Oh! Gravity.
The Songs by Jon Foreman
- The natural force of attraction between any two massive bodies, which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
- Grave consequence; seriousness or importance
- Solemnity or dignity of manner.
Meaning Behind Songs
Oh! Gravity is a conversation with a well-known law of physics. The question is this: If in the physical world things naturally move closer together, why are we falling apart? War and rumors of war, divorce, hatred, violence, and everything else on the evening news seems to contradict gravity. This song is a fun happy-clappy tune about a grave matter: "Sons of my enemies, why can't we seem to keep it together?"
American Dream. I am proud to be an American. Proud of my grandfather who was shot down in world war two. Proud of some of my best friends who are in the Marines. I believe in a nation that is serving a higher calling than a TV. I have nothing against the material world. I have nothing against consumerism as a social structure. Certainly we are consumers with physical bodies, but if that's all we are we've lost what it means to be human. When success is equated with excess the ambition for excess wrecks us. As the top of the mind becomes the bottom line when success is equated with excess.
Dirty Second Hands. the machine. the clock. our own hands. The dirty second hand of time is always ticking- bringing us and all that we have worked so hard to achieve closer to the grave and the second hand store. In my fight with depression, lust, pride, and boredom I have found that the biggest challenger is often within me. The very machinery that I loathe and have fought so hard to defeat stares back at me from the mirror. This mechanism is always ticking. And in my spiritual life I have found that this is a part of me that has to die everyday if I am to be truly alive.
Awakening. How quickly I am lulled back to sleep! How quickly I forget. In one of my favorite Wilco songs Jeff Tweedy sings, "You know I would die if I could come back new." Perhaps to be truly reborn death is not optional. Here's a firsthand story about new life, it always starts at the bottom.
Circles. Here's a tune that had its roots in the past. We actually played a version of this song a few tours ago while we were gearing up for the recording of "nothing is sound." It's an ecclesiastical song about the modern machine. We tracked a previous version of this song while we were tracking stars. But something about the song was never quite right. When Sean and Sarah Watkins (our friends from Nickel Creek) came in, the song took on a new life and became something truly special. The end of the song represents one of my favorite moments we've ever had on a CD.
