[A-->B Life]  |  mewithoutYou

       release date:  2002            record label:  tooth and nail

track list:  1) Bullet to Binary
                  2) The Ghost
                  3) Nice and Blue
                  4) Everything Was Beautiful And Nothing Hurt
                  5) (A)
                  6) Gentlemen
                                                                         7) Be Still Child 
                                                                         8) We Know Who Our Enemies Are
                                                                         9) I Never Said That I Was Brave
                                                                       10) (B) 
                                                                       11) Silencer
                                                                       12) The Cure for Pain
                                        
                                     "the cure for the pain, is in the pain, so that’s where you’ll find me…”

The [A--> B] Life by alternative-punk / post-hardcore band mewithoutYou is the perfect place for 
this potentially-never-ending experiment into the long forgotten recesses of my iPOD to officially 
begin.   As an impressionable high school student I remember first hearing about mewithoutYou
from a number of friends who were into the blossoming hardcore scene. To be honest, I didn’t
care too much for artists who screamed their lyrics at me but I put up with it fairly well; one to 
had to think about one’s image when picking music in high school. 

I can’t remember how this album came into my possession, but I know without a doubt that 
before a few days ago I had never listened to it in its entirety.  I tried numerous times, but 
by the time I got through the first few songs I had lost interest.  And so it has waited patiently
in the catacombs of my IPOD for its chance to resurface.  Vocalist Aaron Weiss, who has the
tendency to speak his lyrics more than sing them, is joined in the band by his brother Michael 
Weiss on guitar and for this, their debut album, Ricky Mazzotta on drums, Daniel Pishock on 
bass and Chris Kleinburg on guitars.

MewithoutYou is not your typical post-hardcore band.  The Weiss brothers are of Jewish 
descent, but were raised in a Sufi Muslim household by parents who had converted from the 
Episcopal church (their mother) and Judaism (their father).  Aaron, the principal songwriter for 
the band, came to Christ in high school and seamlessly blends imagery from Christianity, Islam 
and Judaism into quite an interesting tapestry.  Clearly well-read, Weiss quotes from the Sufi 
poet Rumi, Kurt Vonnegut and John Donne at various points throughout this album.  The 
band has lived in an community house in Philadelphia and travel in a van that runs on vegetable 
oil.

The songs comprising [A-->B] Life, as the band name suggests, dwell heavily on feelings of 
loneliness and loss experienced at the ending of a long-term relationship.  The pain, the 
questioning, and the anger that are such integral parts of any breakup are here in copious 
amounts. 

Looking for a quiet place to experience this album, I retreated to my car and drove to the back 
of an empty parking lot.  The gray sky opened up and it began to rain; I watched water droplets 
race each other down the driver’s side window as I started the album to Weiss’ screaming “don’t 
you tell us about your suffering, look in our eyes, look in our eyes.”  This mood hangs over the
entire album; in Nice & Blue he admits that “I once was alive, when you held me.”  Silencer
finds Weiss at his most confessional: “I don’t do too much smiling these days.”  In the same 
song, he describes a woman (although it very well could describe anyone going through the 
pain of heartache) by saying that “she put on happiness like a loose dress over pain.”

The confession of mewithoutYou lead me to my own:  there have been plenty of days in my life 
when I could echo the lyrics found on [A-->B] Life.  I’m not sure anyone is to blame for the
innumerable nights I spent grieving over any number of girls; that seems to just be a part of 
growing up.  I do wonder, though, if society has affected our view of relationships and what they 
can (and can’t) offer to us.  I couldn’t count how many times, growing up in the church, that I 
heard about the girl whom God had already picked out to be my wife.  Hearing this so much, it 
just became second nature to speed the process up for God by looking for her myself; you 
know, just in case something went awry before God could bring us together on.  And so every 
girl I dated took on the persona of “the one;” in the end this resulted in me dating girls much
longer than I should have.  I put up with issues and looked over glaringly obvious character
contradictions because, in my mind, surely this girl would eventually blossom into the wife 
“promised” to me by God.  Now that the days of messy relationships and tears of heartache 
are behind me, I find that what I was told in my childhood by well-meaning adults was, in 
actuality, true.  God had picked out a beautiful woman to become my wife; the problem arose 
when I tried to speed the process up.  Once again, God’s timing won. 

While I’m on the subject, can I just say that I think the whole idea of “kissing dating goodbye,”
as one book asked us to do, is a load of crap.  I do believe that God knew, even before I was
born, what woman would become my partner through life.  But unlike God, I did not know 
who that girl was; my learning process was dating.  With each subsequent girl I dated, I took
one step closer to knowing what characteristics I needed in a wife.  If I had chosen not to date
I know that I would have made a disastrous choice when it came to marriage.  There is no way
around the fact that experience leads to knowledge.  Science operates on the idea of
“trial-and-error” and I have found the same principal at work in my own life.   

Although I don’t anticipate having to suffer through the pain of romantic heartache still, I 
understand that suffering is universal.  I know and expect it to rear its ugly head again in my life.  
People age, tragedies occur, death catches all of us.  Pain is just as much a part of life as joy.   
That’s why the book of Psalms contains songs of both praise and suffering; long before Aaron 
Weiss was crying out from a broken heart, David was penning laments that would rival anything 
on this album.  We need the Psalms, and mewithoutYou, to sing our songs of doubt, questioning and 
suffering when we don’t have the strength to sing for ourselves. 

In the closing track of [A-->B] Life, Aaron sings that “the cure for the pain is in the pain, so that’s 
where you’ll find me.”  Our world teaches us to recover as quickly as possible from suffering; to
leave it behind as fast we can because it doesn’t look good on us.  And while there is a need to
move on from the hurts in life, there is also something to be said for taking time to heal.  There’s a 
time for holding a wound close, to comfort and coddle it; but there comes a time when the wound 
must see the light of day to experience real healing.  MewithoutYou rips the bandages off their
wounds and exposes pain that we can all identify with, encouraging us to do the same.  Perhaps 
that’s the message of the [A-->B] Life, moving from a place of private pain to a world where 
suffering is accepted and therefore ultimately healed.  Therein lies the hope of the [A-->B] Life, 
that, as David wrote in the Psalms, “weeping may stay for the night, but joy comes in the morning,”
or, as Weiss puts it on Nice & Blue, “I’m not the boy I once was, but I’m not the man I’ll be.”   

On Be Still Child Weiss describes a woman who “was hiding because she wanted to be found.”  
The [A-->B] Life has been hiding on my iPod since high school; it took me awhile, but what once
was lost, now is found.  And what a sweet sound it is.

4,772 songs.
395 albums.
173 artists.
And still counting.

From indie to the classics,
Hip-hop to hardcore,
Ska to techno to bluegrass.
Albums that I wore out as a high school student
And an few I picked up just days ago at Half-Price Books.

The music that you listen to,
As well as those artists you choose to ignore,
Say volumes about who you are.

I received an IPOD as a Christmas present about five years ago.
It’s been through a lot,
Including a hard drive crash in which I lost everything;
Not my happiest moment.

The other day I was flipping through my IPOD 
When a frustrated thought entered my mind:
“I have nothing to listen to.

”Really?
Over 4,000 songs and not one worth hearing again?
Almost 400 albums and nothing worth listening to?
If that was the case, what were those albums doing on my IPOD;
Why does music exist other than to be listened to, experienced, and digested?
If I was not giving my music this respect, why did I even bother owning an IPOD?

And that’s when an idea hit me that took me back to childhood:
I distinctly remember frequently spending time on the floor of my bedroom
Listening to an album on my CD player
While I scoured the lyrics and studied the artwork.
It was nothing to sit in my room and listen to an album in its entirety.
Life, back then, was measured in ten-song increments. 

Years later, my life is measured in singles.
We no longer have time to stop our world long enough to listen to a whole album.
Our busy schedules permit us a song or two between stops;
So let’s hear the standout tunes.
We only have time for singles.

When did I start to accept a life this busy;
One that I allow to be measured by top 40 radio-hits and easily digestible choruses?

I refuse.
I will not live in a world where music is relegated to 3 and a half minutes or less;
Where artists don’t write their own lyrics, 
Play their own instruments or 
Sing their own songs.
I want no place in a scene where the “next best thing” is the only thing
And where sex appeal sells more albums than soul-stirring lyrics.

My rebellion is taking shape as an experiment;
One that will value the “whole” over its individual parts.
I plan to listen to each of the almost 400 albums on my IPOD, in their entirety,
Moving through them in alphabetical order.

This task will start with the [A --> B] Life by mewithoutyou
And perhaps, even years later,
End with the album Zooropa by U2.

My thoughts on the magic contained in each album
However earth-shaking or elementary they may be,
Will be recorded here.  

Check back often.
As I experience each album I will post my reflections.
Maybe you will be reintroduced to an old, forgotten favorite
Or even meet a new album for the first time.

But, to be honest, this task is about much more than just music;
It’s about pace of life, about slowing down.
Enjoying art the way it was created to be experienced,
As a whole and not a fragment.
It’s about looking at the entire masterpiece and not just the corner;
About taking time to stop and listen instead of just hearing.

Along the way I’m sure to rediscover the music that has shaped me
And by proxy perhaps I’ll even rediscover
Myself.