the man in me
Enduring all the unpleasantries of suffocated libraries and their quiet shuffles of the walking dead is enough to break anyone’s heart and just slip, slip away into the abyss of fluffy snow piled outside it’s small windows. It took me seven months to finish my university thesis. I spent three days a week at the library. The entire seven months was devoted to meditations on emergent christian movements, the kind of stuff to evoke a spiritual awakening if you read a few more chapters, I was sure. I was on a search, a search for both my soul- and the faint finish line of one of some of the most tiresome and tedious years of my life.
Not a minute was quiet during those times while both ears filled with a steady and consistent few albums. Pedro the Lion’s Control, It’s Hard To Find a Friend and whatever solo stuff David Bazan had out at that point. Cold Beer and Cigarettes will remain in the vaults of my memory as the sounds and tastes and touch of rough text books. That was the season when music grew it’s own legs and waltzed straight into the depths of my young mind and told me stories, answered questions, asked some more that I’d always wanted to ask but was too afraid. It had a hand at more than helping me write a paper- David Bazan’s voice was about as comforting and frightening as the idea of eternity itself. I strayed from Christianity a while after that, as he surely has as well- but I find my way back following all his laments on the original sin, the validity of medieval promises and the irrationality of something he can’t seem to fully shake.
As much as I’d like to believe that my relationship with his music is something of a unique occurrence, there are many more that follow the gospel according to Bazan, because he is just as lost as the rest of us. There’s a certain solidarity that feels as though- if we all wade in the doubt long enough, and keep asking questions, we’ll be satisfied. That’s the thing about faith- it wouldn’t be faith without the possibility of doubt.
Last night, Bazan took the stage at Lee’s Palace and it was one of those shows that was collectively nodded among strangers, with the knowledge that this performance- beyond all others, was rather special- and with no proof, no history or evidence to prove otherwise, we were content with that idea. There is a soothing sound to his voice, amplified by a full band mixing Pedro with newer songs of Curse Your Branches, with his version of The Man in Me, and a Headphones’ song called ‘I Never Wanted You’- a song first heard on a mix my friend David made me last Christmas as I drove around San Diego in his beloved Skeletal Lightning, and we would talk about cheap meals to hold me over for the six unpaid months ahead. I tried explaining the night to friends who weren’t there, and one of them said- you know that’s cool, it’s a bummer I wouldn’t have experienced it the same way as you even if I were there. I thought that was interesting.
Maybe I’m putting too much pressure on the man ‘in him’, because you’ve got to believe that it’s more than that. It’s about yourself- projected on the music. It’s your beautiful or painful interpretation and connection to something independent from yourself. It’s about exercising all the muscles in your heart to make sure you can still feel. Even if it’s just during a three-minute song. If you can feel something for music, you can feeling something for anything. That’s a needed reminder for all of us who feel like we already gave up, and our apathy has brushed off whatever remains of enthusiasm our childhood selves held onto. And that’s all that matters.
David’s Q/A is always evidence of his own awkward, relative normalcy. That he is just a dude that plays music, and he wants you to remember that. To me, that only further solidifies music as it’s own magical elements that cannot be owned by even the hands that play them.
David Bazan- Please Baby Please
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David Bazan- I Never Wanted You
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David Bazan- Cold Beer and Cigarettes
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David Bazan- Bless This Mess
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