Hittin' you with the remix. Or something.

A much more complete version of the demo I last posted. This one really cooks.

My Darkness

New song from yours truly

Here's a demo of a new song I wrote. Not bad for a demo, I think. Much thanks to my brother, Parker Mann, for his production/mixing/organ work. (Click below)

My Darkness (Demo)

The New Obsession Playlist

Here are some artists whose catalogs I've discovered and obsessed over during the past few months. (Though I'm surely a late-comer to most of it). In particular, these songs have been on constant repeat.

The Belle Brigade:

Allen Stone: 

Here We Go Magic: 

Laura Marling:

Bill Withers: 

D'Angelo:

Visitors, ice cream, and realizing my parents were liars

The Thompsons came to visit us in Oregon. About five years earlier, our family had left the Thompsons, and others, in Arizona. Reunited, our respective families did a number of activities together that week. I hadn’t remembered the Thompsons terribly well — I was only three when we moved to Oregon — and thus felt no real allegiance to them. But their visit brought a number of fun activities, like hiking and paddle boating, and in this instance, lunch at a restaurant; so I had no real objection to it all.

We finished our lunches, and the grownups sat and talked about who knows what. Nothing interesting to me; probably catching up on things and reminiscing. Their conversation meandered, and all I could think about was the possibility of dessert. I don’t remember if lunch was satisfying or not, but when your age is still in single digits, there’s always room for treats.

I poked my mom. “I want dessert!” I whispered, not that quietly.

“We have ice cream at home, in the big freezer downstairs,” she dismissed. “You can wait till we get home.”

The adults carried on, and I sat there slightly more patient than before, my stomach anticipating the big freezer’s goodies. The restaurant was pretty far from home — farther than I would prefer given the circumstances. But what’s a powerless kid to do?

My parents dropped me off at the house, then drove away to spend more time with the Thompsons. I swung open the front door and scurried to the basement, to our big white freezer. Hoisting up the freezer door, I peered inside, eyes darting to the normal spot where we kept the ice cream.

Strangely, there sat only frozen loaves of white bread.

How odd. No matter. Someone must have put the ice cream elsewhere in the freezer. I reached my arm in and rummaged under the frozen bread. Nothing there.

Under the frozen fruit, perhaps.

Still, nothing. It was a deep freezer — maybe the ice cream was buried somewhere beyond my reach. Unlikely, though. Ice cream was a treasured commodity in our house. It would never stay in our freezer long enough to get buried underneath some frozen bread.

The smaller freezer in our kitchen! Of course. All this worry for nothing. I rushed back upstairs, opened the freezer door high above my head, and craned my neck upward looking for an indication of ice cream. No sign. I scooted the stool over and hopped on, bringing me eye level with the freezer. More rummaging, but still no luck.

At this point, I started to worry.

There was one more spot: a second freezer in the basement, that, as I could remember, never stored anything immediately edible. A long shot, sure, but the treats had to be somewhere. Right? I walked back downstairs, my little shred of hope fighting a losing battle with growing skepticism.

As I suspected, the second basement freezer was ice cream-less. With a heavy heart, I retraced my steps, digging methodically through each freezer. But it was a lost cause. I sat down, my growing hunger pains mingled with confusion. Why had my mom made such claims about ice cream in the big freezer? There was none there — of that I was now certain. At the restaurant, she sounded so reassuring; so confident. This gross parental error left my faith shaken. I mean, what kind of mom doesn’t know the status of ice cream in her own home? If I couldn’t trust her with this, what other parental duties were now in question? My young mind was deeply troubled as I waited in silence for them to return home.

Eventually, my parents pulled into the driveway, and I nervously anticipated the impending conversation. Somehow, I knew I sat on the cusp of facts that would forever change my worldview.

My gut was right. I asked my mom about the location of the “ice cream,” and she told me we didn’t have any. This only caused me more confusion. If she knew we didn’t have ice cream, why did she say we did? She explained that the Thompsons paid for lunch that day, and to make them buy me dessert would have been rude. But her explanation didn’t console me. This realization, that my mom had lied to me, hurt deeply, in a particular way I had never before experienced. I felt betrayed, and the sting lingered throughout the afternoon. Perhaps longer.

Realizing that my parents were capable of lying to me was life changing. And, though I couldn’t identify it at the time, a deeper hurt came from seeing how quickly my parents would lie to me when it was socially convenient.

In retrospect, though, I appreciate my mother’s decision to come clean with me, and explain why she lied. After all, it would have been easier for her, when confronted by her hungry, confused son, to lie again and say she mistakenly thought we had ice cream. Or something like that. And, looking back, I can remember all the times my parents chose honesty with me, even when it was markedly inconvenient. 

Sure, my parents are liars. But so am I. So is everybody. Gratefully, though, my parents' honesty far, far outweighs their deceit, to a degree I can only dream of matching when I have kids. But I won't get ahead of myself here. It's 2 a.m., and I could really go for some ice cream. If only I had some in my freezer...

Easter: to not be alone

Easter means a lot of things to a lot of people. To some, it means nothing at all. Though I was raised in a religious household, and still consider myself religious, Easter isn’t something I’ve always felt strongly about.

Today, I’ve pondered about what Easter really means to me, beyond what it simply represents. And, as I think about its personal significance, I realize that, for me, Easter is about the blessing of not being alone.

My first Easter as a missionary for the LDS church was particularly meaningful. At the time I was teaching Kun Gao, a remarkable woman from mainland China whose husband was LDS. For so many reasons she was unlike anyone I have ever met, or ever will meet.

Kun Gao had extreme sensitivity to chemicals. Living in our chemically-saturated world of pesticides, soaps and scents, Kun Gao was often sick and rarely left the confines of her home. Visiting her required extensive preparation. We had to have our suits dry-cleaned at a special location. We had to use unscented clothes detergent. The day of our visits, we had to shower without soap or shampoo. And even then, Kun Gao would still sense the chemical residue on us and get lightheaded.

She hadn’t always been that way. The problem had inexplicably worsened as she got older, to the point where she interacted with barely anyone — just her husband, her young daughter and us missionaries. Surely, she was well acquainted with loneliness and isolation.

Her baptism was held on Easter Sunday in 2008. With the abundance of chemicals in our church building — carpet cleaning fumes, women’s perfume, etc. — we had to find another location. So we did the baptism at the house of a local church member who worked with homeopathic medicines. His home office was fairly chemical-free, and he had sterilized his hot tub for the baptism.

When I think of Easter, I think of that beautiful spring day.

Kun Gao could not attend church, so once a month our congregation brought church to her. A small group of members, chemically prepared, would visit her home, bring the sacrament, and have a small meeting where they discussed the Gospel and shared their testimonies. Kun Gao later told us that although she still could rarely leave her home, her life was no longer one of exclusion, thanks to these visits. She could not come to them, but they so willingly came to her. And, for the first time in a long time, Kun Gao was not lonely.

One year later, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, an apostle in the LDS church, gave a talk during the church’s General Conference. Titled “None Were With Him,” Elder Holland spoke of the solitary journey that was Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice, and how, in those moments of divine withdrawal, Christ gained perfect empathy for the spiritual loneliness humankind is so well acquainted with.

Ironically, loneliness seems one of the most pervasive forces in our increasingly interconnected world. Perhaps that interconnectedness makes our own isolation all the more difficult to understand.

Because of this, I’m grateful for what this Easter really means: that we really aren’t alone.

We may feel that we are, and in this life we may be incapable of fully removing such feelings. But there is one with perfect empathy for our situation. And that person also overcame death so that death would not be the end for us.

For much of humankind, inequality and sorrow and loneliness are the marks of their mortal existence. But it won’t be so in the world to come, and I’m grateful that such a world was made possible by Him whose resurrection we celebrate today.