Stepping Stones through the Underbrush

Many of our dear friends and family that have listened to our song Upwards, beyond the Onstreaming have found some of the lyrics unsettling. Admittedly there are elements of the song that are a little uncomfortable, and they are there by design. Asking really difficult questions of ourselves is not a comfortable exercise, but it is one that is crucial for personal growth. The greatest art, literature, and music can force us to confront these darker aspects of human nature while still urging us to seek the light. Perhaps no one did this better than Dostoevsky, whose work has influenced both of us greatly.

If you have not yet heard the song in it's entirety, we invite you to give it a few very careful listens. If you have listened to the song already and felt uncomfortable, we invite you to listen again and to read the listening notes provided below. We hope that our own thoughts on the song will help provide stepping stones through the underbrush of dark and dangerous emotions and eventually lead you to the real message of the song: "Love as you would be loved."

Listening notes

"The title from this song is taken from the short story, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges. Although the song has little to do with the esoteric ideas of Borges, I feel that the title describes beautifully the surreal and distant place that the guitar takes me when I play the song. A place where it is safe to be ourselves.

In my interpretation of the song, that distant place is not real. The darker moments of the song even question if it's possible to continue dreaming of such a place. Michael's interpretation of the song and his added composition infuse a degree of hope that such a place is real, even if it always seems just beyond our grasp."

-Danny

"To sing this song I imagine I am someone else. The words grow my empathy for others. They are not my words. The words awaken me to other’s stories. They grow my appreciation for the individual challenges we each face and further my respect for the human experience. The words remind me to love."

-Michael

lyrics

Contributing works

-Borges, Jorge Luis. "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." Ficciones.

-Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment.

-de Unamuno, Miguel. Abel Sanchez: Historia de una pasion. 

-"The Rhetorics of Religious Violence." Radiowest. KUER, Salt Lake City. 15 February 2007. Radio
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