I'm always hesitant to explain the backstories behind Koala songs since it is instrumental music and I think everyone should be able to create their own meaning to the songs. And I realize in writing what I am going to write may make it more programmatic for whoever reads this…so if this is something that you feel will take away from the music for you feel free to stop reading now.
In giving the backstory of this song I feel I need to give a little information about the album name, Xibalba. You may already be kind of familiar with this (especially if you’ve seen the film “The Fountain”), but in brief: it is the underworld of the Mayan religion and was believed to contain the tree of eternal life (which is what I interpreted the artwork that Kenyon’s grandfather made to be
). In the city of Xibalba there were six houses which all served as tests or trials for visitors. Each of these six songs on the album were sparked from events that were happening/happened that served as rites of passage or I grew from in some way, and were then brought in and fleshed out with the other Koala dudes. These experiences were all kind of about growing up or dealing with/accepting the realization of the mortality of everything. Even though each of the experiences were mine, they became ours and we tried our best to get into the mindset of each of these events in recording them.
"Hope I Live Before I Get Old" is the closer on this album. It was written during the Winter of 2009 after a near-car crash. Raena, Bill, and I were driving home from a party on a night that there was a storm and the roads were pretty terrible. Bill was was the designated driver, he had just dropped Matt, off. Bill was blasting The Who’s “My Generation” and as we drove over the bridge near Stoney Lane, Bill belted out the line “hope I die before I get old” with Daltrey, and as soon as he did, we hit a patch of ice. We skidded from side to side down the bridge and then at the bottom of the bridge we slid off the road. We were all screaming obscenities and freaking out and barely missed a few trees. Luckily no one was hurt and we just ended up in a ditch that we were able to push our way out of.
This song is this experience in reverse: starting with me in bed trying to go to sleep reflecting on what had happened. Then rewinding back to getting out of Bill's car as he dropped me off and lying on the grass in my front yard watching the stars. Then rewinding back to me and Bill driving back to my house as the adrenaline stopped pumping and we were able to talk about what had just happened. Then rewinding back to dropping Raena off and seeing her house for the first time since high school (4ish minutes in here). Then rewinding back to pushing the car out of the ditch. And then the last section is us skidding and nearly crashing and all the thoughts that were running through my head (6:15ish to the end).
So in this section what we (Koala) tried to do, is stretch these 10 seconds into two minutes - since this is how it was perceived. There were a lot of different thoughts, a lot of different memories, but the main thing that burned in my mind at this time was that I was going to die a virgin, along with the only girl I had ever been in a relationship with. A part of me realized that I had partially shut myself off from a part of life after this relationship, and that I had filled the void that was being created with music. Music became my addiction (and still is to some extent). I made a promise to myself in those ten seconds that if I survived that I would try to figure out how to fill this void with something else.
Listening to this song always kind of made me relive this experience to some extent and kind of served as a reminder of the realization I had in those moments. Two years later, after working on filling this void, I can't really explain how the experience of listening to this song and what it conjures up for me is different for me now in words in a way that sounds right. But I guess that's why there's always music to say what words can't.
I know this is the second time in a row I've posted old music - I promise that there are plenty of things that are in the works that will be posted shortly including more music from Koala.
