When something's lost, I wanna fight to get it back again.

It's time to talk about Backspacer.

It’s been almost two months since it was released and I’m not lying when I say it’s the only album I have listened to in that time. I don’t have a radio in my car so this is entirely plausible.

Here’s the thing about this album. You won’t like it.

You’ll listen to it quizzically the first time through and after another stubborn run through the 37 minute long puzzle, you will wonder what Pearl Jam was thinking.

You’ll think about all the time and effort you have put into loving one band, one band alone, for the most formative years of your life and you’ll frown, knowing that this is their latest reciprocal effort.

You’ll feel a sense of disappointment, kind of like the first time you heard Yield come distinctively stumbling through your 90’ Pontiac Grand Prix speakers.

Then, during Track 7, “Unthought Known”, right before the chorus comes crashing through, you hear the words, “Feel the sky blanket you, with gems and rhinestones…” and somewhere inside the gravel and raspy sincerity in Eddie’s voice you will begin the process of falling in love.

It will happen just like that.

For me it happened after three times through the album. It was Tracks 5, 6 & 7.

“Just Breathe” is easy to love. It’s simple acoustic guitar and that voice. A love song, in its own right. Poignant in its lamenting. And, of course, I am just a pushover for love songs; but that is not a big surprise to anyone.

“Amongst the Waves” didn’t interpret for me right away. At first I thought it was a song about regret, but after several listens, it smacked me right upside the head.

This is a song about hope, much like “The Fixer”, and of confidence in the future. That is a notion I have recently distanced myself so much from that I couldn’t listen to “The Fixer” for a few weeks. I wasn’t about hope, I was about darkness and “The Fixer” only served to pull me out instead of wallow in and that’s not what I wanted.

In fact, many of the tracks on Backspacer are woven with glittery, immutable threads of hope; optimism even. The dissonance and dissent from their last self-titled album are curiously absent.

And no, I don’t think it was because they are going main stream to sell more albums. I know a lot of fans do, but I didn’t feel that with this album.

What I felt was a less self-conscious effort to music-making. I felt a band more comfortable in their own skin, and more up-beat than ever before. I don’t know if this is a product of where they are at in their own lives, or the mood of the country, or anything, really, but I know I liked it and I believed it.

Ten and Vs. were epic. There is no denying that. But Backspacer is wholly different. Fundamentally and characteristically, it sounds nothing like anything that came before it.

In the course of listening to only this album I experienced some strong emotions in the wake of a particularly tough break-up. If you are looking for an angry, edgy song like “Black” or “Whipping”, perhaps this isn’t the album for you. Backspacer gave me no pent-up, aggressive release. Instead, it turned me inward and contemplative. It made me nostalgic in not a wistful way, but in a reflective way.

Lyrics like, “Amongst the Waves”, “Love ain’t love until you give it up/Gotta say it now/better loud/than too late” really sliced through the misty, false reality I had been forging ahead into, and “Force of Nature”, "Makes me ache/makes me shake…/is it so wrong to think that love can keep us safe?” finished the process by bringing my head back down from the clouds.

Eddie never lets you forget that above everything else, he's just a guy with a screwed up past who is trying to heal, just like the rest of us. There's something earnest about him. He makes you feel like you're a part of his private relationship with the music. And it does matter. To me, at least.

Don’t get me wrong, “Supersonic” will rock your balls off and has enough energy to power Tokyo with its electricity. “Gonna See My Friend” is equally ferocious, and an adrenaline shot right into your heart, right off the bat.

I just didn’t expect so many insightful pockets of joy from a Pearl Jam album.

For once I had to turn to other bands to fulfill my rock needs. That is not to say that Backspacer is not a rock album. That is plainly not the case. Pearl Jam cannot help but rock. Mike McCready won’t allow anything less.

But during those moments when only the slow, angry build up of “Why Go” or the cold-cocked recklessness of “Spin the Black Circle” will do, I found myself turning to other bands, other songs.

Because there isn't an angry, cynical note on this album.

And that's what made Backspacer a memorable album for me. I will always remember that listening to it helped me through a particularly hard time in my life, pushing me forward, urging me to rethink my future when I could only see one outcome. And then confidently patting me on the back, reassuring me that my past mistakes are not who I am. That I could shatter all my old expectations and create the potential for possibility, to reinvent myself in a way people don't expect.

And, ultimately, that's why music is so important.

I went from "And now my bitter hands/chafe beneath the clouds/of what was everything" to "Riding high amongst the waves/I can feel like I/Have a soul that has been saved/I can see the light/Coming through the clouds in rays."

And that’s why we needed to talk about Backspacer.

We all have one and they probably broke your heart.

"We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you’ll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there’s still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of these loveable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they’re often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really, want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else."

From Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman

Happy Birthday, Peter!

I just wanted to take a moment today to wish my good friend, Peter DeWolf, a very happy birthday. I can't remember not knowing you Peter, but it must have sucked.

To my favorite Canadian, and yes, I love you more than Marty LaPointe!

XOXOXOXO
Megan

My muse is one fickle bitch.

She is patronizing in her arbitrariness, disdainful in her elusiveness.

For months now I have begged her to return to me, chucked my pride out the car window at 85 mph into the dark of night as I scan shadowy back roads to find her, calling out her name, wildly into the midnight air, heavy with anticipation.

I’ve set up altars in her name, promised my soul to her for just one fleeting moment again to bask in the possibility and clarity she provides.

It’s just now that I realize she only turns up when I’m completely broken, delighting in kicking around the pieces of me for a while as I watch on, eyes wide with disbelief. It always takes a few moments before I notice that I am actually mistaken.

Her enjoyment is not in the kicking around, but in the putting back together.

TKO

Everyday it's a struggle to get up in the morning. Everyday. Every morning I play a game with myself; the one that always leaves me feeling like I've lost, even when the rules tell me I've won.

There's this sneaking suspicion that weighs in like a heavyweight, arms in the air prematurely celebrating a win. It's always there. Always two steps behind me, bobbing and weaving, ready to knock the wind out of me when I least suspect it. It's the uneasy thought that some kind of superior happiness is just beyond my reach.

Maybe if I work harder, or do gooder, or smile more, it will tie itself into a ribbon of gold and fall into my lap. But instead, I sustain on nothing. Gain nothing. Tread air.

This type of suspicion will always leave me a little dissatisfied. Never living in the now.

It's making me older every day.

I hate waking in the morning because that abrasive sound of the alarm always reminds me to be cautious. In between its shrill beeps I can hear it whispering,

"Shhhhh...Megan. That punch in the gut is just around the corner."

Your turn to run.

I don’t want to be just another moment in your history. Just another book on the shelf of your infinite library. The song on your iTunes playlist that you loved hard for three weeks straight and now just skip through to the next.

I don’t want to be the water that cuts so easily under your oars as you paddle away.

Because you made me believe less in me and you and more in us and we and now I can’t go back. I shed the impermeable layer that initially kept me from letting you in and now I can’t stop absorbing you. All that energy I didn’t put into us I’m now taking in, radioactive with remorse. And at times I feel as though I might burst with all these emotions I worked so circumspectly to train to roll right off, not in.

You brought truth to me in a way I was not ready to reciprocate. Part of me always thought there would be a runner in this story, but I had no idea your gym shoes would be so effortlessly laced by the time I realized it wasn't me.

By the time I realized this wasn't what I wanted, you had already cut a path through the trees and I could barely make out your dizzying shadow.

You gave me no choice in loving you and now you leave me nothing but to trace and retrace the the outline of your footsteps in the soil, still warm with the heat of you.

Ghost Writer

I am not the heroine of this story.

I am not the villain.

And yet it’s still so familiar being here, dropped off blindfolded at a different place in the telling of it. I’m wandering, arms outstretched, stubbornly refusing to take off the blindfold so I don’t have to see.

The ending.

Because this story we are writing is far more complicated than my last, with newer characters and heavier hearts, much bigger emotions than I am used to shaping metaphorically. I can create something out of nothing, turn dark into light with adjectives and clever syntax, but even the deftest of similies can’t erase what’s already been written.

And I’m shaking the pen, in a moment more desperately, and suddenly the ink is dry and I am left here with so many words and no way to compose the remaining chapters. I’m stuck here in a constant state of inhale.

Write it for me?

Finish it.

Don’t forget to write me into it?

Deja vu

Lately I have been propping up my smile with the ghosts of memories past.

This smile is a counterfeit though, forged with regret that slumps my shoulders and pulls the corners of my mouth down with defeat.

And I think to myself, "This should be easier the second time around."

My poor heart has only recently adjusted to being whole again.

But I'll trudge on, soldiering through the muck yet again; this time trying to avoid the muddy footprints of my past mistakes.