something you should do RIGHT NOW.

1. go to masonjennings.com
2. click on the "music" tab
3. click on the album cover with the orange tree
4. scroll down and listen to "jesus, are you real?"

asking a music nut what his/her favorite song is is like asking a normal, sane person whether they like breathing or blinking more. it just doesn't compute as an answerable question. however, if you were to ask me "what song has most completely dissolved and deconstructed and rebuilt your entire goddamn life?" i would say this song, for sure.

i was fairly devoutly christian until i was about 16 (got confirmed and all), then i stopped going to church, got really depressed, almost died, etc. did a bunch of other stuff largely in my head and less in physical buildings of worship for the next 10 or so years...now when people ask me what i am (whatever that means) i can honestly say for the first time that i'm just happy. and if that's true, i don't see why you need all that other stuff. i mean, as long as i'm not hurting anyone in the process. but dealing with faith in different manifestations has been a huge deal in my life, and reasonably so. i really think the central existential problem of human existence is figuring out how to love yourself (and by extension the world...not people, just the world and the way it works). neither you nor the world is perfect. seems like a reasonable basis for a relationship, but so many people can't accept that. i couldn't for the longest time. i wanted to make things work my way.

anyway, so many songs (good songs, mind) are about loving a girl, or falling out of love with a girl, or whatever. but it occurred to me for the first time three years ago, after the girl i had at one point thought i was going to marry moved away and i was sitting in my apartment alone trying to make sense of that, that you can't expect to love someone else until you learn to love yourself. and i never had. and i think, that underneath all the rust and whatever else that's accumulated on the concept of religion, under all that stuff that drives people to be snarky athiests that wear black t-shirts with sarcastic darwinian messages written in white on the front, that's what people want religion to do. to teach them how to love themselves. how to not be afraid of the fact that everything breaks. realizing that that was more important than being in love with a girl, or for having a date for the weekend to make me feel like someone cared about me, was pretty much the most significant realization i've ever had.

so, long story short, that's what this song signifies for me. you know, pretty much the most important single issue/struggle of my entire life. no big deal. whatevs.

all this hee-hawing made me hungry. powering up radar...search query...locate chocolate-based noms...please stand by...