Any of the anxious or negative thoughts I have already mentioned have the potential to become catastrophic. That is, I might, for whatever reason, fixate on the worst-case scenario, making an otherwise small concern seem like it will wreak complete havoc and disaster on my entire life. If I don’t practice today, I will never practice again and all my skills will atrophy. If I drop the form in a tune, no one will play with me again and my music career will be over. If I don’t get this job, I will not be able to pay my bills, we will go bankrupt, and I won’t be able to handle the shame. If my wrists hurt, it’s carpal tunnel syndrome, I will develop permanent nerve damage, and I will never be able to play the guitar again. If I disappoint or offend or annoy someone, they will never forgive me. If I cancel plans with someone, they will forever think I am a liar, they will hate me, and our friendship will be over. I worry that there will never be enough hours in the day and I will be incapable of doing anything I need to do the proper way. My daughter will be anxious because she sees me being anxious. It will ruin her life, the life she is only just about to start. If I don’t find the proper way to dispose of this paint I will destroy the environment. If I don’t get enough sleep my mind will start to deteriorate and my memory will fade, and if my memory fades it will be as if everything good I ever experienced never happened at all. If I keep worrying about all these things my brain signals will be permanently altered and everything that once triggered happiness will eventually only trigger anxiety and depression.

Catastrophic thoughts are like oil well fires, which can certainly be catastrophic events themselves. Your mind is on fire and everything you care about becomes an immense amount of fuel. The things you care about most, the things that are most valuable, most precious, will burn until nothing is left, until everything is consumed.

Do you know how firefighters put out an oil well fire? Dynamite. They use a sudden, massive explosion, and instead of fanning the flames, it lifts them right off their fuel source. Like blowing out a giant candle. This song is dynamite.

This song helps me make sense of these things; even as it is incredibly bombastic it soothes me, knocks me aggressively back to reality. It helps me see that these things I imagine are not true. There are a lot of dark, heavy, minor-key riffs here. Conceptually, it would make sense to imagine these riffs represent my fears, the terrible things, but I have never seen it this way. These riffs represent me, or at least, the me I would like to be. They represent determination, a need to persevere, an unstoppable force, an intense conviction, an unyielding integrity. Honesty.

Perhaps my preoccupation and value of honesty is because I have a deep-seated fear that people will think I am not honest or genuine. I think, looking at it now, that it’s absolutely linked to social anxiety. But no matter the reason why, I think honesty is of paramount importance. For all the shortcomings and flaws in myself that I perseverate on, the one virtue I can hold onto is honesty. It can be extremely painful, but honesty is also source of solace. Honesty is an infallible path to improvement, to healing, to connection with others. Honesty is incredibly powerful, and that’s what many of the riffs in this song sound like to me: fearsome, ferocious honesty. If you can hold on to honesty long enough to weather the storm, it can bring you to love in all its very different forms. That’s where this song ends: with love.



This song really pushed my pick hand to a new level, not with speed so much as articulation. It took months of practice after I wrote the riffs, but I feel like I was able to get my pick hand to bring out a lot of different and subtle timbres that are evident in the palm muting, down-picking, and harmonics. Those articulations are really what make these riffs work and I am very proud of all of them. That’s what was really missing for me in my jazz guitar career-the riffs. There are tons of great solos, but nothing remotely like a good metal riff.

And the solo at the end…it’s like all that fear and shame finally collapses, giving way to clarity, reality. Relief. Love. It represents everything I ever wanted to say to others but couldn’t find the right words to say.

There are some issues in the solo with the intonation of the guitar (which is a struggle with a 24.75 inch scale tuned down a whole step). But it makes sense to leave them; after all, it’s about expressing yourself even if things aren’t perfect. It also makes me realize that it’s not just artists who worry about how they express themselves, or just musicians who choose to say nothing rather than say something imperfectly. How many people in the world choose not to say anything, for fear that they won’t be able to express their feelings perfectly?