The Sexual Orientation of Our Repertoire

In Glee Club right now, we're singing a diverse range of pieces.  Some of the things we're doing, which will begin the concert, are breathtakingly beautiful.  I'd link to the videos, but there exist no recordings online.  At least two of the others are so contrary to my taste that it causes me pain to sing them.  I'm not linking to them because I don't want to feign endorsing them.

All things considered, I guess it's pretty fair for me to put up with a song about throwing a house party and discriminating against people who choose lifestyles of tranquil civility, even though  that I am personally averse to wasting time and energy on partying away my young life.  I'm ultimately capable of singing yet another rowdy-young-man song about the perils of courting women, despite the fact that it makes me feel like I'm stumbling back into the closet and a façade of oppressive heteronormativity.  And you know, even though one of the songs reminds me of the same kind of Christian evangelism that I thought I escaped after many bitter bouts with my mom in high school, I'll sing it without complaining.

This is because I know that, to everybody who appreciates good music in the audience, there'll be a number of pieces that stick out as far too beautiful to be considered on the same plane as those crowd-pleasers.  And they'll understand why it has to be that way.  Any concert that we do is basically a way to showcase some pieces of music that are beautiful, plus a few pieces that will make the vast majority of people who prefer entertainment to art feel like they spent their money well.  I mean, I really wish that the order of the concert was such that we sang the high-quality pieces at the end, but you can't win them all.  And the Rutgers University Glee Club has an interesting, historical culture of both being the performers of fine men's choral pieces and the representatives of the University's traditions.  I guess the only way to justly represent this college I attend is to include a whole lot of pointless shouting and waving our arms around, because that's apparently a significant part of the "college experience", and most people really quite like it.

I hope that I sound like I'm bashing my social environment and deriding the culture of the state university.  I am.  But more importantly, I'm trying to say that I understand the context of this repertoire, and all of this elitist, judgmental blathering is an inner turmoil that is soundly trumped by a smug satisfaction in my personal, abstract interpretation of the lineup.

For all of the entertainment value that may be found in these fun-filled songs about pop culture and praises to The Male Lord Our God And Opiate, there's enough artistic value in the better pieces to outweigh everything that the lesser ones detract.  In my angsty inner thoughts, the two songs that I enjoy the most so far have some interesting qualities that really appeal to me on a deep, emotional level.

One was commissioned by the New York City Gay Men's Chorus, which gives it an substantial degree of meaning to me.  It speaks of existential crisis, lives filled with pain, and love as the way to triumph over a nihilistic and cruel Universe.  This speaks to me in a big way.

The second piece is another disillusioned question about the nature of our existence, but this time with far more

intimate imagery.

 It was just written, actually, and my interpretation may a bit skewed in this case... nevertheless, the anaphora in the lyrics lends the poem to a substantiably gay interpretation.  Since my director is good friends with the composer, I know for a fact that it's erotic in nature.  When read as something erotic, the poem doesn't seem be as ambiguous as it is without that lens, wherein both the first and second persons have erections by the end of the poem.  

It's pretty standard for men to sing songs about being attracted to women, and it's pretty common for gay men to sing in those choirs and kind of ignore the fact that they're being untrue to themselves.  Personally, I view it as a means to reach a musical apex that transcends the literal meaning of the lyrics.  Although I put massive weight on lyrics to the songs that I listen to, perform of my volition, and put on mixes for friends, I generally end up ignoring the lyrics to songs that I am forced to sing in whatever ensemble I'm in, unless they have some profound meaning that speaks to me.

I'll go out on a limb and suppose that I am particularly picky about which types of songs I relate to. If a song is overtly straight, I feel uncomfortable.  I resent the fact that gay men have to pretend they're straight for all of the music they sing.  I'm sure many gay men don't really mind that much, because that's just the standard for music in the popular domain, especially with the classics that come from a history without canonical homosexuality.   For that reason, I have always just assumed that it'd be something I would deal with, and that would always work unidirectionally.  Now two of the songs we're singing are, albeit neutral in regards to any spectra of gender or sexuality, are pretty much gay.  I mean, one was written for gay men, meaning that the composer must have had a substantial intent to represent that community's particular needs, and the other most likely makes reference to multiple erections in the same bed.

This makes me very happy.  Partly because I can relate with the music better than something like "Girls, Girls, Girls".  Partly because music written by people of non-hetero-cis identities intrinsically have added significance.  But mostly because all the people who have so far been co-opting me into singing for their messages are now being co-opted into singing my message.  These songs, however significant, mean a lot more to me and the other gay men of glee club than they can for the straight men.  Whatever the reasons actually are for its inclusion into our repertoire, it pleases me extravagantly that, for once, based on what I think is a fair interpretation, the straight men are singing gay songs, and not just the other way around.

Only In The Dream

                 Richard Eberhart

Only in the dream that is like sleep
When time has taken the measure of live things
By stark origination
Is mankind redeemed

Only in the melancholy of the music
Of the midnight within the blood
Comes the fulfillment
After faring years.

Only in the balance of dark tenderness
When everything is seen in its purity
Do we penetrate
The myth of mankind

Only in the mastery of love
Is anything known of the world
Death put aside
With pure intent.

Only in the long wastes of loss
Comes the mystical touch on the brow
That triumph grow,
Insatiable, again.




***This poem was incorporated into a song of the same name that was commissioned by the New York City Gay Men's Chorus and that I'm singing in Glee Club.  It doesn't seem to me like these lyrics have received too much popularity in the 28 years it's been around, so I have no reservations about putting it up here for you poetry lovers.***

Intrinsic Belief in Souls

I have a hypothesis as to why we believe in souls.

Anthropologists have studied most cultures in the world.  They make some very specific observations and try to take notice of all the things we generally take for granted.

One of those observations is that every culture in the world has a belief in some immutable essence in anything that is alive.  For example, there's one particularly famous thought experiment in which you tell somebody the following story:

Say you have a raccoon.  Some crazy veterinarian decides to make him look particularly cool by painting him black and giving him a nice, white racing stripe.  She then concludes that he would get a great survival advantage if he had a way to spray vile-smelling liquid at his predators.

Then, you show this person a picture of a skunk and ask them whether the animal is still a raccoon, or if it has become a skunk.  Anybody over the age of, say, five will insist that it's still a raccoon, no matter what has happened to its appearance.

On the other hand, if you take a bunch of chairs, throw them against the wall to break off their legs and backs, nail the seats together into a large flat board, then put a leg on each of the four corners, and nail to each leg another leg to double their lengths.

Everybody will tell you it's no longer a bunch of chairs, it's a table.  Because inanimate objects don't have the same kind of unchangeable essence as living things...

Another commonality between every distinct population of humans is that they all have some sort of folk biology.  Every group of humans on Earth will take careful observations of living things around them, make judgments about how they grow and how fauna/flora change from season to season, year to year.  These are all changes that are carefully kept track of in cultures closely intertwined with natural environments.  Such curiosity has evolved into thorough methodical scientific exploration in developed nations, and is still present in isolated tribes in entirely rural locales.

Do you think these are related?  In The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker makes the argument that this signifies a module in the human brain that is conserved throughout the species.  The purpose of his argument is to suggest that, alongside pages worth of other human nature commonalities, there is an innate neurological module to process language.  He proposes that when a trait is present in every member of the species, it must be constructed from some genetic factor that is shared by every normally functioning member of that species.

Therefore, there's something about the human mind that directs it to identify and categorize living things.  There's an innate, structurally standard drive to think about living things in a certain way.  That perception includes the notion that living things do not change their identity.

There must be some reason for this to be the case. There must have been some reason to think of living things as inherently different from inanimate objects.  Importantly, this way of thinking must be at least practically consistent with the natural world, otherwise it would lead to incorrect assumptions that could lead to death.  Imagine you're a member of a tribe that has just expanded its territory to a new forest.  There are new species of flora there.  Take, for instance, a bush that has a certain kind of berry that is green in the spring.  Your cousin happened to eat such a berry when you were foraging with him, but you didn't eat one because you had already found a particular shrub that you enjoyed eating already.  He was the adventurous one.  Minutes after he ate the berry, he started vomiting blood and perished.

Now let's see all of this ties together:  In the summer, a couple months after your brother died from eating that dreadful green berry, you are foraging again and notice that, at the same location that you found those death-inducing fruits, you find a bush of red berries that look entirely different.  What do you do?  Eat the berries because they look different?  Or assume that there's something beneath the experience that means more than what it looks like?  Based on geographical location and a basic understanding that plants generally don't walk around in the course of a few months (it probably takes longer for that to happen), you can ensure some great modicum of safety by not choosing to eat those berries, and instead telling your tribemates that they shouldn't eat berries that look like those red ones you see before you.

But what is that underlying essence that makes the berries the same between being red and green?  What do you call it?  What would you call the underlying essence that makes a tadpole the precursor to a frog, as opposed to an entirely different species?

I'm sure you're familiar with the tendencies of many cultures around the world, generally in very low-tech, natural environments, to assume that every living thing has a soul.

I'm also sure that you're familiar with the fact that every living thing on this planet has a genome that gives rise to its being - a genome that stays constant, regardless of what you do to the organism for which it codes.

Now you understand what I'm getting at, right?  If not, let me drive the point home as Socratically as I can.

There is generally a tendency for our cognitive processes to gives us, as individuals, better models of the reality we live in.  Our perceptual systems pretty consistently monitor our surroundings in a way that delineates objects that are, in fact, consistently connected.  Gestalt psychology studies the way in which we bring together features to make non-summational wholes.  We understand the thoughts of those with whom we communicate in daily conversation, which are generally pretty consistent and accurate.  We understand the feelings of strangers, even when they're in situations we've never ourselves been in.

Our thoughts mirror reality.

But are our representations realistic, or functional depictions of what is around us?  How much of our presuppositions are simply working models that are computationally similar between each individual of humankind?  We all work pretty much the same way, so we draw inferences from a lack of information.  Language is the most salient example of a human activity that depends on neurological similarities to create meaning out of arbitrary events.

The letters on this page are only letters in your mind - a real-world description of what you see would more accurately call the phenomena you refer to as letters as a bunch of pixels formed by a computer screen.  An even more precise real-world description would be that they are oscillating photons generated at locations that are specified by a series of processors that are running according to the physical constraints of circuits that are physically and electrically connected to those photon-generating locations.

They're words in your mind, and that works.  You're a person.  You live in the realm of ideas.  You existence as a person is possible because an animal of the human species has a brain that works really, really hard to come up with a whole bunch of logical, coherent thoughts.  That animal obeys the laws of physics.  But you simultaneously participate in the world of concepts.

As a scientist, I choose to perceive things in a way that is completely consistent with reality.  I pay try to pay close attention to the event that give rise to my perceptions, and understand those phenomena in conjunction to what I think about the world.  I understand words, and I hear them as the gestalts of many acoustic events.  By understanding the computational system of language is the same between me and my conversational partners, and by roughly understanding the big-picture process by which that computational system moves between ideas and physical events, I have a rudimentary idea of what language is.  My perception is consistent with reality.

As a devout student who's fascinated by human evolution, I try to take note of any perceptions that are pretty consistent throughout humanity and find their correlates with real world explanations.  I am motivated to find the correlates between reality and our perceptual behavior.

My goal in this line of thought has been to find the common thread between the fact that living things all share the characteristic of being coded by an immutable genome, the fact that all human societies are curious about living things to the extent that they make methodical observations about everything about them, and the fact that every human culture has some belief in a soul.  I believe that there is strong reason to believe in a closely one-to-one relation between real concepts and perceptional concepts, if simply because any evolutionarily conserved conceptualization is more likely to propagate if it accurately reflects patterns that are consistently true in the real world.  From an anthropological perspective, it makes the most sense to assume that widely conserved behaviors are the result of selective pressures, and that the characteristics of our species have arisen from truth consistently acting on our species for every moment of our existence.

To this end, I believe that our belief in an immutable soul is simply the perceptual equivalent of every species' possession of a generationally constant genome.

Trusting somebody

I told somebody I trust a secret.

It feels good, I think, for them to know it.

They had recently told me something they don't generally talk about.  It took me a while to reciprocate.

It's funny; it's not significant to anybody but me.  But I nevertheless keep it secret.  Maybe that helps me to keep thinking it's important.  I can't really say whether it is, in fact, important.  But I still like having inner thoughts that are separate from what I say out loud.  And I like being able to share those inner thoughts with the people who mean a lot to me.  I like being able to express that sentiment.

Or am I just pragmatic?  Most likely.

NT8: HS

Alright.  Rest up tonight to make a huge dash for the finish starting tomorrow.  This organic chemistry exam will be incredibly difficult, and I have two chapters to read.  I haven't even started making the handy flashcards that got me through the last one.

So because I'm going to be so busy tomorrow, I want to take note of an idea that I had tonight.  I think I figured out how to make my secret society-changing, paradigm-shifting idea into a successful business model.  So, here's what I need to remember when my finals are over, hopefully to work on during this winter break:

Refine how advertisors reach their audience
Refine how audience receives advertisements
Commissions for contributors
Associate with research institutions
Focus on community
Put a higher premium on good site organization
Transparent to public (don't push membership)
Copyrights on content

And the tasks I think I can work on in the near future:

Search for interested personnel
Flesh out business model
Estimate relative costs and payoffs
Brainstorm potential pathways to starting up
Identify what motivates people to participate in communities
Identify what keeps people engaged with a particular interface

Things that I'll leave to the future, or may delegate to people who are better qualified:

Actual web design
Obtaining assets
Legal concerns
Making connections to the right people/institutions

Hard on Everyone

There's one Bear In Heaven song that I really can't get enough of. It's even on my Defying God playlist - a playlist I'm quite proud of. In particular, there's one lyric of that song that I think has some significance to me.  (Yes, that is a weak statement...)

"Life is hard on everyone"

It's not.

But in a sense, if you don't find life hard, I am inclined to say, with plenty of prejudice, that you aren't living the right way. 

There's a distinction to be drawn between living a hard life and being miserable.  But to live an easy life is, according to me, most likely wrong.  For life to not be hard on you, you must have gotten to a position of comfort by either your own means or you had the good fortune to find yourself in privilege, and you must not have subsequently been put, by yourself or by powers beyond your control, into a position that's personally difficult for you.

It is inevitable that such a person with an 'easy' life is surrounded by people with baggage, people with difficult lives.  Trying to help those who are less fortunate is not an easy task, so...

Any easy-liver is, by definition, in one of two camps:

1. Oblivious - Their eyes are closed.  They are not aware of their surroundings, and they are incapable of understanding others.  Nothing has been demanded of them, so they have not exited the metaphorical cave to experience the greater world.  Ignorance, because they aren't curious enough to see the world for the compromised, chaotic, and painful place that it is.  To this camp, I offer my sympathy, and I hope that somebody opens your eyes.  Furthermore, I hope that once your eyes are opened, you take upon yourself some sort of responsibility and challenge yourself to change the world for the better, whereupon your life will become more vibrant and challenging.

2. Selfish - They are completely aware of the challenges facing others, but intentionally refrain from solving problems that are bigger than themselves.  To this camp, I profess my disdain.  You have doomed yourself to be morally and existentially useless.

Here's an ironic twist to this line of thinking:  if more people were to make their own lives difficult for the sake of improving the world, we may be able to think of living a hard life as entirely separate from being unhappy.  I mean, being able to see a positively healthy future requires that you be disappointed consistently.  Working towards Utopia is difficult, and the failure leads to disillusionment.  But then when people try to ameliorate the unhappiness, they give up.  There is a twisted entwining of earnestness and dissatisfaction.

Now imagine a world that has reached a point where people try their best to actually be good people.  Unhappiness would no longer be the result of disillusionment--it would be the consequence of contingencies, unintentional mistakes, and the simple realities of life.  It's still challenging to sustain that kind of thing, but at least it's rewarding when you know that other people care about you as much as you care about them. 

I care a lot.  I can't do the apathy thing.  Life is hard for me, mostly because I have chosen to take on a few challenges I deem vitally pertinent.  I've essentially decided to leave it to the Universe to decide whether I'll ever be satisfied.  Maybe that's the right thing to do.

Defying God

#	Name	Artist	Album	Comments
1	The Pulse Of This Skyline With Lightning Like Nerves	Slow Six	Nor'easter	[Prelude]
2	Chained	The xx	Coexist	I was raised with love by my parents on the bank of a large river.
3	Inside a Boy	My Brightest Diamond		Every nightfall, I stay awake to explore, past curfew and past my bedtime.
4	Settle Down	Kimbra	Vows	One night, my parents find out and admonish me for being too rambunctious
5	The Queen's Rebuke/The Crossing	The Decemberists	The Hazards Of Love	but I refuse to sacrifice my freedom, so I run away from home.
6	The Universe is Going to Catch You	The Antlers	In The Attic of the Universe	Once at my safest hiding spot, I hear them coming for me,
7	I Follow Rivers	Lykke Li	Wounded Rhymes	So I take off my clothes and jump into the river.
8	Bubbles Shining Over the Sea	Arata Iiyoshi	Hideki Sakamoto	I see lights I see across the water, and I swim to them
9	These Rivers Between Us	Slow Six	Tomorrow Becomes You	But the river is wide
10	The Rip Tide	Beirut	The Rip Tide	and the rip tide pulls me back,
11	Eon Trap	Kelly Bailey	Half-Life 2: Episode Two	too strong to let me leave;
12	What's Wrong?	Grizzly Bear	Shields	I continue to paddle with all of my might, but with undying suspicion...
13	Truth Behind the Project	Takeharu Ishimoto	Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- OST	Yes, their warnings were more than proverbs.
14	Tau-9	Kelly Bailey	Half-Life 2	I understand the nature of the undertow. I feel God's presence, as the waves relax until they are completely still.
15	Oh	Maker		I acknowledge Him and recite a prayer of worship I learned when younger.
16	Mutual Core	Björk	Biophilia	God says to me, “Hush, my Son. I will always be with you. You are still a small piece of Me, and I promise to always watch after you. Yet, I can only keep you safe if you remain with your family in the world I prepared for you. As a child, you must respect your parents. Only through the wisdom of the ages can you understand the world. After I send you back home, keep with you this memory, and live with dignity and reverence.”
17	Disappeared	Yoko Shimomura	Kingdom Hearts -FINAL MIX- Additional Tracks	God has been pulling me closer during this lull in time. He pulls me deep under the water.
18	What The Water Gave Me	Florence + The Machine	Ceremonials	I wake under a bright morning sun, at home, with the memory of unmatched grandeur.
19	Where We Belong	Passion Pit	Gossamer	I am where I was told to be, having been prevented from throwing myself into unknown danger
20	Cool Light	Bear In Heaven	I Love You	I shiver with the knowledge that He will always be with me.
21	Red	Lost In The Trees	A Church That Fits Our Needs	Home is bright, a beach touching trees. I absorb the details until every single one is a little piece of me.
22	Lewis Takes Action	Owen Pallett	Heartland	Restless, defensive, and agitated, I know I must move.
23	You're Not Supposed To Be Here	Kelly Bailey	Half-Life 2	I grab clothes, a bag, a bow, a quiver of arrows, and water. Departure.
24	Mnemonic In Motion	Wires Under Tension		Daylight moves forward, and with it my numbed feet.
25	Thirsty	The National	Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers	Becoming thirsty, I retreat into the woods. I will continue after twilight.
26	Seven Devils	Florence + The Machine	Ceremonials	I see a serpentine beast, and I freeze. God's voice resounds in my ears, filling the words of every important lesson I have ever learned.
27	Tryst With Mephistopheles	Owen Pallett	Heartland	The creature speaks to me: “As you have listened to the words of your own kind, please listen to mine. I am no beast, just as you are no pawn of a deity. I see that you need shelter, and I promise to show you hospitality. Your family and friends fear and kill us, but we refuse to sink to their level. At the very least, we will protect the little peace that we have.”
28	You Could Be Happy	Snow Patrol	Eyes Open	New life in a place like this could fill up the many holes in my heart. Revelation!
29	Black Rainbow	St. Vincent	Actor	The walk back to his village takes my mind off of the past. He takes me to his home, puts some padding on the floor that he can sleep on, then generously gives me his bed. So much about this foreign town excites me, and I can't fall asleep.
30	Stargaze	Xavier Rudd	White Moth	The serpent sees me, and decides to show me around. Together, we stargaze.
31	Guard Down	Kelly Bailey	Half-Life 2: Episode One	I tell him about the ways I have been disappointed and hurt. He listens. He tells me about his world. I listen. We both feel the world become smaller and larger, all at once. Slowly, we surrender to the feeling of peace and just exist.
32	Battle in the Forgotten City	Nobuo Uematsu	Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children	At the same place I entered the village, five of my most imposing cousins arrive with heralding cries of bringing me back. Denizens of this forested sanctuary exit their houses with a defensive air. My cousins shout, and the natives shout back. There is debate, argument, and all that fear will catalyze.
33	War	Hypnotic Brass Ensemble	The Hunger Games Score	When there are threats of war, I whisper to my new friend that I should leave. He offers to take me somewhere safe. We run away with so much excitement we can't help but laugh.
34	Fanfare for the Brave	Senju Akira	Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood OST 1	Although I'm lost in the woods, I follow him. I can only muster courage up to the point that we reach the river.
35	Hidden Highland	Arata Iiyoshi	Hideki Sakamoto	I hadn't told him about being submerged by God Himself in the River...
36	The Abduction Of Margaret	The Decemberists	The Hazards Of Love	We undress, stuffing our clothes hastily into his bag.
37	The Darkness	Arata Iiyoshi	Hideki Sakamoto	The river is far colder than I remember it being the night previous. We swim tirelessly with the knowledge that, were we to hesitate, I would be lost to a lifetime of submission. But for the waves and our own splashing, silence envelops us.
38	Beginning of Breeding	Yoko Shimomura	The 3rd Birthday OST	Around the middle of the river, I see a light on the opposite shore. I become frantic. I shout to hurry.
39	Disrupted Original	Kelly Bailey	Half-Life 2: Episode One	Behind me, the trees fall below the waterline, giving the illusion that the world behind us is sinking. I warn my friend, and he agrees we must swim faster. The same mysterious fate befalls the boulders dotting the river.
40	White Land	Arata Iiyoshi	Naoto Ishida	The stars, the moon, and the ethereal pinprick all grow brighter as we approach land. Rain begins to fall, scattering the many lights, dazzling me more than ever before.
41	Wanderlust	Björk	Wanderlust	As my first encounter with my world's deity, time comes to a standstill and again God appears. The water around Him inexplicably recedes, and He is standing before us. He declares with timbre, “Audacious Man. You have sacrificed all that you have ever held dear. The life that awaits you is outside of my control. I had faith in you, but you destroyed my hopes for your future. Relent in your selfish quest for vanity. I will take you back and continue to provide for you.”
42	Little Faith	The National	High Violet (Expanded Edition)	“Never. I deign to create a world much larger than the one you so graciously lent me. Take back from me that miserly existence. My dreams far exceed what you could ever hope. I am leaving."
43	Face On	Yoko Kanno	Wolf's Rain OST 2	By now the ground is completely exposed, and we are standing in heavy mud. I demand from the Serpent my quiver and bow. I aim at God.
44	Time Control	or Controlled By Time		He insists “You know nothing. This Universe is as easily afforded to my will as if it were a figment of my imagination. Anything you do is destined to fail if I will it to. You would be unwise to defy me.” I refuse to flinch, despite the palpable rise in temperature.
45	J-E-N-O-V-A		Distant Worlds II	The Serpent is equally stoic. He draws with a dagger a circle on the ground, which has completely desiccated. Drawing the knife to his hand, he draws a streak of blood and adds it to the circle. He then folds his hands, and appears to pray.
46	Born Anew	Masashi Hamauzu	Final Fantasy XIII Original Soundtrack	As God walks towards me, one of the stars grows brighter at an alarming rate, until it erupts into light and strikes the Serpent. I am stunned, a fiery pain in my throat.
47	You Do You	Bear In Heaven	Beast Rest Forth Mouth	I stare at the prismatic steam as it clears to reveal a glowing lance in the hands of my companion.
48	Triumph of a Heart	Björk	Medúlla	While God looks on without surprise, The Serpent hurls at Him his lance with ferocity. Almost simultaneously, my arrow lands in His left eye.
49	I Am the Antichrist to You	Kishi Bashi	151A	Silence. The ground opens up below God. He is static above an obsidian void.
50	Chaotic End	Masashi Hamauzu	Dirge of Cerberus -Final Fantasy VII- Original Soundtrack (Disc-2)	He covers his wound and, without a word, leaves our world.
51	Dusknoir	Arata Iiyoshi	Hideki Sakamoto	Once He has vanished, I hear in my head the echo of a message that He must have intended for me: “You will never find the kind of love that I could have given you. You have relinquished a life of solace and ease. Everything yours for the taking.” To this, I feel obligated to shout back to his quickly fading presence: “You gave me everything I never asked for! Forget my family. I know exactly what I want now and I don't need it handed to me by my ancestors.”
52	Idle Heart	Bear In Heaven	I Love You	The immediate response is a flood of water rushing in from both upstream and downstream of what used to be our great river.
53	Ready To Start	Arcade Fire	The Suburbs	The lights in the sky grow brighter still, until the blistering night sky is too much to look at.
54	Period	Chemistry	Unknown Album	Slowly, our eyes adjust to the light and it still hasn't darkened—but we soon realize that the sun has taken the place of the moon, and the starlight expanded to a sheet of white
55	Sleeping Ute	Grizzly Bear	Shields	Finally, our escape is complete. Liberty is now true. My serpentine friend and I look at each other and smile in relief. We decide to travel together for the time being. I mention to him the light that I saw when running away from home for the first time, and he agrees to help me search for its source. We traverse the side of the river until we find it. Silence suits us, having shared so much already in the past few hours. We soon come across the charred remains of a small village. In the middle of all of the thoroughly destroyed buildings, one flimsy structure seems to have defied all odds and survived the fire without a single scorch mark. Though hard to make out in the daylight, there's a lantern above the door with a hearty fire encapsulated by the glass.