Dirt
Confessions & Reflections
Why is sin so easy and virtue so hard? Animal House, Bachelor Party and The Hangover offer some of Hollywood’s well-known and humorous portrayals of partying, drinking, sex and debauchery… and it looks fun!
Not quite pornography, but walking right up to the line and showing enough to make me laugh… or lust… and think.
Some movies, TV shows, rock songs and other entertainment imply that excessive partying, sex and violence somehow leads to happiness. Is that dynamic the root of sinful temptation? Sin looks fun?
Virtuous Sin
I’m liberal with my thinking and drinking. Unrestrained, permissive, frequent. Watching and contemplating violence, murder, sex... is that bad?
The Sermon on the Mount extended the Ten Commandments from physical acts to matters of the heart and mind. So it’s not just the actual acts that violate the law - murder, adultery, lying. It’s also the internal reality. Angry thoughts that lead to murder. The lust that precedes adultery.
Lent isn’t just about giving up sweets or depriving yourself from social media. For me, it’s about examining what’s in my heart and mind. The gap between appearing righteous and being righteous.
I’m giving up beer for Lent this year. But can I give up sinful thoughts?
Pluck It Out
If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. So if your eye causes you to think about sin… If you’ve lusted after a woman or man, have you already sinned? If you thought violently toward another person, have you already sinned?
So it’s not only the act. It’s the thought?
I’ve contemplated that extreme. When do your thoughts cross the line? When Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people during the 2020 Kenosha protests - killing two, wounding one. Acquitted of all charges. It inspired parts of my song “Confession” which opens the B-side of my “Vinyl Scars” album.
The song explores violent thoughts, rage, and the internal justifications we make.
“I am free to dream and think whatever I please.”
That’s the 1st chorus. The narrator claims freedom to think anything - violent fantasies, hateful thoughts, perverted desires - with no consequence. “Harmless violence makes no sense / There must be a consequence... Anger, rage... I taste my stain... No restrictions... No restraint...”
But is there a consequence? For thinking it?
Digging in the Dirt
“Too much thinking makes my head hurt.”
Initially I wrote the opening lyrics for “Dirt” as, “Too much drinking...” It felt forced. I’d already explored unrestrained thinking in “Confession,” where the narrator defiantly claims “I am free to dream and think whatever I please.” That lyric kept rattling around in my head. What if the problem isn’t the drinking? What if it’s the thinking itself?
I shifted the opening lyrics, and the song found its center:
Lose or win? My thoughts begin to spin...
Pressure starts to build - I feel the urge to sin
Think about the future - where’m I s’posed to be?
Suffocating fear with high anxiety...
And I know.... ohhh....
I know.... I have to go...
To the dirt
Every section ends the same way: returning to the dirt.
Digging out of the Dirt
I emailed Magda with the cover art idea. “Make it smell like fresh dirt.” She came back with a mashup of my demon character’s hand - from the Vinyl Scars Angel/Demon artwork series - bursting from a grave, reaching for an empty gin bottle. The tombstone reads “R.I.P. JOHN BARLEYCORN, Oct 1913 - 2022” - a nod to Jack London’s memoir about alcoholism and the folk tradition of alcohol personified as death and resurrection.
Around the same time I was creating Dirt’s first demo, we visited the American Prohibition Museum in Savannah, GA. There were multiple John Barleycorn exhibits, including a funeral procession photo and a wax figure of Carrie Nation wielding her axe. Nation looked like my grade school principal - same severe expression, same certainty about stamping out sin (or sending me to the corner). I sent the photo to my sister. We both laughed.
Ash Wednesday Rocks
I released “Dirt” on February 14, 2024. Valentine’s Day. It also happened to be Ash Wednesday.
The convergence wasn’t planned, but it worked. Valentine’s Day celebrates romantic love, connection, life. Ash Wednesday marks mortality, dust, death. A song about returning to the dirt landing on both felt right.
Every refrain in “Dirt” ends the same way:
And I know.... I have to go... to the dirt
I know.... I can’t escape... this endless dirt
I know... I’ll find my peace... deep down in the dirt
I know... They’ll bury me... in the deep dark dirt
The Ash Wednesday liturgy says the same thing. When the priest marks your forehead with ashes: “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
“Dirt” is a meditation on that truth. Mortality is inescapable. So are the thoughts that lead you there.
Fat Tuesday Paradox
I enjoy the idea of Mardi Gras. Party hard and get it out of your system before “the fast” of Lent begins. Eat, drink and be merry. But it seems a bit strange if I frame it like, get all your sinning done before attempting to be virtuous. And going even further… can I give up the thoughts?
Dirt ends where Fat Tuesday ends for some of us:
Face down flat in the middle of the floor
Passed out cold and waiting...
To return... yeah
To return...
To the dirt
The hangover. The morning after. Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. Tomorrow I’ll get ashes on my forehead and be reminded to remember that I am dust. The party’s over. Lent begins. And the slow progression toward grace starts.
Finding Grace
It does make me wonder... How would I even go about changing how I think about things? Especially private thoughts that are insensitive, mean, hateful or lustful?
I can’t help that my product manager brain kicks in. What if I mapped my thoughts like an Eisenhower matrix? Sinful vs. virtuous on one axis, frequent vs. rare on the other. Would most of my mental real estate end up in the ‘frequent and sinful’ quadrant?
It’s a journey, not a solution but when I start paying attention to my thoughts, I feel like I start “running into Jesus.”
But that’s for another story.