Son,
At this point, I could probably claim this blog as the biggest example of me following through on a creative promise I’ve made to myself or others.
Yes, I am acutely aware that I haven’t even done this for two weeks.
What is it about promises that makes them so difficult to keep? The phrase “broken promises” is such a vivid one. You know someone is trying to get off easy when they talk about how they didn’t keep a promise they had made. It’s not that they didn’t keep a promise. They broke it. Breaking a promise carries imagery with it. If something breaks it’s either irreparable or it will take someone a lot of work to fix it.
A couple weeks ago, my Japanese friend and I were discussing the word promise in English and Japanese and we stumbled upon a fundamental difference in how the word is treated in Japanese. You don’t break a promise in Japanese.
You tear it.
This really affected me for some reason. The image of a promise being torn in two struck me as more permanent for whatever reason. It’s infinitely fascinating to me how language has a huge part in shaping our worldview, but we can talk about that another time.
The point is, I think I am able to keep the promise of writing to you daily because the stakes are higher in this particular endeavor. Consistency is something I fight with often, but I’m okay with letting it win this time.
Regardless of being able to keep up a daily schedule, it doesn’t mean I haven’t struggled. I know I’m not getting any sympathy here, but writing something meaningful on a daily basis is a heavy weight to carry. On top of that, I have to pick the perfect song every day. For someone as flighty as myself (I can’t even pick something to eat in a timely manner when we go out to eat), the song is such an important decision that I can’t afford to screw up.
I was aided in that decision by my writing class today. I gave them a journal assignment. They had to listen to a list of songs I played for them and write what they thought about each song. The kids really enjoyed the assignment and it was nice to have the chance to expose them to some music that they would have no other way of hearing. One of the songs was Jimmy Eat World(JEW)’s Futures. The song is from their 2004 album of the same name. It was their fourth full length and the first of their albums that I wasn’t fully sold on. I had a lot of problems with the album, particularly the lyrically repulsive Drugs or Me. Other tracks felt too heavy-handed instrumentally. However, JEW has a strong command on opening tracks, and Futures is one of their best openers, hands down.
The song explodes from the outset and I think it shocked my students a little! Everything is typical Jimmy Eat World, but it just ties together so perfectly, from the verse to the chorus to the quiet breakdown that builds to a classic ending. It flows superbly. The lyrics seem like a thinly veiled commentary on the impending presidential election in 2004 (I hope for better in November), but the concept outside of that is a decent one.
It seemed appropriate to play this song for you, since my future is now largely based on becoming a competent parent and raising you and your future siblings to be decent people. I shared with my coworkers today that I’d heard somewhere that our job as parents is to screw up our children as little as possible, and that definitely resonates with me. I can only strive to give you the tools to discern that I am fallible yet loving, flawed yet dutiful as your father.
I believe in the future I’m giving you.
Ultrasounds Mixtape 