"Such A Time" Flynn Adam

This reminds me of TV on the Radio’s first CD a little. Which is always a good thing.

Adventures In The Big Apple:

New York.  The city that never sleeps, right?  Or, is that Vegas?  Nope, it’s New York (thanks google!).

They Might Be Giants have this great song that kind of doubles as a musical buffet of New York’s greatest places.  I spent my day getting to know some of the finer points of a different big apple, the computery kind.  Yup, tech support.  I gotta say, it was the single greatest tech support experience I’ve ever had.  I was probably with the guy 30 - 45 minutes total and we talked about our works and the weather.  I restrung my guitar and discussed the finer points of Macs.  For instance the time displacement effect when they say a  download will take 35 minutes and it only takes five so that when it says a minute is left and it takes three minutes you have no real grasp of the time and that three minutes feels like 10 when it’s supposed to be just one.

Got all that?  Either way, they helped me figure out a long standing frustration with my Software Updates.  I couldn’t get them to work is the short version.  He walked me through it and now I’m bopping along swimmingly.  All except for the fact I completely took my computer back to zero the night before hoping it would help, which it didn’t.

So, I’ve been spending the day getting things back from my Time Machine backups.  See, you thought I was going to tell you I had lost everything, didn’t you?  Well, you would have been right, at least partially.

You see when I set the Macbook back up I did it with a different user than we had originally so when I brought in the old user and stuff from my time machine backup it locked me out of folders that I had no permission to get into (because I didn’t exist when the backups where being made).  I was a new user so of course I didn’t have permissions.  That’s when it dawned on me, “I don’t think it brought over any of my music, movies and pictures.”  Which immediately sent my heart pounding and my head into panic/terror mode.

I pulled up iphoto, no pictures, it had brought in the app but not the content.  I silently shouted in my head, “Where are my pictures...”, and then I thought about how I was going to have to tell The Wife I have deleted every picture we had taken as a couple.  I almost cried.

Then I thought, I did bring over my other user info, and it might have the content since it has permission to access it.  So, I logged out and rememberized my way to the other account and darted full speed to the dock at the bottom.  Deftly, I clicked on iPhoto and waited as the app, for the first time, loaded the pictures it had.  The white screen that mockingly read, “loading photos” seemed to sit there forever.  I closed my eyes and sent up a quiet, quick, and ultimately selfish prayer that the pictures would be there.  When I opened my eyes the screen was still blank and my heart sunk low.

I don’t think I’ve felt like such a fool.  I had destroyed years of memories because I was careless.  I almost cried, but before I could a picture popped up.  It was one of my youth with the chik-fil-a cow.  I was suddenly filled with hope and darted to the pictures to see if everything was still there.  It looked good and I raced to my wedding pictures, “please still be there” I thought.  They were, and then I cried a little.

I had never looked as longingly at those pictures as I did just then.  The thought of losing them was unbearable.  So, maybe the moral is to never get yourself in a situation you don’t fully understand how to fix.  Or, maybe it’s to not take for granted the special things in your life because once their gone you don’t always get them back.  Needless to say, I’m going to back the pictures up special for my peace of mind, and I’m going to kiss my wife and make sure she knows I love her.

I love those pictures, but I can always make more.  I would hate to take another picture without my wife.  And, that’s what I’m taking out of this.

Jesus, Keep Me Near The Cross:

I’ve really fallen in love with the old Hymn named above.  It was originally written by a lady named Fanny Crosby.  Which shows just how much times have changed in that you could name a child Fanny and they wouldn’t be teased into catatonia before second grade.  It was a kinder and gentler time.

She also apparently wrote every hymn, ever.  No, seriously she wrote some 8,000 odd hymns in her life.  And, it’s cool if you try to count them all and seem to come up short, she used a bunch of pen names to keep the man from holding her down.  Oh, did I mention that she did all this while being blind from birth?  Yeah, that’s making me depressed, I’ve hung blinds up in my house and that took two years.

But, her song resonates with me and I want to include it in my Orphan Songs project.  I’ve been fiddling with it and feel like I’ve found what I was looking for.  Hopefully, I can do it justice, particularly this one verse that makes me tear up when I sing it now.

Near the cross, a trembling soul,

love and mercy found me;

there the bright and morning star

sheds its beams around me.  

To imagine what my spirit was like the moment I fell before the cross.  Lost and broken.  Orphaned by sin and separated from God.  And then at my weakest and most desperate Christ came for me, love and mercy found me and it adopted me into it’s family.  Those words really hit me right now.

So, I’m going to post a video of the song.  It’s not how I’m going to go about the song.  Because . . . it’s terrible.



PS.  I’ve spent the better part of the last two days coming to terms with the fact that I’ll never get close to making a song as Otis Redding’s cover of "Try A Little Tenderness” and I’ll never even touch Otis’ voice.  I might even include that video after the jump.

Songs For Orphans:

Let me tell you about my idea to help support the Ashir Orphanage in India.  I’ve recorded two songs that are at least not terrible and I’m hoping to write about four more.  When I get about six decent songs the thought is to put on a benefit show with some of my friends who have bands and to sell the songs I’ve written.

Why am I telling you this?  Because I will stall out if I don’t keep talking about it.  And, I don’t want to stall out when 80 kids are counting on my support.  I’ll try to give periodic updates on this project.

If you’re interested here is a video my youth group made to raise awareness.