(SMS) Resgate - Genérica

🇬🇧 Generic

[Verse 1]

False lashes and coloured lenses in the eyes

Silk socks and flip-flops in the feet

Plastic flowers and wax fruit in the hands

Carmen Miranda without a tick for samba, but poses like no one.

[Chorus]

Who are you?

Almost nobody can see

Who dazzles with fibre plumes except for anyone but you?

Who are you?

Only God knows

Come back to life and land so we can see you

[Verse 2]

A hole in the pocket and, in the wrist, a “falsey” watch

Decayed tooth, but mint breath

Long live the powder which makes two faces apples

So tidy, whitewashed tomb, waiting a fool to see you

[Chorus]

Who are you?

Almost nobody can see

Who dazzles with fibre plumes except for anyone but you?

Who are you?

Only God knows

Come back to life and land so we can see you

Today (08/30), where I live, Cascavel, Paraná, Brazil, we’ll have for the very first time a concert from one of the most influential Christian rock bands in Brazil. Band that started and is still playing since 1989 with the same lineup and smartly critic lyrics, because being a Christian means you know how to be critic and active in society as a whole.

Their songs are timeless: regardless of what year they were released, they always bring some message to reflect. This song today, though not that old (2010), it makes itself even more contemporary. A generation attached to appearance, quantity of "likes" a picture or video their Instagram or YouTube accounts can give. These excesses hide, most of the time, a frail personality. Someone who screams, internally, for help and attention.

I think it's curious the expression "whitewashed tomb", because an adorned tomb is worthless. There death dwells. Life is over. Everything inside is rotten.

Which reality are we living? Are we rotten? Do we need help?

Only one person knows us, beyond all makeup and masks we may create. God knows our inner self and what we feel. He can put people around to help us, we only need to accept this help.

No more masks or fallacy. Who are you?

Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/track/6305184

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/2vY6fZfnQT1n0MWCssUqe7  

YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=QsU3TJG56x4

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcFlD2P7sa0

(SMS) Petra - Beyond Belief

[Verse 1]

We're content to pitch our tent

When the glory's evident

Seldom do we know the glory came and went

Moving can seem dangerous

In this stranger's pilgrimage

Knowing that you can't stand still, you cross the bridge

[Chorus]

There's a higher place to go, beyond belief, beyond belief

Where we reach the next plateau, beyond belief, beyond belief

And from faith to faith we grow

Towards the center of the flow

Where He beckons us to go, beyond belief, beyond belief

[Verse 2]

Leap of faith without a net

Makes us want to hedge our bet

Waters never part until our feet get wet

There's a deeper place to go

Where the road seems hard to hoe

He who has begun this work won't let it go

[Chorus]

[Bridge]

And it takes so long to see the change

But we look around and it seems so strange

We have come so far but the journey's long

And we once were weak but now we're strong

[Chorus]

A good friend, almost brother, from long ago, Thiago Andrade, great advertising executive and filmmaker (check his Instagram @timecom.tv), asked me to talk about this song. In about 17 years we know each other, I’ve lived enough to know that this song is his life’s song. He even had the chance to meet the composer and tell how the song changed his life. He went beyond belief, beyond what he could see and imagine, and even got what wasn’t dreaming about.

But sometimes is different for us. We’re happy in just cross our arms an “let life give its own way”. We live in compliance with what we have because we fear risking. We fear in going forward. I like when it sings “leap of faith”, because I remember the Assassin’s Creed game series. In the game, the jump you do from faraway places to a safe landing, that is called “leap of faith”. The leap amidst what is uncertain right to safety.

I think it’s cool when the Bible brings the definition:

'Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see. ' Hebrews 11:1 NLT

We have faith in many “silly” things. We have faith that tomorrow we’ll be alive. We have faith that the bench we’re sitting down won’t break. But which faith, regarding eternity, have you got? I’ve got faith that God has sent his son, Jesus, to salve and forgive sins. That died on a Cross and gave his own blood so I could have eternal life.

You can even question “where is God in all this chaos? Isn’t he good enough to end such evilness and destruction?”. That is complicated to discuss about, but I ask you back “where were we when God sought us? Why did we let him aside?”. He’s kind and won’t force you anything. And, from the moment which, through our free agency, firm and walk with Him, the certainty of our future, after death, will be a wonderful place.

'That is what the Scriptures mean when they say, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.”' 1 Corinthians 2:9 NLT

  

And the work God has begun, with the announcement of Jesus' first coming right after the man's fall, the life and death of Jesus, and the prophecy of the end of the world and consequently Apocalypse, is good, perfect and delightful. The work won't ever be incomplete. He'll finish it with all majesty, giving us strength to not give up and carry on.

'And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.' Philippians 1:6 NLT

Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/track/134234582
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/27JODWXo4VNa6s7HqDL9yQ
YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=n0z9E5aIFUM
YouTube: https://youtu.be/GewMizbRaWY

(SMS) Periphery - Satellites

[Verse 1]

The heart went in two ways and the brain has gone in stereo

Invent and reinvest

What do we know?

(What do we know?)

Why do we do it?

Not enough to carry on alone

What's left of simple life and beauty all around?

[Refrain]

Left in the arms of the living, I shake

Left in the cold

A cut upon the skin

They’re always sharp in the beginning

Where is the love in the bend and the break?

This is our home

A cut upon the skin

They're always sharp in the beginning

[Verse 2]

We stick to the two lanes

Live on the road

Shy away from the natural

What do we know?

(What do we know?)

It's not enough to carry on alone

(That’s why we do it together)

What's left of simple life and beauty all around?

[Refrain]

Left in the hands of the living, I burn

But to return

A sheet upon the sphere

This simple heart is the exterior

Where is the love in the bend and the break?

This is our home

A cut upon the skin

They're always sharp in the beginning

[Chorus 1]

Down in the blue

Damaged by the new

Beyond the tide

Far from all (Far from all)

But this is us

This is life

It's suicide

We're all ten feet tall rolling in that ball

This is us

This is life

Suicide

[Verse 3]

The mountain cracks from the kicks we give

The plain will split in two and swallow where we live

(Swallow where we live)

We're pushing the mistakes and the love that we take

The plain will split in two and swallow where we live

(Swallow where we live)

We're pushing down in a hole right before our eyes

The rising heat and the melting ice

Now all we care for is blood and satellites

The mountain cracks from all the kicks

The love we take and the grave mistakes

The land we rape that's within our wake

And all we strive for is blood and satellites

[Pre-Chorus]

We’re going under

We’re going under

It's not worth taking the fall

Not worth losing it all

We’re going under

We're going under

We'll drop dead at the end of the fall

It's not worth losing It all

We’re going under

We're going under

[Chorus 1]

Down in the blue

Damaged by the new

Beyond the tide

Far from all (Far from all)

But this is us

This is life

It's suicide

We're all ten feet tall rolling in that ball

[Post-Chorus]

Battered skin under the road

Life begins as I corrode (Corrode)

Battered skin under the road

Life begins as I corrode (Corrode)

Battered skin, battered skin under the road

Life begins as I corrode (Corrode)

Battered skin, battered skin under the road

Life begins as I corrode

[Outro]

We're going under

We're going under

We're going under

My mobile phone carrier plan has given me premium access to Deezer, and I was/am testing it and comparing to Spotify. Every streaming app has some exclusive tracks/albums, and while searching some of those, I've got into "Deezer Originals: Periphery / IV: HAIL STAN (Track By Track)". In this "track by track", the singer, Spencer Sotelo, makes a comment on every track and/or what inspired the composition, and while talking about this one, Satellites, he said:

"(...) it’s from the perspective of planet Earth singing to humans about not destroying it, and being like dude, give me a f*****g break, I’m your home, this is where you live. It’s the Earth’s perspective rather than just a narrator saying this is what’s going on with Earth, it’s Earth to humans."

You can see and feel the melancholy during the song progress. That is Earth screaming at us to stop and give it a break.

Interesting how we live our lives. We may not be part of big corporations, armies, governments, still we live in this blue planet named Earth. We have the opportunity to build and enjoy the beautiful things that exist. We were given the opportunity to enjoy simple things for free but sometimes we don't do it. We choose to destroy.

We destroy it with the simplest acts: a candy wrapper on the floor, a malfunctioning vehicle we don't take it to a mechanic shop, a long shower, disposing edible food, etc. Also, our minor corruptions, like skipping line, not returning an extra change you got from a cashier, they're the reason our planet is dying little by little.

If we cared about what Jesus said in Matthew 22:39 (‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’), we wouldn't be fearing wars, which are killing thousands of people and the nature itself. If we really cared about our neighbours, we would be trying to see their needs and giving a helping hand.

We may be a few, but we can make a difference. Probably not in the whole world, but our world: family, street, neighbourhood, job, city... let's save what we still have of Earth.

A post scriptum and more than honorable mention, I want to thank my great friend Éber, who owns and writes the blog Plug in, for helping me translating the song's lyrics to Portuguese. It was the translation, one of the hardest I've ever done (I'd put in my top 5), that made the text take almost two weeks to be ready.

Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/track/626353142

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/6B89qqSG7irsUA3v4lEGl8

YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=QfVF1cQjZ4E

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAXQxAkcL78

(SMS) Thousand Foot Krutch - Be Somedody

[Verse 1]

I’m just the boy inside the man

Not exactly who you think I am

Trying to trace my steps back here again so many times

I’m just a speck inside your hand

You came and made me who I am

I remember where it all began so clearly

[Pre-Chorus]

I feel a million miles away

Still you connect me in your way

And you create in me

Something I would’ve never seen

When I could only see the floor

You made my window a door

So when they say they don’t believe

I hope that they see you in me

After all the lights go down

I’m just the words you are the sound

A strange type of chemistry

How you’ve become a part of me

And when I sit alone at night

Your thoughts burn through me like a fire

You’re the only one who knows who I really am

[Chorus]

We all wanna be somebody

We just need a taste of who we are

We all wanna be somebody

We’re willing to go but not that far

[Verse 2]

And we’re all see through, just like glass

And we can shatter just as fast

That light’s been burned out for a while

I still see it every time I pass

It was lost in the corners of my mind

Behind a box of reasons why

I never doubted it was there

It just took a little time to find and even when

[Pre-Chorus]

[Chorus]

We all wanna be somebody

We just need a taste of who we are

We all wanna be somebody

We’re willing to go but not that far

We all wanna be somebody

We just need a taste of who we are

We all wanna be somebody

We’re willing to go but not that far

[Outro]

I’m just the boy inside the man

Not exactly who you think I am

Trying to trace my steps back here again so many times

When I could only see the floor

You made my window a door

So when they say they don’t believe

I hope that they see you in me

 

After a time on pause (life here on the other side of the screens is a tight), let's try to return to a routine, and this time with one more request. A great friend of mine, which I've met on college, asked: the good Rafa Grant.

Thousand Foot Krutch is a band that I've always heard about, but never stopped to listen properly. When I heard this song, it wasn't what I was expecting. I've been changing some concepts, lately, about some artists I didn't like in the old days and now they're turning into inspiration. Age and maturity? Maybe.

Though one thing is right, when I heard about them for the first time, about 2007/2008, I had in mind what I wanted to be and do for a living. I wanted to be a computer programmer and game designer. I even entered a technical course regarding computer software and hardware, and in the end, I hated. I've got lost with my ideas. I desired to be somebody. I desired to be somebody who made difference, even for a small circle. Well, somehow I do it nowadays being a teacher.

Not only wishing to be somebody is having a purpose. Is being part of a purpose bigger than life, for in our daily basis, we face delusions, we lose our focus, but above all, God is ready to give you a hand, to help you. He's the one who helps changing opportunities, shining through your mind, what the song calls "making window a door". Maybe you, who are reading, don't believe in God and think that He's unfair in giving opportunities to some and not others, however we've got to remember that in many chances we didn't let Him act, and for not being a human being, His thoughts and actions are different of our broken judgement.

Believing or not, we're unique beings with our own personality and dreams. People who seek being better, who fight for a change. Change that can be reflected only with words because the "song" echoing comes from God. Only Him knows who you truly are. He knows the most intimate of your heart.

And if it is needed to be like a child, that sometimes wants to run away and pave its own way, and later realises that is better to stay with its guardians, be it. Open your heart to The One who knows who you are. He's kind and won't force you anything. He's there, observing and waiting with arms wide open for the best of all hugs. If you want to be somebody that is really complete, He can guide you.

'I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!” The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him. So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord . And it is good for people to submit at an early age to the yoke of his discipline:' Lamentations 3:24-27 NLT

Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/track/54617411

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/3NRhy4mzDwQc6IgPwyQM1x

YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=7XRot_-syIA

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6JTUfQI0Zo