Whether religious, DC (comics), or related to time itself, I’m a big fan of the trinity.

Once upon a time, I played in a band called Social Focus. The most consistent and gratifying description that was shared to me was, “It’s like Led Zeppelin meets U2.” That’s not an easy line to walk.

I reached out to a group of guys in northern Chicago, shortly after I started my Master’s at Northwestern in 2009. Matt Fedderman, Matt Garza, Brian Kipp, and Ben McMunn brought me into their musical fold. For the first time in my life, I was strictly the singer. It was liberating. I offered structural suggestions here and there, as we all did, but mostly I stuck to my melodies, to my lyrics.

I have been writing music since I was a teenager, but for the first time in my life, from a songwriter’s perspective, this was the first time there was a distinct separation between the lyrics and the music. I had always taken each on, simultaneously, sometimes to the degree of treating the task like a burden. It had to be me, always, all the time.

But not now. It was liberating.

I was writing lyrics as if they were prose, actual poetry.

I was liberated.

Social Focus played their final show together in August of 2013. It really is a damn shame. Our trajectory was upwards and our songwriting/playing as a band was noticeably maturing. Still, I can’t begrudge the experience for freeing me as a writer. So much so that the songs we wrote together, the lyrics that I set as poetry to their music still swirls in my head to this day. I lament the fact that I’m not actively sharing those words as I was back then.

As I said, at the beginning, I’m a big fan of trinities. In this case, my fandom lies with time. All of the lyrics that I’ve written since I joined Social Focus have dealt with a sort of temporal time travel. You talk about the past, in the present, and point to the future. There was this song we had titled “Note to Self”. I love that song. I love our arrangement. Prior to this, the lyrics haunted me. As my life progressed, and the band stopped playing, those lyrics kept coming back to me, as if they were unfinished. Finally, in the summer of 2019, as an exercise, I began singing lyrics/melodies from previous material to music that I was working on. “Note to Self” became “The Future Is Ours”.

I don’t want to give too much away, but for me and my psyche, I closed a loop, a discrepancy in my temporal psyche. I created closure and a way forward through music. Temporal time travel.

To Matt, Matt, Brian, Ben, and Alex, the future is ours. Thank you for helping me on my journey to freedom.