. Either way, we play these games in our minds and try to find a balance.
Is ignorance really bliss? Would you rather be completely oblivious or deal with reality? I'd pick the latter. Overall, I believe it's easier to deal with things head on rather than run from them. Yeah, life's hard sometimes but we have to just suck it up and deal with it. I don't think we should take our lives for granted even when it throws you a curve ball and smacks you right in the face.
I reference the Beatles song, "A Day In The Life," in this one. It's quite possibly my favorite song by them. The Beatles have been a huge inspiration for me over the past 20 years.
I'm posting Song Descriptions for all the songs of Bare Bones to provide a bit more perspective. I'm starting with the oldest song and working my way up. Here's the first one:
Captain & Crew
This is the oldest song on the album. I wrote it back in 2003. When I began writing the lyrics for this it was all about imagery; military submarines, torpedoes, fear of battle, navy operations... But I also wrote it for other reasons. - Life is like a game of chess. It's like you send your pawns out to battle, sometimes moving them into the line of fire. You take risks. Sometimes you win and sometimes you fail. Sometimes you keep moving that Knight 2 spaces over and 3 spaces down, then back again... then in the other direction... and then something catches you off guard and your opponent takes out your Rook. "I didn't see it! It's not my fault!" you say, but really, it is. The key is, we must stay accountable for all our actions and admit when we've made a mistake. Chess is a really hard game but then again, so is life. There are a lot of pieces you have to think about all at once. We are all the "Captain" or the "King" at one time or another and it is in these situations, where we should be the most self aware.
Do you know what it's like when you've got a problem and you're at the point when you're damned if you do and damned if you don't? That's when the opponent's Bishop is lined up on a perfect diagonal to take out your King, and if you move it out of harm's way, the wrath of the Queen will fall upon you. If only you had thought it out better in the first place. It's way too late. Now It's checkmate, but you'll do better next time. At least you'll try harder anyway.
In my last band, we used to play this song quite a bit and every time we did, the song got longer. We called it our "epic." I think it was about 10 minutes long by the end. For this recording, I trimmed it back down a lot, however it's still almost 6 minutes. That little instrumental bit at the end is the torpedo coming, and then blowing the submarine to smithereens!
