fair warning. i am allllll over the place tonight! so hopefully, you guys can follow along down these rabbit trails…

we’re officially a little over half-way through the tracking of this album. it feels real-er than ever. i’m starting to understand all these songs more and where they’ve actually come from… for a minute, it was such a whirlwind of inspiration, emotion, and sweat. now that we’ve spent some time getting to know the album and growing with it, i can finally tell myself it’s real. i can just almost tell myself that it’s alright to relax.

have you ever been that way? haven’t you ever said “things are so great right now that i know something’s bound to go wrong… any minute.” just so you know, i might be the QUEEN of that phrase. maybe it’s part of being a total realist? maybe it’s just the fact that i’ve been through some rough situations and i know how awful it feels not to be prepared for the worst? it’s been a while since i didn’t have my fists in a ball… since i wasn’t sort of on the defense, waiting for the attack. if there was an actual good reason for why i lived that way for so long i’d give it to you but now that i’m (hopefully!) passed that, it’s a little unclear as to why that would ever be worth it. because now i wake up every morning and i know for certain that there are at least a few good people around me, if not physically then just by an iPhone somewhere, who could look me in the eye and tell me that they love me. i’ve got just enough blood in my veins and air in my lungs to know that i am definitely not dead. and that could be enough to say outloud, to myself… “You’re OK!”

another thing to consider is what if there is a part of us that doesn’t fully want to be satisfied? what if there’s something that asks us: if everything is “OK” then what do we have to strive for? to LIVE for, even? that’s the constant duel in my spirit! i want life to go smoothly but when it’s all working out… i’m sort of bored. ugh. it reminds me of a lyric by mewithoutYou that i’ve always connected with so deeply. “All I want is to want one thing.” how beautifully that depicts our nature as humans to want everything, sometimes multiple things at once that couldn’t be more opposite… and in the end get upset with the whole thing and want to get rid of desire altogether. (i digress!)

what i’ve had to learn during this last year and a half, is that i might actually just be happy with where life is heading at this point. doesn’t mean i’ll always feel this way. nothing’s perfect… at least for very long! anyway, it might just be OK to be happy now. right now in this very moment. i should just go with it, right? by the way, if i don’t sound completely insane to you after 3 paragraphs which all are complete contradictions to each other then i appreciate your patience and flexible perspective.

all this to say, i feel happy and i feel like my soul is actually being fulfilled. not only by the making of this album but also by the few close relationships i have in my life that have either stood the test of time or have bloomed from virtually nothing since entering whatever phase of my life i’m in at the moment. i’m not waiting for the sky to fall because i know that while the sky is staying up there in it’s place, i have my opportunity to live. no more wasting time, hope, emotions, on worrying when, if, or how i could ever be let down again. i’m going to tell myself it’s okay to be happy now.

i guess i want to finish this off by asking you what fulfills you. what is it that reaches your soul? it doesn’t have to be some profound thing or even anything cool. if you can hold that one thing in your mind and know that you’re exactly who you are supposed to be in that moment, then that could be all you need to get from point A to point B. maybe i want to finish THAT by saying, let’s all listen to “One Thing” by One

http://fuse.tv/ontv/shows/best-of-2009/



Papa Roach is great, but Paramore is the best, vote now!

'It looks awesome,' frontwoman Hayley Williams says of new cover art.

By now, you've probably seen the cover of Paramore's upcoming Brand New Eyes album (and if you haven't, well, here), which very artfully depicts a freshly dissected butterfly.

It's a pretty striking (and strikingly pretty) image, so, on the same day we spoke to Paramore about the title of their new record, we decided to ask them to tell us the story behind that butterfly too. Turns out — like pretty much everything on Eyes — there's a personal connection.

"The cover is actually a butterfly I found in my driveway one day, and it was huge and really gorgeous and we clipped its wings off and pinned its body and its wings up to the fence in my backyard," frontwoman Hayley Williams said. "I've had [it] forever in this box in my mom's house. And we all liked the idea of ripping the wings off a butterfly, because it's in the lyrics of 'Brick By Boring Brick.' "

Of course, that begs the question: Did they rip the wings off the thing while it was still fluttering?

"It was already dead," Williams said.

"No animals were harmed in the making of this record," bassist Jeremy Davis laughed.

Of course, the image of the butterfly only extends the implicit message on this album, one born out of intense inter-band struggles and battles with self-doubt: that divided, nothing — not love, relationships or a band — can survive; but united, anything is possible.

"I really feel like the theme of the whole record is really self-explanatory. I don't think anyone is going to have a problem understanding exactly what we're talking about, or relating our situation to them," Williams said. "Even if they're not in a band [that's] touring and traveling. That's why the image works ... it's a really cool representation of those themes. It looks awesome."