I Still Believe

Album: The Call, Reconciled, 1986

Acquired: As with this band's Modern Romans, I'm not at all sure when or where I picked up Reconciled. I am very glad to own it, though. Just for the sake of outrageously lying to make myself look cool, I'll say that Michael Been, lead singer and head songwriter for The Call, hand-delivered this tape to my dorm room at Virginia Tech on November 2, 1988.

Best Track: "Even Now"

Lasting Memory: I would swear that every bodybuilding and fitness competition I've ever not really watched has had at least one poser perform to this album's "I Still Believe." Which both make sense and is very odd.

The song itself is a sonic bonfire. It is a four-minute-and-twenty-four-second crescendo. The intensity builds and builds to the end. And it is in three-quarters waltz time, so you can dance to it.

The lyrics, however, are about all of the band members' recommittment to Christianity. There is no metaphor or allegory involved. One commentator has even gone so far as to claim that the song is the quintessential Christian rock song.

The narrator was "Stuck in a cave/ For forty days." He had "Only a spark/ To light my way." But he tells anyone who can hear his howl into the void, "I still believe!/ I still believe/ Through the pain/ And through the years." I grok that affirmation of faith, but I have to wonder how Jesus feels about steroid use.

Many of the songs on Reconciled are statements of faith. That's not rock, but it sure is cool. And it gives The Call a reason to greet each day and each challenge as an opportunity to be the men they know they should be. Check out "Even Now":

Chased, chased
Out into the woods
Footsteps close behind my back
I never knew how close I stood
Shame has brought me to my knees
Love protects the heart
It is just as you please

Fights, fights
Up and down each shore
We may be outnumbered here
The lions start to roar
Cry, cry for all to hear
Cry, the world goes on

Would you lend me your ear for a moment
I still care even now

Chased, chased
By the angry mob
Trying to steal my heart from me
Steal from me my love for God
Watch as stars fall from the sky
Wait until the oceans dry up

But even then
I still feel loved
Even so, I feel cared for
Even now

So look in my eyes again
Do you recognize my face
One of despair again
Is it gone without a trace
I feel I’m alive again
Rescued from the void
Here I’m alone with you
Here I’m at home with you
Even now

Look, look
They’re running close behind
Those you thought your enemies
Are friends now standing by your side
Fight for every step you take
Shaped by every lie you’ve ever heard

Pain, pain
The pain I’ve been forced to see
Blame, the blame belongs
To no one but me

But oh, I still care
Even so, I still feel loved
Even so, even here, even now

Even at their lowest, The Call are ready and willing to assume the best. That's a worldview we would all would do well to adopt.

Listen to a clip from "Even Now"

Up Next: The Call, Let the Day Begin, 1989

Word Count to Date: A lot. More than 21,000. Which is less than half of the 50,000 words participants in the November-long National Novel Writing Month have as their Web site-mandated goal.

Some of the NaNoWriMo participants must have hit their target word count. To them, I say, "Congratulations. You suck." I salute those people's effort even as I have to ask them , "Um, why did you do that?"

I am the first to acknowledge that the only way to write is to write. That statement is neither original to me nor in any way truly insightful. The only way to write well, however, is to revise, reivse, revise. Again, those words are not mine, but they do encapsulate a universe of eye-opening truth.

You may not be able to tell, but each of my posts to this site takes about two hours to write. I do a little research. I spell-check. I read through every sentence a couple of times and edit the text before I hit the Publish Post button. I don't even care if you appreciate all the work I'm doing. I would refuse to publish anything I didn't think was good. You're allowed -- sometimes even encouraged -- to think my writing sucks. But do at the very least recognize that I work at it.

The NanNoWriMo organizers, on the other hand, specifically urge participants to not work at improving their drafts. The NaNoWriMo Web site is chockfull of admonishments like "the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality (caps in original)." What. The. F.?

Truman Capote delivered what I consider to be the world's greatest literally insult by observing that Jack Kerouac's On the Road, which Kerouac lied about having originally written on a single, continuous scroll of paper without revisions, was "not writing; that's typewriting." Keouac, if he had actually written his autobiographical travelogue in a stream of consciousness, would have carried off a stunt. He would not have created literature.

Merely putting words on paper or on computer screens is a physical, not an artistic, act. By actively encouraging aspiring writers to ignore this distinction and pretend that the task is the payoff, the NaNoWriMo organizers are perpetuating a great evil.

I feel much the same about novel writing that I do about marathon writing. If a person is given enough time and not judged on any result other than crossing the finish line, anyone can do either. Running a marathon in under two and a half hours or writing something anyone would want to read, however, requires correcting many, many missteps.