I absolutely adore this Caedmon's Call song... I first fell in love with it when my dear friend, my roommate Heidi's brother was in a crazy intense and life-threatening bike accident a few years ago. By God's grace alone he overcame so many negative prognoses and is now, incredibly, studying to be a prosthetic-orthotic technician at George Brown College in Toronto.

It was early in November of 2004 when we got the news. What I remember most about the weeks following is being overwhelmed by my grief, my concern, my fears, and my worry. Being so far from Eric while his life hung in the balance had me feeling all kinds of uselessness. My roommate at the time, Sarah (also a friend of Eric's) and I got quite resourceful in our letter and e-mail writing during Eric's long hospital stay, even making audio tapes of us reading children's books and playing songs on the guitar to brighten his long, pain-filled days. Eventually, in early January, we finally bucked up and flew out to see him (which was, incidentally, when I first met Heidi).

This Caedmon's Call song "Love Alone" had never really held any intense meaning for me, but during this season of my life it became full of implications and significance. I held it close to me as a small representative of the many thoughts I was struggling through. But in that time, my biggest cry to God was this: "Why does it hurt SO much to care for others? Why must it hurt so bad?"

There are so many things that those around us can do to break our hearts, and if we chose to love, then we must know that we may someday feel the full strain of loss, or regret; disappointment, or grief. It will not always be their fault; Eric certainly didn't mean to cause anyone pain when his motorcycle was hit by an inattentive driver in 2004; our pain was borne from our love of him. I think it is a righteous, holy grief, the kind that splits your heart when you long for those you love and care about to know and love Jesus, but they don't, and they won't; when you see your best friend's family fall to pieces when you're 9; when someone you love (or someone someone you love loves) takes their own life. When you don't know how to "fix" it, but you want to so bad. And your heart instinctively cries out for someone, anyone, but still always, somehow, that same Someone: "Give me Your hand to hold because I can't stand to love alone."

I have said to much; I should let these words speak for themselves. Read whatever you will; I know that every time I come to them, in every new empty-hearted scenario, they meet me there with something new. Even now they wrap around my particular grief and raise me up to grasp a hem, hovering just above me, but is it low enough? And I am glad that I have reached for it after all.

Love Alone

No one would love me
If they knew all the things I hide
My words fall to the floor
As tears drip through the telephone line

And the hands I’ve seen raised to the sky
Were not waving but drowning all this time
And I try to build the ark that they will need
To float to you upon the crystal sea

Give me Your hand to hold
'Cause I can't stand to love alone
And love alone is not enough to hold us up
We've got to touch Your robe
So swing Your robe down low
Swing Your robe down low

The prince of despair's been beaten
But the loser still fights
Death's on a long leash
Stealing my friends to the night

And everyone cries for the innocent
But You say to love the guilty too
And I'm surrounded by suffering and sickness
So I'm working tearing back the roof

Give me Your hand to hold
'Cause I can't stand to love alone
And love alone is not enough to hold us up
We've got to touch Your robe
So swing Your robe down low
Swing Your robe down low

And the pain of the world is a burden
And it's my cross to bear
And I stumble under all the weight
I know you're Simon standing there
And I know you're standing there

Give me your hand to hold
'Cause I can't stand to love alone
And love alone is not enough to hold us up
We've got to touch Your robe
So swing Your robe down low
Swing Your robe down low


*The part of the song that I have italicized is the part where Jesus echoes are cries and He, in His own human experience, cries with us. I just didn't want you to miss it.

Alright. So I've been reading poetry lately, upon the prescription of my English prof. Of course, however unfortunately for someone like me, reading poetry inevitably turns into writing poetry and descending into a mushy pile of romantic, whimsical sappiness. It's a tragedy, really. But it's true.

So I've decided that if I must go, you all must go there with me! Don't worry guys, it's doubtful that I'll subject you to any of my own poetic endeavors; that might be just a bit too painful for all of us involved, and just when I've gotten my readership to an all-time high, hovering somewhere above 2...

Self-deprecation aside, I was struck again today by the profound loveliness of these lyrics to a song entitled Healed by Nichole Nordeman. If you've ever heard it, it's truly poetry set to song.

Alright... has anyone ever had the sensation, where they're hearing a song, some music which is presumably "new", and they KNOW they've heard it before?

I get that a lot.

Most often, it's the sensation that some song, supposedly "new", MUST have been out since 2002 at least, since I know I've heard it a few years ago. It's just this general unimpressed-ness with the song, and the insistence that it is truly nothing new. I've never been able to get to the bottom of that feeling, but my assumption is usually (to calm the cognitive dissonance) that perhaps the song IS older, but is just now being radio-released.

However, this is something altogether different.

This **new** sensation first occurred to me at some point last year, when I bought The Afters' album, I Wish We All Could Win and could have SWORN that the opening riff and lines were a loose rip-off of a song that I at first couldn't place, but eventually attributed to a semi-obscure Sixpence None The Richer song entitled "Brighten My Heart", which appeared on the collective worship project Exodus. However, after finally dragging this information out of the dustiest corners of my brain (it haunted me for weeks!), I discovered that the similarities were only tonal, thematic, and mostly, imagined. So my great song rip-off conspiracy theory died that day.

Today, however,I felt that prickling "I've heard this before" feeling creep up the back of my brain once more... and this time, my instincts were not wrong! Taking a listen of Hawk Nelson's album, Letters to the President (which, in my opinion, is a shamefully copped-out album title for a Canadian band just breaking on the American music scene), the song "Take Me" struck me, and the second line in particular stuck out like a sore thumb.

"Can you hear me, does anyone around me
Feel the way that I feel now?"

I was ON to something here! A little brain-searching, and I had the line tagged to the Dashboard Confessional song "Saints and Sailors", which opens with these lines:

"This is where I say I've had enough,
and no one should ever feel the way that I feel now"

I know, I know what you're thinking - that 7 words does not a conspiracy make. However, you'd have to be familiar with Dashboard's song to appreciate the feeling that rushes through you when you hear Hawk Nelson sing the line, 2nd line into the song in both cases, following the exact same melody and rhythm, even including suspending and delaying the delivery on the word "feel", that Dashboard made trademark (in my humble opinion) 4 years earlier. (Dashboard's The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most was released in 2001, while Hawk Nelson's Letters came out in 2005.)




So, what constitutes a rip off? Is this excusable? "Take Me" is a decent song, for what it's worth. Strong melody, although whether or not their style is a Relient K rip-off is an entirely different conversation; meanwhile, Dashboard's "Saints and Sailors" is classic for Carrabba fans. Or, alternately, is taking a line from someone's song, note for note, an appropriate and catchy "inter-musical reference"? Supposing the Hawk Nelson boys groove, as I do, to the sounds of Dashboard, is this nothing more than a musical "tip of the hat"?

I, for one, am not convinced. It's a pretty gutsy and presumptuous move for rookies like Hawk Nelson to make; besides the fact that they look about 14 years old, it makes them seem like they can't even write their own shaz. However, I'm interested to see where others weigh in on it... should I give Hawk Nelson the benefit of the doubt here?

Their musical careers have thus far produced nothing even faintly approaching blistering genius; however, there's time for that... geesh, let them get through puberty first! (tee hee... actually, they're probably my age.) And their album, while nowhere near worth the street cred of Relient K, is not half bad.

What's your take on the incident I've creatively dubbed "Nelsongate"? Leaving the legal implications aside, unless you have more information than I do, which is certainly not difficult given that I have taken about 5 minutes to investigate this before shooting off this post, how do YOU feel about Nelsongate? Does it anger you? Offend you? Confuse you? Perhaps make you bored or drowsy? Whatever your opinion, I'd love to hear it... give the tracks a listen if it's humanly possibly for you... just to get the gist of the rip-offage.


Your faithful reporter for all things useless,
~Kelly