My fiction characters always have a song on my writing playlist.
And, most of the pivotal events that happen in my books are usually set to music in my mind before I ever write about them. Sometimes I wish God made me a songwriter instead of an author. Songwriters can tell an entire story in a couple of minutes! And there is this awesome permission a songwriter gives a listener to insert his or her own meaning, memories, and emotions into a song like an unconditional gift to the world.
This is my first attempt at writing non-fiction, and the writing I’m doing is already loaded with meaning, emotions and feelings; but I’m finding that making a playlist is still very useful.
At the moment, I’m going through a music phase that I think they call Indie Folk. This type of music helps me daydream about my past with a soundtrack of songs that can help to coax out a discovery or two about how poetic the details of life can truly be.
There’s an older song called Foreigner’s God by Hozier that keeps popping up on my playlist these days. It’s moody and dark, and whenever I hear it, I can’t help but wonder about the singer, Andrew Hozier-Bryne. (What was happening in his life when he wrote this song?) For me, there is pain and confusion in the lyrics, and also a layer of questioning that catches me every time I hear the song. But the hook is the part of that song that really draws me in. It goes like this:
Screaming the name of a foreigner’s God,
Screaming the name of a foreigner’s God,
Screaming the name of a foreigner’s God:
The purest expression of grief.
Even though these words have made me so curious about what this song meant to the songwriter, I made up my own story about this song the very first time I ever heard it. This song provides me with a portal back into a season of my life where loss, fear, and grief would leave me pleading and searching for something to give me some relief. I guess it’s human to go into a season of darkness and lose your way because you don’t have any answers. But whenever I hear this song, it reminds me that when people are desperate, they end up calling out God’s name — even when God is a foreigner to them.
I can honestly say that I never lost track of God during this very dark time in my life. I always knew He was there; He never became a foreigner to me — not even for one second. And so in many ways, when I hear this song, I can turn it into an expression of gratitude in my heart to tell God over and over again that I know exactly who He is.
My doubts have never been in God. I’ve only doubted myself, and my ability to endure my life in His shadow. My “purest expression of grief” showed up in my lack of answers, and in this all-consuming fear I was fighting off so I could stand up against any of the ways this world could take me down.
