The_Exit_Cycle

(reverbnation.com/jameslaugerman)

photography by Sara Scherf

144

- The number of beats per minute of every track.

- The length of every track.

- The tuned frequency of D for the cd (scale of time), the key (or modulated key) of every track.

- The number of blog posts I’ve written.

- The number of times I nearly (and probably should have) given up on this project.

But, I did it. And, in my proudest achievement, without telling a soul about it, until now. Probably the best decision I could have made, considering the results.

I spent 6 months on 12 seconds shy of 21 minutes of music. An inaccessible nightmare of 20:48. I broke all the rules. I read Jimmy Webb’s “Tunesmith” just to make sure. I memorized Psalm 144, and wrote music well outside of any genre I’d be comfortable listening to. I took on an impossible task, and passed. And failed, due to what I had accomplished.

The songs are too personal for me to ever be able to say that I’m proud of them. The mood is too dark, the quality too poor, the recordings too amateur. I’ve learned that I was foolish to attempt this on my own. That any reasonable fellow would have walked in after hearing the first vocal take and said, “James! What the @%&@ are you doing?!?” No one is going to listen to this, and for the most part, I absolutely don’t want anyone to.

That said, I’m going to take the assumption that whoever reads this is a friend of mine, and will be able to see through this not as a completed work, but as the start of something new. Something where I can sing something uplifting and positive, something where I can trust others in making contributions, something I would want people to hear, and take honest joy in playing it for people.

That said, listen to it anyway. Read the lyrics (all posted at reverbnation.com) . Some of the tracks (#4 and #7) aren’t a complete waste of time, while others (#3 and #12) most assuredly are. It’s all there, the good and the bad. Even the screaming. Know that the feelings, however angry, spiteful, painful, or surly they may seem, are quite real, in fact more real than I’ve ever been able to express anything; and it is for that reason that this cd will never be sold or promoted.

I am a patient man

I am a well that overflows

As to mirages in the sand

I am a quiet man

And when I care I hope it shows

Like elder lovers holding hands

I am the plastic in mold

Treasured like gold around her neck

I am a logic man

But all the trap doors have been closed

An honest book to understand

I am a common man

With all conformities exposed

All I’ve learned is second-hand

I am a plastic in mold

Treasured like gold around her neck

Along the shallowest road

Where streams of traffic flow

Addicted to the glow

Awake, I’m outside of the dream

Pressing down on her alarm

Pressing down on her alarm

On the way home from move-out today, I listened to the most excellent Aqualung and his masterpiece, “Memory Man.” I still love this cd. Lyrics fit everything perfectly. Sad sounding on the surface, but really optimistic underneath. Realizing that everything’s gone, but at the same time thankful for how much everything has improved and become more sophisticated.

Anyway, Matt Hales is better at nostalgia than me.

This song goes out to my roomates.

“Broken Bones” - Aqualung

Picking up broken words
Snipping the tips off
Grinding down the long ones
That wind around your eardrums

Dangerous plastic words
For crowd dispersal
And dumb dumb words
That could blow your head off

[Chorus]
This is a story ’bout the three of us
Down by the water and the tide is rising
This world is burning and I’m terrified
I need a little more time with you, oh
I just need a little more time with you

Original song played at acoustic show (the one with the jazz ’scat’ call and response). I’m selling out lyrics now for graduation parties. I don’t know why I wrote this song, or what I was thinking while writing it, but maybe you can figure it out. It’s lighthearted, unlike most of my other stuff, which is probably good.

I want to feel

Feel like I’m in high school

With all the emotions and hormones and drama to keep you awake

I want to see

See all of my good friends

Before the girlfriends and break-ups and college all took them away.

But you can’t take me back to my high school days

To the spring prom dance or the jazz band craze

You can try, you can try to relive your years

And I’ll be right there

Wondering what we were thinking

I want to love

Love like I’m in high school

To say forever and ever and mean every ever I say

And I want to fly

Fly back from the future

And tell them that life isn’t life ’till you’ve lived for today

And I want to go back to high school about as badly as I want to leave Iowa State. 

(background…I was assigned to write a 500 word essay on what I learned in English 250…which was about as edukational as going back to middle school. this is what i came up with.)

A Reflection on Improvement

            Development, whether in personal character or academics, has always come to me as sort of a linear process. While lessons are often learned through mistakes or epiphanies of revelation, my experience can be more clearly modeled after a simple space/time graph, attempting to follow a consistent or accelerating speed toward an intended destination. This model of learning often is far less exciting and interesting when viewed over a short scale of time, but when the graph is enlarged, extraordinary results can be clearly seen. Results are more powerful when lessons are implemented into consistent improvement through regular practice rather than short-lived and forgotten instructions. In the end, it isn’t how many lessons are learned, or even how important the lessons were, but rather how one uses what he has learned for consistent improvement.

            Being required to put my learning into practice was, without a doubt, the best possible way to improve my abilities. I came into the semester with a firm understanding that I was in control of my abilities, and that little improvement was needed. Looking back on my efforts and exertions, I’m amazed to see how far I’ve come with my understanding of everything. I can honestly say I’ve been challenged throughout the semester, and forcing myself to rise to the occasions by putting the teachings into consistent practice has been a rewarding experience. When I compare where I am to where I was in my understanding, all of the difficulties and challenges I overcame seem trivial, but at the same time absolutely necessary for my edification. I also see that I am far from complete in my learning experience, and that further practice and lessons are absolutely necessary if I am to rise anywhere near my full potential.

            If there was one eye-opening lesson I learned over the semester, it was that the English textbook title is absolutely correct; everything really is an argument. More specifically, I began to understand that arguments should be carefully constructed and implemented. Any statement, no matter how trivial, carries the weight of a contestable debate, and every word should be chosen with a full alertness of its purpose and the receiving audience. A crucial sentence that is incorrectly interpreted can have disastrous consequences, and while the audience is partially responsible for the explanation of a message, much conflict can be avoided with a more clear and cautious selection of words.

            Furthermore, one must take extreme concern when deciding which arguments to compose. Arguments with lesser degrees of offensiveness are almost always going to be more effective and better received by the audience. Arguments must also be sure to never be stated simply for argument’s sake; they should only implement the most relevant and effective arguments to achieve the purpose. The purpose should be clearly understood throughout the argument, and failure to achieve the purpose of an argument is unacceptable. I have learned that it is often possible to both win an argument and lose the purpose. While arguments change and their methods can be improved over time, only a complete and effective display of the purpose can have the power to persuade an audience. 

            As I finish another semester of learning, I can make an entire list of arguments for my progress and improvements, but the true evidence lies in my commitment and challenging pursuit of my purpose of a consistent improvement in my understanding.

(and yes, this really isn’t about english at all)

-lyrics from “Optimistic” by Radiohead

Lyrical title idea copyright: Samantha Carlson, 2008. samansa.wordpress.com. 

Summer, in the eyes of James.

It should be a good one. I got a full-time politically oriented job as a canvassing mercenary today. I will be knocking on peoples doors all summer long trying to raise awareness (aka money) for “Environment Iowa”, among other groups. 

In other words, I’m coming home from my first year of college as a liberal activist. Awesome. (They’re really not that liberal, it’s mostly pretty boring stuff about cleaning up hog-farms and dirty rivers; but I won’t be offended if you affectionately refer to me as “the tree-hugging hippy” during the summer months)

The hours mean I won’t be able to make any Immersion nights, although it’s probably for the best. 

Also, I hope to be coming home with good grades, although a lot can happen in the last 10 days. 

Lastly, I’m pretty excited for The Freedom Project Reunion Tour, Lollapalooza, and 80/35 (if you haven’t heard, go to 80-35.com). 

I know I’ll miss college, but that will probably be the best part of it all. 

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Death Cab for Cutie, Coldplay, and Sigur Ros are all releasing new albums this summer. If you haven’t heard the new Death Cab single, “I will possess your heart”, youtube (i like how its a verb now) it. And you can skip over the first 4 minutes, because the song is over 8 minutes long. I just listened to the new Coldplay single, “Violet Hill”, and though I’m not entirely impressed, one of the working album titles is “Death and All His Friends”, which is probably the coolest album title I’ve ever heard. And the artwork is sweet. (sidenote: although “In Rainbows” is brilliant as far as subliminal title meanings go, on the surface, it’s probably one of the lamest titles ever allowed to be released)

As for The Freedom Project Summer Reunion Tour, our first show will be June 17 at Vaudeville Mews with The Estate, Jade Lea, and probably one more band. I’ve contacted the 80/35 fest to see if we can get on, and if we do, that would absolutely make my entire summer. Stephen Engels is the little drummer boy in training. I think Pete, Nick, and Caleb are excited about it, but to be honest, I never have any clue what those kids are thinking. And they probably think the same for me. 

(note to reader…I’m going to start ending my posts with super random ambiguous statements that probably don’t have any real meanings…just for fun)

And that’s what makes The Freedom Project’s music work so well among the children. 

Finally, a newspaper decides to put some actual political news on its front page. The NY Times actually talks about what the candidates plan to do and how they plan (or don’t plan) on paying for it! Maybe they just got bored of interviewing people about Obama’s bowling technique, Clinton’s night at the bars, or McCain’s lack of a flag on his lapel. 

Read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/us/politics/27fiscal.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

And if the election were today, I’d vote for Obama, just to see what happens. 

The title lyrics are from one of my new favorite bands, the local group Poison Control Center (myspace.com/thepcc). The song is called, “Magic Circle Symphony”, and I saw it performed at the Freeman Concert last weekend. One guy with an acoustic guitar, a voice strikingly close to Conor Oberst, and the best stage presence I’ve ever seen. Got a crowd of at least 300 people singing the title lyrics as loud as they could for no reason at all. 

And, if you substitute the word “cancer” for the related idiom, “AIDS”, what do you get?

ISU Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transexual Awareness Week!

Now, for whatever reason, we must have skipped over that week in the good ole DMC calendar. But at ISU, sidewalks were suddenly pepper-sprayed with sidewalk-chalk rainbows, and the Iowa State Daily began to read like a backwards romance novel. 

Monday went by without a whole lot of flair. It was gay/lesbian day, and our lunch table practiced our “awareness” techniques by pointing out anyone of questionable mannerisms. 

Tuesday was the big gay parade. Zach and I got a big kick out of that.

Then today was “Transgender Awareness Day”. Now, out of a sense of common conservative decency, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be “aware” of the transgender people. From what I knew, the transgenders were those sick people who got surgeries so they could do whatever it is sick perverted people do. Gross.

In the Daily today, there was an editorial from a regular student writer who I had come to respect over the year (I read the campus newspaper “daily”) for her open minded viewpoints. Anyway, her article today was entitled, “I am a Transgender Cyclone.” (you can read it at iowastatedaily.com) 

In the article she (well, technically a he taking estrogen pills) said she would be giving a speech on the library steps at noon. As I didn’t have class at noon, I went and saw her. 

I expected a loud and obnoxious rally, with every liberal within a 10 mile purple triangle in attendance there to show their support. Instead, I couldn’t find her at the beginning, as some of the world’s craziest evangelical abortionist protesters were there with their children holding up the grossest signs you could ever see (more on that later). I finally found “Sophie” with an audience of only about 30 people (pretty small considering the hundreds walking around the area at the time). She really did look, dress, and talk just like a girl. 

She talked about all of the things she said in her article, and then added that she had been raised in a Christian home with a loving and supportive family. She said she began to question her identity as early as only 6 years old, and always felt as if she was simply a woman trapped in a man’s body. She talked about the difficulties in getting psychiatric and medicinal help, and the difficulties of taking the hormonal medications. She discussed social difficulties and the voice training she went through to become accepted as a woman. To those wondering whether it really is a choice, she made a case that it’s not an easy one by any means. 

I began to feel compassion for her. Not just any compassion, but something along the lines of “What would Jesus do?” compassion. I really felt sorry for her. There was something very personal and eye-opening about actually seeing a transgender person talking about her issues less than 20 feet away. All she wanted was to be loved and accepted for who she was. 

As I thought about it, I reasoned that the real Jesus, the one who spent a lot of his time with sinners, probably would have befriended her. As it was, the only people that seemed to befriend her were homosexuals and extreme-left liberals. She didn’t really care. She would have accepted approval from anybody. And it was there, standing in the absence of a right-wing Christian crowd, that I forgot to think about how gross transexuals are. 

Jesus loved people like Sophie because they were so easy and open to love. I know that too often I try to limit my spread of God’s love to people similar to myself; well-off suburban white kids, when these are usually the people who truly believe they don’t need love. 

As she finished, I approached one of the surrounding abortion protesters. I just wanted to tell them that while I agree with their message, I strongly felt that the way they go about it is completely wrong. While I could have made a case that their pictures were obviously of partial-birth abortions (which are illegal), that their arguments couldn’t hold wait in a sea of intellectuals (it’s the ISU Library for crying out loud, everyone wanted to argue with them…and usually won), or that they were just plain too confrontational, I just wanted to share what I had learned from the transgender person: that the problem lies with the sinner, not with the sin.

And as we are all sinners, what then can we do but to share the love of Christ?

I wrote a journal during my week-trip to Rosebud. I revisited it today, and found a poem I’d written. I found it better than I remembered it to be, so I’ll share it. 

I wrote it after meeting this “Medicine Man”, who was probably one of the most interesting and mixed up people I’ve ever met. He described himself as, “Just a clown, walking down the red road, giving help to any who will take it.” He also said he was willing to bet his life on the fact that the end of the world would come in less than three years.

Anyway, if that doesn’t kick start inspiration, I don’t know what will. 

In the native prarie

The heart of the badlands

Wooden birds and painted feathers

Spiritual as the rising sun

Though tents have long been thrown away

For shelters made by foreigners 

To call as homes with cornered rooms

For the earth’s last three years

And the medicine man comes to town

Riding in a Chevrolet

With visions of the antelope

And a clown suit for the day

Listen to the family drum

Transfuse his thinking to the soul

His words are sent from Grandfather

Yet he heals in Jesus’ name

All the misconceptions lies, sent down the red drawn road

While their souls collective one, our sweat as martyr’s blood

And soft the path of righteousness, though hard the modern steel

And the dirges of the oil spill

From the cars they didn’t need

There’s a reason the Psalmist said more than once, “Sing unto the Lord a new song.” 

Being a songwriter and a worshipper of God himself, I think David understood something about wonder.

Familiarity breeds contempt. It’s why people have mid-life crises, get sick of roomates, and can’t listen to “Soldier Boy”. What may have been once considered great, when thoroughly examined over time, will only shine its imperfections like a VH1 reality show. 

It’s where I was getting off on Christianity. I had lived it all my life, and it was I understood like a second nature. But after so many years of the same routine, it began to wear thin of its wonderment. 

What is the Bible, really, with no sense of wonder? Or for that matter, what is prayer? Or church? Although I might be getting off on a little anti-theological correctness, here, I’m going to say it anyway.

Meaningless.

Mark A. made an excellent analogy at Salt Company tonight, which was based off the following quote from C.S. Lewis:

“The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approached the judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the Dock.” 

He then told a story from the Old Testament about a man who accidentally touched The Ark, and was instantly killed. He said that while modern people would question how a loving God could do such a thing, the correct reasoning takes God out of the cage of definitions and predictability (definitions like God is love is choice is abortion), and instead asks how a mortal man could ever stand before such a holy God. 

It’s the answer I’ve been looking for to the question asked so often and yet seldom given a satisfying reply:

Why does God allow bad things to happen? 

To which there really is no comprehendible answer. People can make arguments for answers, like “it’s because of human freedom and the nature of sin.” But what do we learn of God, then, other than that he is a libertarian? That he loves us? Then why create a world with sin? To refine us and make us ready for his kingdom. And why does God need a kingdom? 

It goes on forever. It’s a lot easier if you just accept it as a different question.

Who is man to understand God?

If there was an attainable answer to the question, visible lines could be drawn around God’s figure. We would understand the heavens as we understand the earth. Spirituality would turn to science. God would be a predictable phenomenon of no cause of greater wonder than a blizzard in April. 

Against all common logic, I feel a lot of freedom in not being able to understand God. I feel like I no longer have to be the lawyer questioning God over why he does anything I would object to. Instead of asking what atmospheric phenomena makes the sky turn colors before sunset, I can simply sit outside with an open conscience and take it in all its splendor. 

Christianity is no more a science than love, music, Girls Scout Cookies, or anything else that is intrinsically beautiful in this world. No one knows what it actually means to fall in love until they’ve done it, and the only books you can write on the experience are categorized under poetry. Getting a graduate degree in music theory isn’t a guarantee for anyone to become a great songwriter. Lastly, no one really knows or cares what girl scouts actually do with the millions of dollars they make off their cookies.

I love Radiohead. You’d think I wouldn’t, though. I’ve listened to their music over and over again. But I don’t fully understand it yet. Someday, maybe I will, and then I won’t like Radiohead anymore.

One of the worst things about becoming a musician is losing that sense of wonder about a lot of things. What once was, “Wow! He’s making really cool noises with that guitar!” is now, “he’s just playing a Fender with a delay pedal.” Professional sound people are the worst at this. You can tell what they will or won’t like by a bunch of numbers on digital scales. They could see the Beatles rise from the dead and play a show, but if they weren’t using the right microphones and speakers, they could no more appreciate it’s quality than a seminary graduate hearing John 3 preached from the pulpit by an untrained 17 year old. 

Someday, I’ll fall in love with someone who instills a sense of wonder with me. I believe human beings, unlike anything else in this world, are much deeper and spiritual and wonderful creatures than we give ourselves credit for. We are made in the image of God, after all. We are constantly changing, constantly growing, constantly moving, constantly never completely able to understand one another. It’s why people really do fall in love, and are able to stay that way after they have been married over 60 years.

Wonder. Something seemingly unattainable, and yet anything less is utterly meaningless.