I think these are some of the first lyrics I ever really wrote, and oddly enough by this time I started feeling that something was missing from the community of independent music where I was living, where I still am, in Oklahoma; as I write this I think to myself ‘how cliché’ and is it really necessary to express a jaded perspective here? Yet I think there is something to it, when I see the scene ‘dying’ or things changing from what they were or kids not showing up or not caring, is it the scene I’ve lost? Does that mean that the meaning of it is gone? Do we need a show to remind us that life isn’t about money and products but instead about expression and community? Or is that thing, that manifestation of those ideals, however imperfect, just a reminder that we all make promises to each other, that punk or d.i.y. is a promise, and the whole idea in this song is just that if you don’t put something on the table, if you don’t open up, if you don’t express yourself and thereby make yourself vulnerable, if you don’t expend effort in the hopes that others will follow suit, then nothing will happen, and that cynicism, that pessimism will end up right, reality will live up to your expectations, if you don’t bet something, you can’t win, if you don’t risk something, there won’t be a reward, however much our hopes may be based on cloudy sentiment that is nostalgic and emotional and irrational, that is what we’re fighting for, that is what is worth risking for, because reason and efficiency and logic will tell you to go get a business degree settle down raise a family and vote for the status quo but your heart is telling you something else, everything that is human in you is telling you that need to do something, to make something, to express yourself, to be more than a cog in a wheel, we can delude ourselves into thinking that that is all that is left in these days, we can convince ourselves that its just a battle of economics or property, and we can fulfill our own prophecy but we can also fulfill the promise we have within us, live up to the dream that punk was for us when we were first introduced to it – if we remember that a commitment to that ineffable and luminous emotion of excitement and discovery is not a commitment to a static musical genre or to a social clique, but instead to a group of people committed to each other, committed to enriching each other’s lives, and that is a battle, it’s a battle against the complacency within ourselves, a battle against the culture of commodity, a battle against conformity, a battle worth winning, if we live up to our promise by keep our promises to each other.