'Imaginary Enemy' (Colin Demo) + Some Words

Hello everyone... I appreciate your patience and even encouragement with our period of rest here last week. I can say that it was very good for me and I feel extremely grateful to have a job where I could take a week off  to further educate myself on systemic racism, police brutality and how I can deepen my activism & understanding of my place in it all. (that in itself is a privilege) 

For many years now I have been trying to make anti-racist action/learning a part of my regular existence (it is a life-long process) and what that really means is staying in a student mindset and consistently humbling myself while communicating/navigating these topics.  It means apologizing at times when I get it wrong but more importantly it's about trying to take lessons and integrate them into new patterns of behavior & thought.  I'm working on a longer post about this journey and what its looked like for me so far, what resources have helped me, etc which will be a public post I can share with all who wish to read it.  

 For now if you want a deeper understanding of the history behind the US Prison system, it's connection to slavery and the relationship between Black Americans and the police,  I strongly suggest watching the Netflix documentary 13th by director Ava DuVernay which is actually available for free on Youtube.  Start there. To understand more about the militarization of our Police forces I recommend the documentary, Do Not Resist by director Craig Atkinson which you can rent from Apple or Amazon. 

 Oddly enough I was already planning to take June 1st-7th off as I felt myself slipping deeper into some mental health struggles lately so it wasn't necessarily the relaxing vacation I had initially planned but it was still extremely helpful to take a break from the daily grind so thanks again.  xoxo

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IMAGINARY ENEMY

As mentioned previously Blue Sky Noise was the first Circa album where all of us were actively contributing vocal & lyric ideas throughout the very long and arduous 2 year writing process. Why was it that long? Well we had basically been in a write/record/tour cycle from the beginning of Juturna throughout On Letting Go. It was like I blinked and all of the sudden 4 years+had gone by.  So much had changed in our personal lives but in some strange way there was an element of stillness throughout. If you could imagine the stage as a spaceship time machine it was like we stayed on the stage and the world swirled around us like a hyper speed time lapse.   

  'Imaginary Enemy' was another one that I created myself as a full demo with Vocals and then presented to the band.  I've only done this on a handful of occasions and most of them were for BSN. As I mentioned it was a very long writing cycle and we were throwing everything we had against the wall to see what would stick.  I think we demo'd over 60 songs to some degree by the time we were actually in the studio. It was crazy. 

So about this song... We were going through a lot of changes and challenges.  Some were overtly painful and others were confusingly so.  In the middle of this writing process Anthony, Steve and I all moved out of our shared band house into new living spaces with our significant others. We were renting another small house by a nature preserve (Creek House) as a rehearsal/storage/writing space but no one was actively living there.  It was the first time in the band's history that we weren't cohabitating and while we all still loved each other very much there was some distance growing between us that created some communication breakdowns and heartache in the midst of immense artistic pressure both self applied and by those we worked with.

As he has discussed publicly, Anthony was going through a lot of mental health problems at this time and struggling with substance abuse in a way that I hadn't witnessed with him prior. I was struggling with alcohol dependency and depression/anxiety cycles myself.  If I am honest I think we all were retreating into our various vices in one way or another & began simultaneously playing the roles of enablers, victims and supportive loving friends to each other.  It's important to note that even at our most frayed moments, the dynamic between all 5 of us has always remained loving to its core.   I'm explaining all of this because this paradox sets the tone for what I was feeling when I wrote this song.  

Have you ever had a friend, family member or romantic partner whom seemed to resent your desire to help them? Have you ever resented someone else's desire to help you and perhaps seen it as self serving and or insincere? These are some of the layers of meaning behind this song.  I would say that the overall sentiment I was going for with this initial demo was a sense of bittersweet acceptance of these roles/dynamics as a occasional byproduct of love.  

The collaborative process that occurred between Anthony and I on this song was almost too perfect.  While there were so many relationships and experiences that inspired this song idea,  I think at the time I was writing it to Anthony and then when he changed the verses I felt like it was him writing back to me as well as speaking to himself.  The reason it makes me smile now is the same reason it made me smile then. The collaborative sum of our parts has always been far superior than any of our individual contributions.  When he first heard it he said something like  "this is awesome, I want to rewrite the verses tho."  I was both excited and a bit annoyed if I remember correctly haha.  When he sent back his rewritten recorded vocals, despite feeling some projected notion of being passively attacked, all I could say was "FUCK. This is so good."  I loved what he did and was so excited that it was going to become a true blue Circa song. This was another moment of artistic vindication I'll remember forever, not just for myself as an artist but for the collaborative ability of the band as a whole.

Speaking about the final album version of the song now : From a purely aesthetic perspective my verses sound good for my voice but Anthony elevated the rhythm and melodies to a place only he could.  He took it from being an idea to being an actual song. Same thing with the music in terms of Brendan, Nick and Steve. That bass and drum accent reversal they did on the second verse is one of my favorite things ever and this is one of Brendan's most stand out moments of the entire record in my opinion.  His subtle finger tapping in the verses, switching back and forth to slide and no slide, and that epic solo were true corner turning moments for the band's sound moving forward.  

I could never play any instrument or sing especially well, I always strived to be able to do it just good enough to write a full sounding song. So like most of my demos this one has an element of cringe for me but hey that's because none of you were ever meant to hear this stuff LOL. I think it's neat to hear me singing on a heavier song as most Psychic Babble songs for instance are way more on the ambient mellow spectrum.  I used to dream of singing for a  post hardcore band ala Quicksand/Deftones/Tool/Helmet and this moment was the realization of what that would sound like if I did.  Hope you dig it. I love you.

-Colin