Again, inspired by my sister, I ‘m taking a season to write about songs that I am “noticing”. Here’s the Spotify list of the songs (in development).

I think it’s one of the great truths of music and art that the best songs are generally written by folks who are either running firmly towards God or firmly away from God.

(Bono said that, by the way, so you know it has to be true.)

I don’t know really know Trent Reznor, but at the very least he (a) has the reputation of running away from God, and (b) writes some awesome, forceful and violent songs.

Most of them are very much NSFW; police yourselves.

I wrote that I was pretty much in the pit on Nov 3, and on Nov 4 I woke up still fighting a bit of shame and sadness.

But then I got mad.

I’m not proud of my temper; most of the time it expresses itself in hurtful and even embarrassing ways. Nevertheless, it’s there. It’s a part of me.

And on November 4 I decided to get pissed off at the things that drug me into that pit.

Whoever Reznor really is, he writes pretty profoundly about (what I consider to be) spirituality and even health. He kicked a pretty rough heroin addiction back around 2005. Since then he’s created some pretty insightful songs about some of the emotional and psychological demons that haunt some of us.

The chorus of “Discipline” is,

“I need your discipline // I need your help
I need your discipline // I know that once I stop I cannot stop myself…”

Doesn’t get any more real than that.

I cannot and will not vouch for all of Nine Inch Nails’ work, but there are sometimes that I need to hear something that is loud, intelligently aggressive, and also grooving. 

So as I drove around central Florida (still in Orlando for class), I just blasted NIN’s music and allowed some of my anger and frustration to fuel my crawl out of the depths.

Johnny Rotten once sang (well, sort of, Rotten never really “sings”), “Anger is an energy.”

Sometimes our anger can help us fight against the “dark stuff” in our lives.