Not the Same

I remember trying to justify my appreciation of Days of the New back in the day.  It was always a slippery slope, but I wasn't one to relent.  Why, because of the album tracks and sentiment behind a lot of Travis Meeks lyrics. To be such a young guy he was able to tap into a world weariness that was beyond his years.  His youth was more than likely a major factor in his personal and professional missteps back in the late 90s.  He was a teenager after all.  He was also an ambitious musician, and this song is just one of the many examples of his ability to push the envelope of the aesthetic he created with the simple idea of what basically started off as acoustic grunge.

How does this song relate to me?  Well, as someone who's felt miscast, misunderstood, vilified, and guilt-ridden, I know what it feels like to want to be empathized with, validated, justified.  Finding an audience with your persecutors or victims isn't something that comes easy.  When people write you off, sometimes that's the end of it.  Sometimes that last cutting thing you say to them, is the last they will ever be bothered to hear. Sometimes that last whispered rumor about you that someone hears is enough for them to never ask you about it and get it from the horses mouth.

It's human to want to get your say, have your day in court, to speak your truth.  It's just not promised.  So, this song resonated with me at a time in my life when I desperately felt the desire to plead my case after years of people interpreting my actions, intentions, and feelings inaccurately, particularly in situations where I didn't have enough information to make up my own mind as to how I felt about all the goings on.  In some cases it may have been precisely because people didn't trust me with the information in the first place for one reason or another.  In the grand scheme of things I may deserve that for not honoring the confidence of others in my youth.  That was then... this is now, and I'm not the same... or am I?  This blog may be evidence to the latter.