I’m listening to a song from a new record called “I Surrender”. It’s a beautiful mix of emotion and spirit. It encompasses, for me, the three parts necassary to piece together anything honest: 1. heartbreak 2. worship and 3. vengeance. Ahh so frequently these three will work in tandem or in hostility to one another, vengeance leads to heart break, heart break leads to worship, and so on cyclically and cyclically until they form something new every time, like throwing 52 playing cards off a balcony, like tossing paint around an empty, dry wall; this is how it feels to write songs. And they hurt and they cut deep to be made. But they are beautiful, refined pieces of gold when they are complete.

We (BOY PILOT) are making this record. Every week we go in and press record; we are never sure what the outcome will be, but we go in unabashed and unashamed. There are feelings then that tug at the heart, feelings that make you want to prove yourself to the world. Feelings that want the people who God placed on your path, hear the cry of your heart, to have your hearts cry out together.

I have this dream sometimes, this image in my head; it’s of me and this other person, this person is broken and weeping and looking to the sky, I am unsure what to do so I just place my hand on their face and cry with them, shed tears and I don’t even know what for. It’s a vision I have often, it reccurs to me when I see the homeless, it recurs to me when I hear about a 13 yr old person getting sexually transmitted sickness, it recurs to me when I hear someone talk about buying things that will hurt them, when I see women and men looking for love in one another and finding only heart ache and then, nothing but argument. This vision occurs a lot and I don’t quite know how to remedy it. Music is like the tune that keeps the demons away, keeps the monsters at bay, but this image still remains when the songs are done, when the stage is cleared. I find myself making inward commitments to the homeless folks I see on the streets. “One day, I am going to find a way to help you with more than just money. One day I am going to help you get a job, find a home, have an honest conversation with you in a warm place of your own, underneath your own beautiful ceiling, help ya have faith again…” One day, one day, one day…When will this day come? When will the power of love diffuse the will to power? I don’t know. But mark my words, that day is coming soon. Believe this with me, see this with me and it will happen. Again, the few will be called to change the world and to let the change start with them. A few will reject the modern and twisted interpretation of Adam Smith. A few will actually take the scriptures seriously when they say “the first shall be last and the last shall be first.”

That song “I Surrender” is still playing in the backdrop of this vision, it helps me make sense of it, helps me work towards it’s completion. I pray that is what these songs are to you as well, that they would help you work towards your completion. This is just the beginning, “Day by day, brick by brick,” as my friend Mau says, “is how the Great Wall was built”. This is true. So for now, we build.

-David J. from BOY PILOT