Thanks to all the entries for The Louder Than Havok AFI Compilation Contest. All of the entries were truly thought provoked and it was quite hard to judge. Thanks again!
We now have our three winners. They have each won a pair of tickets to see Davey in American Idiot on Broadway! These are the entries that won:
Lauren T.
I chose the theme of loosing childhood innocence as one grows older:
1. The Boy Who Destroyed the World
2. Theory of Revolution
3. The Great Disappointment
4. Now the World
5. Over Exposure
6. ...But Home is Nowhere
7. Where We Used to Play
When you're young you're generally happy, naive, optimistic, and blind to the problems of the world, but as you grow older you begin to understand these problems and begin to go through problems of your own. You realize that the way you perceived things as a child is very different from the way things actually are.
The Boy Who Destroyed the World is about a boy who was once happy but as he got older, became depressed (maybe from being alienated from others?) and "lost his glow." He reaches out for help but it only makes him feel more alone because of how different he is from others, and how no one really empathizes with what he's feeling. He remembers when they were all young children and happy ("Remember when, Remember when, Remember when we were all so beautiful?") but as they grow older they all change ("But since then we've lost our glow").
Theory of Revolution is about people beginning to do drugs and drink. Younger children don't really have any idea what drugs are, but as kids get older they start experimenting, some at a very early age. Eventually for some of these people drugs will take over their lives and destroy them, while those who don't do drugs might lose their old childhood friends to drugs and will have to go through that pain.
The Great Disappointment is, to me, about a child who is brought up as a Christian and as they get older, realize that what they were taught is not true. The child is taught to believe in God and that their prayers will be answered, and being young and naive, accepts what they're being told without a second thought. The child dreams about angels and despite the fact that they have never seen an angel ("I knew they would appear, saw not a single one") still believes they exist. As time goes on the angels never appear and prayers remain unanswered yet the child continues to wait for something to happen, until they begin to start doubting their faith ("While I waited I was wasting away, hope was wasting away, faith was wasting away"), until finally they come to the painful realization that what they had been taught to believe in was just a lie. ("I always wanted to believe...But from the start I'd been deceived")
Now the World is about a boy who falls in love with someone, probably for the first time. He feels like the girl he loves could make him happier than he's ever been before ("Summer I painted, a scene, that lit the stars for me") and completely opens himself up to her, only to have her turn him down ("That summer created, those words, that came to life in three, They were denied by you"). Instead of ending up being happier than he had ever been, the boy's heart is broken for the first time and he instead becomes more miserable than he had ever been before ("This summer created a boy of abject misery. He was designed by you").
Over Exposure is about realizing all of the problems that there are in the world. It is about going through everything from being young and oblivious to it all, to experiencing pain, lies, and corruption, and feeling overwhelmed by all of this and wishing it was possible to be oblivious to it all once again.
...But Home is Nowhere is about how as time goes on one comes to terms with the fact that all childhood innocence is gone, and everything that was simple and easy about childhood is gone with it. As one gets older life becomes much more complex and painful than it was during childhood ("I lay strewn across the floor, pieced up in sorrow, The pieces are lost, these pieces don't fit"), but that's just the way it goes, and as difficult as it is, one must learn to accept that. BHIN relates to many of the points I talked about in the other songs; there is the lonely, misunderstood boy from TBWDTW ("Ungranted in dead time left me disowned To this nature, so unnatural, I remain alone"), the child who lost their faith in God in The Great Disappointment ("My prayers to disappear Absent of grace, marked as infernal"), and the boy who's heart was broken in Now the World ("Twenty-six years and seems like I've just begun To understand my, my intimate is no one").
Where We Used to Play is about trying to find again innocence that was lost. It could be interpreted as someone returning to the place where they grew up in hopes of reliving their childhood, but finding out that even though the place itself might still be the same, everything else is different. The people that had once been childhood friends have changed and become distant ("I know I'm with strangers I recognize and I realize my own disowned me"). The bottom line is that as you grow up and go through difficult experiences, you lose your childhood innocence forever, and you can never really get it back.
And that’s the end of my novel. XD
Entrant #36 (name omitted to respect privacy)
The theme of my AFI compilation is the instinctive evil of human nature, the darkness inside us that seeks to smother the light, to put out the fire inside us. This compilation follows our path from morn to night, our fall into darkness.
Songs:
1: Prelude 12/21
2: Death of Seasons
3: Beautiful Thieves
4: The Missing Frame
5: Medicate:
6: The Last Kiss
7: Reiver's Music
When we are young, the fire burns brightly within us. We are innocent, blind to the world's faults and horrors that surround us, the injustices, and evil. We think that we know people, and that they will never betray our trust ("This is what I thought, I thought you'd need me. This is what I thought, so think me naïve.") Promises and love all seem to be real ("I promised you a heart you promised to keep.") Each night, our parents put us to bed ("Kiss my eyes and lay me to sleep."), and we wake thinking the world is still a good place, and the fire is still the greater force within it. The fire is our life force, the thing that keeps us going, the essence of goodness. It is art, it is knowledge, it is love, it is utterly benevolent... and it is easily corrupted.
As we age and mature, we begin to see the human nature, and the evil that lies there. As Davey says in Death of Seasons, we are disgusted with what we see ("Writhing with sickness"), but we are immersed in it. In the media, criminals are glorified, broadcast around the world for all to see ("Turn it off." and "Turn it on."). We watch as all that is good, that stars and the light, fall, smothered by the crushing blackness of the sky, the evil that seeps into our hearts. We hate it, and would rebel against it ("All of this hatred is fucking real.") There are those that would comfort us, and tell us that life goes on despite it all, that it doesn't affect us. They try ignore it, but we know better. We know that it will not leave us alone, that the darkness will find us and try to take us, for it has taken so many in the past ("It won't be all right, despite what they say. Just watch the stars tonight as they disappear, disintegrate."). Even as we try to cling to our beliefs and our morals, we can feel ourselves slipping away. However, we believe that we won't sit by idly; we will fight to keep the fire burning ("I hope to shade the world as stars go out and I disintegrate.").
With each passing second, each beat of our hearts, we see more of the atrocities. In Beautiful Thieves, the phrase "beautiful thieves" has a double meaning. First, they are those with power and influence, who can get away with anything they please, any crime, any immoral action ("Can't you see they turn blind eyes to we swift and spotlight strangers? Oh, before the rush is over, we will be revered again while the victims still recover." "If we run this light, take a little life, no one will care at all.") The media will gloat over them anyway, simply giving them more publicity, and the people will love them all the same ("Even if we're discovered just be sure to wear your best; we will surely make the covers.") Secondly, they are addictive substances: drugs, alcohol, and sex, to name a few ("the rush"). Once you have become addicted, taken by these evil things, you do not know that they are wrong, and will keep coming back to them ("Who would run for cover? Who would run from us?" "No one suspects at all."). We see all this, we know it, but it is difficult to fight.
In The Missing Frame, our morals are blurred ("constants become surreal."). We see people turning to death to escape the darkness of the world ("suicides are revealed."). We see people forgetting the morals and values they once upheld ("I watch them all forget.") In the face of all this evil and corruption, we slip away faster and faster ("I'm lost in little deaths.") It becomes harder and harder to resist ("I forget my life"). We wonder if we can withstand the evil that rushes about us and the media that brainwashes us, barraging our minds. We wonder if we can keep our fire burning ("Will the flood behind me put out the fire inside me?") In the end, we stop trying to fight. The evil is too much to overcome, and we give in. We let it break in, and tear our sense of decency and goodness to shreds, even though we know it means we can never go back ("I'll let you tear it up if you don't wake me up. But if you tear it, we can't repair it, so please don't wake me till someone cares. Now no one cares. ... it's apparent that you don't care. And it's sunk into me 'cause I don't care. Now no one cares.") And no one cares; it's just another life lost, another fire that has gone out.
We fall from light into the darkness of addiction. It is both the addiction to drugs and a cheap, superficial, unfeeling and meaningless love ("Medicate here with me. Now as we lose ourselves in this, ignore that you don't even know my name. Medicate.") The darkness isolates us, even though we pretend to be loved ("I've come to find everyone goes away."). We know that we cannot escape ("I'm destined to remain."). In the cold and the dark, the evil has robbed us of all feeling and emotion ("Can you describe what it's like? I feel nothing. Can you feel this? Does it sting? I feel nothing at all. Can you tell me how it feels?"). We want to be a part of the darkness and embrace it. We want to still feel like someone knows us, or would want to ("Can we pretend this is real?"). And we continue to "Medicate."
The Last Kiss represents the trading of addiction to love for an addiction to self-infliction. We are left alone, and want someone to pity us, to bring us back from the darkness ("Hung in your room, swaying, hoping only that you'll see."). No one will come; there is only the evil and the darkness ("I'm alone in such poor company."). The evil cannot be stopped, and we continue to indulge on drugs ("I can't stop the insects that are feeding, pull the needles from beneath my skin."). Distantly, we remember a time when the flame was still alive within us, but cannot quite recall the light ("You'll love the eyes. Have they always shone so vacantly?"). Still, we sink further and further from the surface, down into the dark, into the evil. We try to put the blame on someone else, to free ourselves of the guilt ("Hurt myself today. It's all for you. Do you like what I'm becoming? Cut myself today. It's all for you."). In the end, we cannot escape our guilt, our self-hate, our addiction, our fate; and we, too, turn to death.
Reiver's Music is the mind reeling as we die. It is a reflection on the life we have lead, the path we traveled, and the fall off the edge. We recall when we were overwhelmed by evil, and stopped trying to resist, when our fire went out ("I gave up fighting.") We remember the first time, when we convinced ourselves that we could go back ("Am I now worse off for this one night?") We remember how we were so quickly abandoned by those we had trusted ("All the while we know those enamored never miss us.") Then we embraced the darkness utterly ("I've taken to speaking words that only they know.") Even when we were so far gone, we knew that we were alone, despite our denial of it ("How soon I did see, all here is unseen.") Then we despaired, and committed suicide ("I gave up trying. I've come to be these halos."). And we know that, in a world so full of evil, no one will remember us ("Those enamored who won't miss us."). As we lose our grip on life, we see these things one last time ("All now in dying days. Hear nothing and see no one. All now in dying days. Nothing is all we own. All now in dying days. Hear nothing and see no one. All now in dying days. No one is who we know.") And then the light fades in our eyes, and the darkness is complete, and we are lost.
Entrant #53 (name omitted to respect privacy)
For my theme I chose Losing Faith. I know these songs may hold a different meaning for everyone, but when I hear these songs I relate them to religion and the realization that your faith my be wrong.
1. The Great Disappointment- I see this song as the beginning of the realization that you have lost faith. The title alone relates to the Millerite Movement and the hope that the rapture would happen in 1844. When that didn't happen, it was then called the Great Disappointment. But the lyrics give way to the notion that he wasted away waiting for God and being excited about the idea until, at last, he realizes his mistake.
2. The Despair Faction- This has the same meaning to me as The Great Disappointment, just in a softer version. Waiting is a huge theme in this song as well.
3. This Time Imperfect- There are many meanings for this song to me. But one that can fit is the idea of being hurt because he feels betrayed by believing in God. "Seems no one will appear and make me real" is the idea of the Church saying you are not alive until you believe in Christ.
4. Miseria Cantare-This could also relate by finding a group of people with the same belief as you. "Love your hate, your faith lost, you are now one of us>"
5. Miss Murder- This is symbolic of Lucifer's fall from heaven, when can also be seen as one's fall from faith. "That the ghost you love, your ray of light will fizzle out, without hope." Maybe this is trying to convince someone that still believes that they are wrong?
6. Open Your Eyes- I see this song as being about the church and how many religions can make people feel worthless and criticize people for their sins. When in many cases the people who are doing the judging are sinning far more than the congregation knows. "Open your eyes, the real problem is you."
7. Sacrilige- This song comes full circle from The Great Disappointment. He is no longer struggling with whether or not God exists, he is fully comfortable with his beliefs. He is showing his frustration with the people who still believe, and just can't understand why anyone would choose to believe in God. He finds it a ancient fairy tale, and an obsolete idea. He says "I see you're scared, well I feel fine" which shows just how much he is set in what he sees as truth. This song is the the most obvious in this theme, there is no hiding the true meaning. It is just out there for all to see!
It’s time to announce how we will give away the remaining six tickets (three pairs) of tickets to see Davey in American Idiot!
To enter, think of a theme such as a season, place, or feeling (be creative!) and then seven AFI songs that fit that theme and explain why. No more than three songs from each album or EP! If a song was released more than once, count it on every release it was on.
