Ear Candy!

I haven’t done one of these posts in a while, so it’s time to get the wheels turn­ing again.

First up is a song by With­in Temp­ta­tion called Nev­er End­ing Sto­ry. This is one of my favourites from their discography:

This song’s melodies and words erupt with truth; in life, we are part of that greater tale. I also think that, read­ing between the lines, it’s a good idea to be able to switch roles between observ­er and par­tic­i­pant, muse and pur­vey­or, cre­ator and con­sumer, leader and fol­low­er. The stream of life is burst­ing with oppor­tu­ni­ties for us to expe­ri­ence, learn, and accu­mu­late knowl­edge. The more we explore, the more ver­sa­tile it can make us.

Being present and aware of one’s exis­tence in the over­all con­text of that tale as it is being writ­ten is, to me, one of the most impor­tant aspects of being alive.

You can find the lyrics to this song here.

And now for some­thing com­plete­ly different …

If you know my tastes, you might remem­ber I’m also a long time fan of the Cruxshad­ows. Aside from Rogue’s grav­i­ty defy­ing hair get­ting plen­ty of stage time, they’ve been burn­ing up the air­waves with some espe­cial­ly pro­found tracks dur­ing the last decade and only seem to be get­ting bet­ter with age.

What I’d like to share with my read­ers tonight is a 2009 release, Quick­sil­ver, that stands bril­liant­ly head-and-shoul­ders above the rest. I’m actu­al­ly rather embar­rassed this one some­how man­aged to fly under my radar until just last night.

Quick­sil­ver is a moti­va­tion­al anthem whose lush, dance­able sound­scapes and pow­er­ful lyrics con­vey soul­ful per­se­v­er­ence with no short­age of unapolo­getic hon­esty and raw emo­tion­al pow­er. The vocal into­na­tions will rever­ber­ate par­tic­u­lar­ly well in the heart of any­one who’s been down that unen­vi­able road to hell (and back).

(Is it real­ly any won­der this track end­ed up top­ping the charts?)

Quick­sil­ver is a song that a lot of peo­ple have need­ed to hear for a long time. It beau­ti­ful­ly touch­es on the price of indi­vid­ual strug­gle, voic­es the feel­ings that come with rebuild­ing the psy­che, and exudes the courage that comes with learn­ing once more to step forward.

I’d actu­al­ly take it a step fur­ther and say what this song inspires in me: the reminder that heal­ing is not all (or always) indi­vid­u­al­ized. Some­times it can take the help of anoth­er, or many oth­ers. If you know some­one who’s down and hurt­ing, don’t let it go unno­ticed. Share inspi­ra­tion, and let hope find a way in.