High School was a bit of a roller coaster for me, but that's not anything out of the ordinary. I had really good friends, I liked a couple girls, and I learned a lot of things about the world and about myself (though much of those lessons didn't come from school). There were a lot of triumphs, but just as many struggles. Deep set insecurities, distrust, and bitterness took root and developed into ugly forms as time went on. I spent a lot of time feeling alone and feeling sorry for myself. While these times are thankfully over, I look back on them as points where God was right there beside me, holding my hand and dusting me off when I would stumble. Though I'm not proud of a lot of what I did and thought during this time of my life, the process of discovery that I went through has a lot to do with who I am today.
One of the most important things in my high school universe was music. It was my obsession. Much of my time, at least in 9th and 10th grade, was spent IMing my friends while pouring over different albums and artists. I would take a trip out of town almost every week to buy CD's, and I was always borrowing music from friends. I didn't feel particularly special in most areas, but I did take pride in the fact that I was the resident indie music guru. I realize now that this wasn't nearly as cool as I thought, but dang it, it was my niche and I was gonna hold onto it as tight as I could. I slowly developed a core "repertoire" of 5-7 albums that I absolutely could not live without. Many of them are quite strange, as I would admit even now, but no matter how many times I listened to them they never became boring, and they inescapably influenced my views on what music should do and what it should sound like from that point on.
One of those albums was a ten tack collection by the band Weezer named Pinkerton. A lot of people only know Weezer through some of their newer songs such as "Pork n' Beans" and "Beverly Hills," and it really is a shame. While those songs aren't bad by any stretch of the imagination, they cannot come close to the emotional rawness that those first few albums contained. Pinkerton was Weezer's second album, and was markedly different from the first. It was intense, introverted, and at times painfully honest. It was a little snapshot into the mind of the creator, much like the Pet Sounds, and that immediately drew me into it. The album was (loosely) based on the story of Madame Butterfly, which you should google sometime if you're really aching for a good sad story. Basically, this U.S. Naval officer (named Pinkerton, no less) is stationed in Japan and decides that he wants a wife for his time there. The divorce laws are very loose in Japan, so he figures when the time comes he'll just break the knot and be done with it. The problem is, the girl is not only beautiful and sensitive, but completely in love with him. She even goes so far as to renounce her ancestral religion and face complete disownment by her family so that she can be completed devoted to him. He promises to always be faithful, and then a year or so later tells her he has to go back to America but will return ". . . when the robin makes its nest." Long story short, he does come back 3 years later, but with an American wife and no knowledge of the son that his other wife bore him. Madame Butterfly (the nickname of his Japanese wife), hoping for his return every day for 3 years, hears the news and is overcome with grief. I won't tell you how it ends, but it's not happy.
Though the album doesn't follow that storyline track-by-track, it has connections to it thematically. Most of the songs follow of theme of searching for true love and being sick of meaningless physical relationships. Much like Pet Sounds, there is a definite character growth and process that the songwriter goes through as the album progresses. It begins with a dissatisfaction with the one night stand life style ("Tired of Sex"), moves to a search for real love while still feeling drawn to that old lifestyle ("Why Bother," "The Good Life") and ends with the possibility of love finally becoming a reality ("Falling For You.") However, it ends with the songwriter ruining the relationship because of his wandering eye. Though I couldn't relate to some of the specific events of the songs, that longing for true love along with the fear that if I had it I would ruin it was a huge part of my high school existence. I would go as far as to say that was the undercurrent for much of those first three years (before I got to know my lovely soon-to-be bride). I felt like someone else understood me, that I wasn't alone in my longings and insecurities.
The album really is best taken as a whole, but if I had to pick the most significant track for me on the album was the closer, "Butterfly." It's a mellow in contrast to the others on the album. It consists only of acoustic guitar ad vocals, and the lyrics are simple but heart wrenching at the same time. The first verse and the chorus together impacted me quite a bit when i first heard them:
Yesterday I went outside
With my mama's mason jar,
Caught a lovely butterfly
When I woke up today
Looked in on my fairy pet
She had withered all away
No more sighing in her breast
I'm sorry for what I did
I did what my body told me to
I didn't mean to do you harm
Everytime I pin down what I think I want it slips away
The goal slips away
The last part, "Every time I pin down one I think I want it slips away," pretty much summed up all of my hopes, fears, and insecurities when I listened to it. I'll post the whole song, but really the chorus is what stuck out the most to me. The thought of getting so close to what I wanted and then ruining it was what connected with me. Later in my high school experience, God showed me what I had been missing all along. I was looking to find my worth in the affection of someone else, gauging how my life was based on if my feelings were reciprocated. I completely left God's love for me out of the picture, and that was what made me feel so lost and hopeless. I think this song is a affecting portrait of what the pursuit of love is without God in the equation. It is a pursuit that can never satisfy, a longing that will always be left wanting more. The human heart cannot be satisfied with human love; though we have a large capacity for it, and do indeed need it. However, until we know the perfect love of God, we can never be satisfied with any form of love. For those who do not know it, the search becomes increasingly desperate, and finally they settle for the meaningless fluff that the world has to offer. This song, where it once was a lament connected to my own experience, now stands as a reminder of the life without Christ's love. It still profoundly affects me, but now because it stands out as a corporate cry of a hopeless, love hungry people.
Here's the song. Warning: There's one bad word in the 2nd verse.
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