I’ve been waiting all this time to be something I can’t define

so let’s cause a scene

clap our hands and stomp our feet

I just gotta get myself over me

The First Single, The Format

It was one of the closest things to true bliss I’ve ever experienced: hearing my favorite song, a song so perfect, I feel as if the words poured out of my own heart, played live.

Click here to listen to The First Single.

I can thank freshman year for this. A girl named Joanna lived down the hall. She was (and still is!) artsy and friendly and hilarious. One afternoon, I came back to my dorm room to find a lovely little burgundy and lime green paisley scarf and a burned CD tied to the door knob. I rejoiced. On it was a song called “Janet” by a band I had never heard of called The Format. It was Destiny, with a capital D.

At first I was hesitant about it. It reminded me of…nothing. It felt more foreign than the Swedish pop music I paid top dollar to import. My musical tastes were quite limited then; showtunes, Hanson, the aforementioned Swedish pop groups and boys with guitars were my only true sonic loves. But I kept listening. It was like learning new partnered dance. I had to be lead through slowly, note by note, lyric by lyric. Finally, several weeks later, the verdict was in: I had never been so enchanted by a band since I was 11 years old.

It’s a pity I can’t remember the exact moment I heard it. But I know from that moment, it must have pushed “A Song to Sing” by Hanson out of the top spot of my All Time Favorite Songs and it has yet to budge. In a world where musicians hit the top of the charts and then slowly fizzle away, I believe that to be quite an accomplishment, at least for a girl who has been baptized into the indie music subculture and hasn’t looked back. It must have been through one of the mp3 blogs I still visit every day on my internet rounds, Fuel Friends. I bet it was magic, though. During my freshman year, I slogged through my first identity crisis that most college students must go through. I doffed all of my past sins, habits and friends and became an entirely new person upon move-in day. The lyrics must have been salve for the necessary still-open wounds of this identity surgery.

you know me,
or you think you do you

you just dont seem to see
I’ve been waiting all this time to be
something I can’t define

I still don’t know what I’m waiting to be. I thought I knew back then. I thought I knew this spring. Had another identity exploratory surgery over the summer. Conveniently, that aforementioned moment of bliss came at the end of the summer. The guitar pumped through the speakers, pulsed through my stomach. The staccato snare drum reverberated through my ears. Nate (the lead singer) counted off…1…2…1, 2, 3, 4.

I can’t stand to think about

a heart so big it hurts like hell

oh my god

I gave my best before

three whole years

to end like this

do you wanna fall apart?

I can’t stop if you can’t start

do you wanna fall apart?

well, I could, if you can

try to fix what I’ve undone

because I hate what I’ve become

I screamed. I screamed, my eyes closed, my fists wrapped tightly around the metal barrier in front of me. And I prayed.

I know prayer isn’t something one does at a rock concert, let alone a “secular” rock concert. But this song, I swear, it had become my secret anthem. God, I prayed, please mold me into what you REALLY want me to be, not what I think you want me to be. Jumping up and down, the song became more like worship than any other hymn or praise song I had ever sung. It was undignified. It was intense. It was the most genuine praise I had ever given to Him.

Yes, I wanted a change when I came to college, three whole years ago. And I got it. I got a change that squished my square beliefs in a round hole. I trimmed the corners of my square. I sanded down the edges of my hard to swallow opinions. And it worked. I found people who accepted me, who believed (in the beginning) that I was so perfectly round.

It’s been five months since the concert and I know things have changed. I subscribed to a feminist magazine. I placed my GLBTQ ally pins on my front door instead of hidden away in my desk. I’m seriously contemplating starting a Bible study that is open to and addresses contemporary liberal questions about faith and the Bible.

me, flushed after the most amazing concert ever.