For someone who just comes back and happens to be seen by a pair of eyes filled with longing and yearning, it is never just about the welcoming that fills out a picturesque scene; there’s more to it, and Said Sara says such in his newly released song, “Then There You Are.”
Throughout human existence, it is with the study of past events that are the things that we tend to cling towards to answer all questions that are yet to be answered or to go back to what was once a sight that was witnessed back then but couldn’t. Bringing this to the forefront, history shows that men are built with memories, and these memories, when not taken care of, will just end up being decayed in the corpse’s tomb, allowing its skin to be consumed by the worms and other decomposers scavenging for food. Funnily enough, it seems ironic that people proceed to hate history because the past, to them, is something that is not a residential unit for us to live in and be blanketed in the comfort of our beds. According to them, it should be treated as an abandoned house in a ghost town from a faraway land because no one wants to live in such a place anymore.
Said Sara, David Benson’s musical project, though, felt offended by this, that a memory is something to visit from time to time, bringing fresh white chrysanthemums and roses to the graveyard of someone you have longed to meet since, then cried intensely, letting the world joined one’s mourning. It is, indeed, never a peaceful way to experience when you see someone you have longed for but never got the chance to meet until recent events for various reasons. After all, the song was titled “Then There You Are.” The muse is not dead at all. The muse is just from a place of distance, and although it is not something we can easily demand, there exists a sense of urgency within our innermost selves to find out why a space was created between them.
Unfortunately, the song tells us nothing about that. However, the song presented such emphasis on imagery throughout the 4-minute mark that the question we have been asking since listening can be answered without an answer. The corrosive nature of acid ‘biting’ whatever substance was being affected, the gasses bursting in flames and explosions, the black hole vomiting specks of stardust, someone out there hula-hooping their own worn halo, a moon in Jupiter erupting its steams off—all of these intricately written yet invigoratingly graphic lines to invade all of the angles of the ever-consuming and overwhelming emotions of rekindling someone’s soul.
However, upon these seemingly aggressive melodic choices with the displayed candor yet sensitivity in his guitar, with, for some reason, a voice somewhat resonant to The Smashing Pumpkin’s vocalist Billy Corgan, it welcomes the pandemonium of a track in such a way that is bearable and is considered more as a normal rather than unusual.
The revelation in this song lies in a strong lyric, “Reveal yourself as freed,” and could be considered as the core of his newly-released song, which, for some reason, progressively makes the ‘someone’ in the song as the singer himself. That, in itself, is a powerful statement, as its imageries beforehand allow them to fully embrace their journey towards a new identity they are more introduced to best after shedding their own skin and turning it into a new leaf.
After all, we are just nomads, even in our very own flesh.
For a song that encourages renewal and rebirth, David Benson creates a more chaotic song. Its mess challenges these lyrics to just go and play with its waves until it agrees to be one with its abrasiveness, creating a song that is, indeed, more human.
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About the Author
Jett interestingly seeks every supposed-to-be-life-changing almost: getting a Bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education, submitting a finished compilation of epistles and poems to some book publications, and releasing passion projects to audio streaming platforms. However, his inkling of his pen and his reverberating of his music, being the ones that keep him sustained in somehows, never stop him from walking to a road yet to be taken.
