Please Keep In Sight What Makes You Care, You Have It Always

To preface this blog post, I wrote this months ago (after the Jimmy Eat World Clarity Tour) and I never posted it.

In high school, my sister and I had a clunky 3 disc CD changer that sat on the floor next to her bed. We would do homework in her room, her at her desk, me on her bed, and we'd listen to three CDs on a loop all night: one rotating disc, and the perennial staples: Foo Fighters - There's Nothing Left To Lose and Jimmy Eat World - Clarity. But this is about Clarity.

Clarity is perfect. The album is cohesive, imaginative, thought-provoking, emotional, distinct and beautiful. It's what a designer on Project Runway wishes their Bryant Park collection could be. Each piece (song) tells a story, references a distinct moment in your life and hits a different piece of your heart. There are the love songs, the songs about death and loss, the break up songs, the songs about the industry and the job - all filtered through the insecurity, vulnerability, and ambition of four young 20-something year olds wanting to play what was important to them and hoping to God that others would find it just as important.

A few months ago I was able to watch Jimmy Eat World play the album in its entirety. After 10 years, the songs meant something entirely different to me. I stood there listening to the album I'd heard hundreds of times and couldn't help but think about how different I was from that kid studying biology and calculus all night. I don't think that you can truly appreciate Clarity until you've gone through your own clarity. You can't understand "A Sunday" until you've felt your dreams fall apart and you're left with nothing except the memory of the promise you once had. You can't really know "For Me This Is Heaven" until you've felt so frustrated with the world, your own shortcomings, and outside pressures that you wonder if you will ever be happy and if that will ever be considered okay. And you really haven't listened to "Table For Glasses" until you've fallen in love and felt your heart ache because of how much you're using it. The themes are so universal, the songs so poignant, it's obvious why this album has had such staying power - it's the album of our every day - our growing up - our life.

It's been 10 years since the original release of Clarity - they will never make another album like it. And I can Live With That.