Listen to the song HERE

Snow Patrol are an alternative rock band from Northern Ireland. They've been active since around 1994, but have been going as Snow Patrol since about 1997. Currently comprised of Gary Lightbody, Jonny Quinn, Tom Simpson, Nathan Connolly,and Paul Wilson, these guys hit their mainstream stride in 2003 with Final Straw, and then really exploded in the US with the release of Eyes Open in 2006. I'm sure you've heard at least a few songs from that album -- like 'Chasing Cars' or 'You're All I Have' and (one of my personal favorites; featured in the movie The Invisible) 'Open Your Eyes.'

Elena made her way through the halls of the dusty Alexander Ramsey House Museum, panic setting in. How – why – where? When – Gone – If ? The questions whirled around her like a typhoon, words catching her every step, every breath, every movement of her eyes.

Would they really? Maybe. Will I never? Is there? Can I? But one word stood out more clearly to her than the rest, as if in bold, as if shouting – one word to capture her feelings.

Lost.

Lost in a lethargic, ancient house with creaking floorboards and imposing stairs and… and oh. She collapsed into a dark green chair, plush and vintage, not caring if the sign read ‘Do Not Touch’ – if there was one, even. She didn’t care. She was lost, unable to find the entrance, the exit, her friends. Elena knew it was childish, but the one she wanted right now was her mother. Who wouldn’t? It was cold, so cold. Her blond hair had fallen out from its loose bun, the clip lying forgotten in some bypassed room.

So what. There wasn’t anybody else in the Museum today – not even the clerk, who had gone out for lunch. Elena had nearly given up hope of finding her way out of the house when she heard voices –no, one voice. Was it calling her name?

She sat upright, listening for the hushed voice again. But it didn’t come. Out of control! Her mind yelled. Don’t just sit here, go! Elena never gives up! She took a deep breath, rising regally from her ‘throne.’

Good, her voice urged her – was it even her own? But who else did she have to cling to, confused and afraid? Now just walk, and keep walking. Everything comes to an end. It’s just a house.

The voice kept on talking – she kept on walking. Step, step, step, look into room, step, step step. Step, step, ste- stop. A crossroads? In a house? And the voice in her head was silent. Her thoughts became fuzzy again, and Elena threatened to faint. She was panicking, breathing hard, spinning around, looking at all her options but not analyzing. No air- no way out – trapped forever – Help!

No help came, of course, except for a distant rumbling sound. Her ears seemed to perk up. Maybe it was a man laughing, though she couldn’t fathom why he would be laughing, or a footstep, though she didn’t know why it would be so … heavy. It boomed again. Thunder! And then, she heard her name.

“Elena!” A man’s voice cried, youthful yet sad. “Elena, this way!” Elena didn’t think at all, though some part of her mind knew she had never heard such an enchanting voice in her life. But she knew him. At least, she thought she did.

Lifting her skirt – had she been wearing a dress, so tight fitting, so old-fashioned it was as if it was from at least a hundred years ago? No, she most definitely hadn’t. So why was she wearing it now, drifting along as if she had worn it her whole life? Part of her said she had. Part of her said she hadn’t.

At the same time, part of her knew she was lost. The other told her this was her house, she knew every inch of it. When had that side of her come? Or was it the half of her that insisted, no, she was lost, she was a normal girl visiting her cousins, and she had gotten lost in this house – was that the new side? Everything blurred together, the lines between hallucination, imagination, and reality. Reality turned everything into confusion. Imagination made her think she was from two times. And hallucination? Everything.

“Elena!” came the cry again. Thunder rolled again, louder this time.

She found a name tearing out of her lips, a name she had never spoken before. “Alexander!”

A door! Right there! She was free! Elena streamed out the door, narrowly avoiding tripping over the doorway. But outside was not the blue-sky day she had entered. No. Outside, the sky was a dark, suppressive grey, a shade of desolation and hopelessness. The air around her crackled with energy – storm energy. A dry storm – and the heat was oppressive in the heavy beige dress.

She saw a man – handsome? Or was the word noble? – out there. He must’ve been the one shouting for her. Alexander. Alexander Ramsey Jr., son of the Alexander Ramsey who owned the large historical house. Alexander, her Alexander. Waiting for her on the pavilion. Elena started running to him – but stopped.

What in the world was a pavilion? How did she know who that man was? Why was he hers?

Again her mind was wracked with confusion, the two memories, the two parts of her battling it out for her true self. Elena felt like she was whirling around. Her hair felt like it was floating – as if she was swimming through the air. It was thick, so thick, pressing down on her, crushing her. Why had she ever wanted to come outside?

And then, suddenly, Alexander was in front of her with a worried yet loving expression on his face. Gentle hands touched her face, checking for a fever. He said something, but she couldn’t hear him over the ringing in her ears. Lightning flashed, so bright and sudden she flinched. And the guy, Alexander, thought she was flinching away from him. Did he say “Don’t leave me” or “I love you” or perhaps “I’ve been looking for you?” She didn’t know, she didn’t know!

Elena’s mind was so, so foggy. Was he a stranger or a close friend? He said something again, something unintelligible. Lightning, bright streaks across the sky, surrounded them in their flashes. It wasn’t nearly as dark, but the air was still so heavy and orange. Her mind was a chaotic mess. Even she couldn’t follow her own train of thought.

Lost.


Chaos! A hand grabbed her wrist, but Elena’s mind was no longer functioning enough to realize that it was he, standing in front of her. She did something she hadn’t even done while lost within the house – she screamed.

And what a piercing sound it was. It nearly shattered the windows. The blonde woman, her hair the colour of the lightning around her, released all the pent-up confusion and hectic thoughts that danced in her brain. She wished they would all just fly out of her – she could be empty, calm, serene. Blissfully unaware of this turmoil.

Elena closed her eyes and collapsed to the ground.


The next moment, she found herself writhing on the floor, crying out “Alexander! Alexander! Don’t go! Make it stop! I won’t forget!” And the words faded out to senseless yelling. Hands held her down, yelling right back at her. Alexander only had two hands – and they didn’t feel at all afraid like these did.

“Elena, calm down. It’ll be alright!” Hearing that made her stop thrashing. It sounded like her friend Nadya. Hesitantly, she opened her eyes.

Surrounded… by her friends? On the floor? That familiar feeling, confusion, returned, and she sat up. “How did I get here?”

The clerk-woman shook her head. “It’s been long rumoured her dress was possessed or something. Apparently it’s true.” Elena looked about, and saw, to her surprise, the dress she had been wearing.

“Whose dress?” She was afraid of the answer, but somehow, she knew it to be true.

“Elena, Alexander Ramsey Jr.’s fiancée. She died the night before the wedding – struck by lightning. He swore she turned into an angel before his eyes as she vanished – but then they found the body. No one knows her last name.”

The modern Elena would never forget – but never see him again. And oh, how bad she wanted to.

Analog Rebellion (PlayRadioPlay!) is a kid in his basement making music. Or, that's how he started anyways. Daniel Hunter writes, performs, and records all of his music and refers to his sound as 'Stadium Lo-Fi.' It's mostly electronic-based with a rich assortment of time signatures and styles. After gaining popularity on Myspace, Daniel signed on with a record lable (Island/Stolen Transmission) at seventeen, and released an EP titled The Frequency along with a full-length LP called Texas. In late 2009 he officially changed the name of his act from PlayRadioPlay! to Analog Rebellion, citing that -- ""I have come to the point where I no longer feel that the name PlayRadioPlay! represents the music I create."

Interestingly, this song isn't on either the album or the LP. Daniel was making music long before he was officially signed, and so there a handful of 'rare' PlayRadioPlay!/Analog Rebellion songs out there. This is one of them.

Link to the song is HERE, and while I can't attest to how accurate that lyric video is, the sound quality should get you through.

Hi. I’m Sophie. What, you knew that already? Of course you did. This letter wouldn’t make sense, otherwise.

I always told myself I’d make a buffer zone. I’d make sure I had a safety catch or an airbag; a shell or a parachute to catch me and stop me from falling all the way down to the metaphorical hellhole that is rock bottom. I always thought that I’d never let the rollercoaster of shitstorms that is falling for someone disrupt my logical thought processes, I’d never be so careless as to throw my heart out on a silver plate, ripe for someone to stick a knife into it. But love doesn’t work that way, does it?

It was a bit of a shock to wake up in bed next to you, you know? Not in the way that I never wake up in bed with people I didn’t expect to, but in the way that I actually knew who you were. Most of the time it’s just another pretty face that I got smashed with. I’ve never actually slept with someone I’d call a friend, before. More than a friend, even. Sad ain’t it? Well, it wasn’t until it happened. Things got complicated after that.

I don’t think it shows a lot of the time; when I’m just talking, laughing – drinking – but I’m not the happiest of people. In the time we’ve spent together, you’ve probably picked up on comments about my drinking, my house, my money... things that off hand sound like jokes. They aren’t, jokes. I’m told that I was a happy child, always smiling; I hardly ever cried as a baby. When I was born, and my mum was holding me and crying, I wasn’t. Most babies – almost all – cry when they first come out into the big wide world. I guess that I must’ve just had high hopes for it. Too bad it all went downhill from there.

You get to a point in life when you’ve wasted yourself away with alcohol from your teen years, fucked up your education and screwed yourself over for the rest of your life where you just don’t know what to do. What am I supposed to do? What can I do? Counselling, sure – but how do I afford that? I can’t make ends meet. Even without the money going out on alcohol, I can’t pay my bills! I’ve gone wrong at every point in life, made terrible decisions and fallen in with mostly the wrong people. I’m a veritable disaster. Every day just makes it harder and harder to keep going at all.

My other friends all tell me that I can turn things around. I could work on my problems, I could get a better job, go back into education. They’re right, painfully right, but I just... don’t see it. I don’t see a time when my problems have gone. Every time I try to work at them, I just get so dwarfed by the sheer enormity of the shit that I’m in that I lose hope and stop trying. I go and get drunk instead. The cycle continues, and all the ‘coulds’ and’ cans’ are worth less than the breath it takes to say them.

When we met, it was obvious that you had problems too. You were quiet, meek, lost. Everything seemed to surprise you, even the little kindness that I offered to buy you a drink. You had the deep purple bags under your eyes that screamed of insomnia and sleepless nights. Over the months that I’ve known you, I’ve found myself for the first time to be the stronger of two friends. I’ve offered you words of kindness that sounded hollow in my own chest but seemed to warm you like a dozen fires. I get the feeling that nobody’s ever showed you kindness before.

Watching you, talking to you, getting to know you and [i]experiencing the magnitude of your misery first hand, like watching a tiny animal convulse in its death throes... it made me realise how selfish my own depression is. You can’t see the person that you really are – you see someone who is so much less than what you could be, the broken self esteem forced on you by years and years of neglect and abuse. You can’t decipher the difference between what people say you are, what you are in their eyes, and what the reality is about you.

It was realising that that really pushed the idea into my head that the same applies to me, but in reverse. I pulled myself into this mess, this disaster of a life, rolling downhill at a million miles an hour, and because of what I’ve done to myself I can’t see me as anything but a failure. I loathe me as you might loathe the people in your life who ruined it for you, because I was the only person who ever ruined my life. All this time I’ve been unable to see past the loathing image I’ve created of myself, and find the me that can actually sort my stupid self out.

We’re two people who’ve touched each others’ lives in unfathomable ways. I can’t help but think we misinterpreted what we felt for each other. I love you – I don’t want you, I mean, we slept together but that’s nothing compared to what we’ve done to each other on the inside. We’re different people because of each other and I don’t know if any physical act can do it justice.

All I want is to hold you close to me – physically, emotionally, literally and metaphorically, all at the same time.

That’s the truth. That’s why this is more than just a “Sorry, I slept with you but I’m not interested” note that I’d normally leave behind. See you soon.

x.

Disciple, a Knoxville-based rock band, has been around about as long as I've been alive. High school friends Kevin Young, Brad Noah, and Tim Barrett met in 1992 to start on their journey of carving out a niche in the music industry. In 1999 (after a few modest EPs) the gang released their second feature-length album, called This Might Sting a Little which cemented their place in the GMA scene. Since then, Disciple began branching away from their roots and have been gaining mainstream appeal. After a few line-up changes, Disciple stands here in 2010 with their eight studio album release in sight.

'Dear Ex' is the lead single off the album, which is released some time this fall.

Listen to the song HERE.

Stringer.
And she was.
Stringer.
And she couldn’t help it.
Stranger. Stronger. Stringer.

Of course, they weren’t the same. She wasn’t a stranger, she wasn’t stronger, but she was a Stringer. And it was so obvious by the way she held herself, as though she was too big for her body, and the way she spoke, like nobody could hear her.

Stringer was a nickname she’d been given in school, but nobody could have known she would end up being one. A real Stringer. On her twelfth birthday, they’d knocked on the door and they’d said it wouldn’t hurt. But it hurt. It felt like they’d cut a chunk out of her neck.

“Tell me, Anna, how do you feel?”

“Great!” But that hadn’t been her talking. That was them. She felt muffled, like somebody had stuffed a cloth over her mouth. Like she was breathing warm air. She didn’t have complete control over her motions or thoughts, either. And that wasn’t supposed to happen, they should’ve taken over flawlessly right away. Maybe it was mercy, because she was so young; or maybe something had gone wrong. Either way, she was this now. She was a Stringer.

You know that place in your head, where your forward thoughts are? The ones you’re really thinking? And then there’s that foggy, darker place in the back, where you can still have thoughts but they’re overlapped by the ones in the front? Anna had that end part of her head. She still had that, despite the seven years it had been since she was implanted. And they didn’t know about it, her People. They had no idea that she was a thinker. There weren’t many of those, she’d learned, and if they were found out somebody had to do the operation again. Implant them again.

“Hey, Anna.”
She looked up. “Yes?”
“Remember, in school, when we learned about the Stringers?”
They put a cold smile on her face. “Why, yes, I do.”
“I read about them in the paper, today.”
“Yeah?”
“There was a list…” her friend trailed off, looking solemnly at her.
Now, even her people couldn’t resist bugging their eyes out; and so, she did, as well.
“You were on it.”

In the little chunk of brain Anna could still use, she remembered. She remembered well when they’d explained in school that the doctors would put a pill-shaped chip the size of a flash drive in your neck and then you would be a Stringer. The People would be able to control you.

“Anna?”

She looked up from the table, her cinnamon bread still lying untouched on the plate. The smell wafted through her nostrils, and made that back part of her shudder. She wasn’t eating that food. Not on purpose. She hated cinnamon.

“Do you…do you want me to…unplug you?”

“Nooo!” she hissed at him, pushing her chair back on the slippery pastel-blue tiles of the coffee shop, and stood. But really, Anna did want him to unplug her. She didn’t know how he would do it, or why he would risk losing everything. It was illegal to unplug somebody. Nobody was allowed to take the thing in Anna’s neck out.

I’m always going to be a Stringer. They thought for her. And I like it. Anna didn’t like it. Being unplugged was exactly what she wanted. She wanted to be a person again. She wondered if she could trick them into letting her speak. If she could implant thoughts in her own mind. Being a prisoner all these years, a prisoner in her own body; that was brutal. She was done with that. Stringers were toys. Toys for their people to play with.

I’m not a toy.

She shoved the thought into her mind.

I’m a toy!

That was them.

“Yes.” She said aloud. And, finally, it was her talking. She’d taken them by surprise, and snuck through the wall that kept her from her own mind. “I want you t—“ They took over again. Her voice changed from light and determined to pessimistic and sour. “I want you to leave me alone!” She threw the plate on the floor, and her friend looked surprised.

“Come with me, Anna,” He stood up.
“I will not!” They screeched. Other people in the shop looked up, worried.
“Hey, buddy! Leave the lady alone!” Cried a man behind the counter.
“She forgot to take her medicine this morning, I think,” he replied. “I’ll take care of it.”
He dove at Anna, and took her by the waist. Kicking and screaming, out to the car, he carried her. When they got there, he hit her in the head pretty hard with his fist. She blacked out, and her people did too.

“Anna?”
The world came back into focus.
“Dean?”
He grinned at her response.

She felt like she was going to lift up and float away; so light, and airy, it was like she was a whole new person. The back of her neck hurt.

“How do you feel?”
“Shitty.”
“I think that’s the best thing I’ve heard all week.”
“It’s certainly the best I’ve felt for a long time.”
They looked at each other. Anna’s eyes moved to the bloody capsule on the shining silver tray. “Lucky my best friend is a surgeon, eh?”
He ruffled her hair with a big grin. His eyes were watering. “Yeah, girly. You owe me.”
“Big time,” she agreed with a nod.

Then she stood, and wrapped her arms around him. They hugged each other for a long while. Anna didn’t have people any more. Her head was calm, and quiet, and full of love for the man that had brought her back. It was like the last seven years hadn’t happened at all. She was still a giddy, twelve-year-old girl. She had every right to be.

The song you will be working with is 'Undiscovered Colors' by The Flashbulb.

We're shaking things up every four weeks! This song has no lyrics. Write me something that you felt when you listened to the song.

The Flashbulb is Benn Jordan, an American musician, who has been making electronica music for years -- albeit under a few different names like 'FlexE' or 'Acidwolf.' He's an accomplished jazz guitarist and pianist who does composing work wherever he can -- television, commercials, movies, you name it. (You may have heard 'Passage D' in a Dove Campaign For Real Beauty ad). Anyways, this song is from his latest album release called Aboreal which released on June 8, 2010.

Listen to the song HERE.

I sat on a white, plastic lawn chair that had slats so thin and far apart I barely stayed on top of the seat. Every so often, I would slip down between two of them and I would have to twist and scoot about until I was propped ever so tenderly in a sitting position once more. It was very quiet, where I lived. Now and then the sound of a laughing child would echo, all around me, and fill up the blank space that was my canvas. That was what I had.

So blue was the sky; every day, brighter than the clearest ocean. The sky was mine. It blew breezes of drifting hands across my back, and made the Canadian flag behind me rustle and sway in the breeze. I was not sure why I had a Canadian flag. I did not live in Canada. I was not sure where I lived. But I knew it was quiet, and I liked that. I liked it a whole lot. Where I used to come from, it was always loud, and noisy. And somebody was always asking strange questions, like what two plus two was and how to read the words on the paper.

Paper…

What was that? I thought about it sometimes, when I remembered it, and then I realized that where I used to come from did not matter. What mattered was where I came from now. And so I stopped thinking about it when I began wondering where it was that I did come from now. I was never entirely sure if I was right or not, when I decided. Sometimes I thought it was Belgium, and other times, America. But I knew it was not Canada. It was too warm to be Canada. It never, ever snowed. The trees far down below me were in a constant state of shedding their leaves. Did that mean it was fall?

I never went down on the ground. I was always on the balcony. The one that I thought must be ten stories off the ground, and never seemed to change. There was not a timeline for me; I had not begun sitting here one day and done it ever since. I had always sat here. It was an endless occurrence. The cheap, off-white lawn chair was mine. But the flag was not. Nobody told me this; I just knew. Knowing things was important where I came from now. It was important where I used to come from, too, but not as important as here. If you got something wrong there, or did not know, there would always be somebody to help you or tell you what it was.

Here…

Here there was empty canvas. I thought I must be the only person, but at the same time knew that I could not possibly be alone here. From my tenth story balcony, I saw the whole world go by. The whole, empty world. Was it mine? I did not know. But there was nobody to ask, and so I would have to decide for myself.

The chair was warm all the time, like I had never left it. Did I ever leave it? I was not sure, once again. I hoped I left it sometimes. But I did not know. And when I started to wonder about those sorts of things, like where I came from before and why I was here now, I felt sort of dizzy and found myself looking in a different direction, where something would catch my eye and again I would begin thinking about where it was that I sat.

Sitting…

That was all I ever did. I never stood. And I never wondered why I only sat, either; I accepted it as fact and continued to obediently sit, every day. I could not turn around to view the building that my balcony protruded from—yes, I knew that the balcony, along with the chair and the sky, was mine.

I did not wear shoes. My feet were bare, and small, and my toes were dirty, with slightly overgrown toenails that had dirt caked under them like it was a part of me. There was, sometimes, a voice that was not mine that would creep into my head and interject random observations every now and then. And who are you? I would wonder. The grass is not down there they would reply. And so I would wonder, for a little bit, why there was no grass, and by the time I came back to questioning the voice it would be gone. I thought it must be a genius, that wanted to peek inside the minds of normal people like me and figure out what it must be like not to notice things like absent grass.

I came to think that there was no real purpose to my balcony, or this world, or the sky; but I always wondered about the flag. I could not actually see it, because it was behind my head and off to the left, but I knew it was there, and I knew that it was a Canadian flag. It might have been the way it sounded that tipped me off, but I was not sure how that worked. To know what something was by the sound of it.

It always came together when the voice told me there was no floor. And who are you? I would ask. There is no floor down there they would reply, and for a while, I would be distracted by the floorless state of my balcony. Oh, but I do not need a floor. I would say. How are you up here, then, without a floor? They would ask me. I do not need a floor. I would reply.

“Jenna!” This voice would always shatter my concentration, and so I would never reply. “Jenna!” and then I would turn around, and see the red brick of the building my balcony was protruding from. “jenna, play time is over! Come inside, now!” and I would blink at my large, off-white, rickety lawn chair, and my wooden balcony, and I would see the woman coming outside to fetch me.

“Come on, now, Jenna, it is time to go back inside for writing class.” And I would accept this, and go with the woman I did not know inside of the school building I did not recognize, past the Canadian flag that was not mine, and away from the view I had of the buildings of where I used to be from. And tomorrow, I would do it again.