from the LP Know By Heart, Tiger Style Records, 2001Like a ratty old patchwork quilt, mottled with stains and prepared with pieces that bear no resemblance to one another, the copious amount of times where I’ve gotten by due to the kindness of strangers blankets my life. Sometimes it’s help with the day-to-day things: a server buying your table a round of drinks, an unknown neighbor snowplowing your driveway after a blizzard, someone complementing how you look; these may seem trivial and primitive in nature, but at times, they can turn your whole day around. More impact-laden, as I gaze back over some of my wilder adventures, are the genuinely crucial moments in my life where strangers have come through in very big ways: several people over the years, who I barely knew, giving me shelter when I had none, secure and friendly rides hitchhiking alone, staff members who showed us grace when I was locked up…safe passage away from the chaos of my life, time & time again. There is a profoundly freeing feeling which accompanies one’s reception of those random acts of kindness, big or small, because you know that the individual stranger aiding you expects nothing in return, there is no obligation to be met later; in fact, you will most probably never see them again. The American Analog Set, who hail from the indie-centric universe of Austin, TX, always manage to be intellectual without coming off academic or haughty about it. The vignette inside this song, of an adolescent being thrown out of their home because they are sowing their wild oats, could come off cheesy and overwrought in the wrong hands, but these guys handle the task with a firm and grounded sense of reality. “…but there was no doubt, the kid was, in danger; ‘cause she was cast out, but turned a corner and her dad forgave her…” Some of us are stubborn-assed mules and just won’t be told, so sometimes it takes an event as seemingly harsh as being “cast out” to really get it through our skulls just how retarded we are acting/living. Mercifully, and thankfully for us, compassion still lives in the hearts of total strangers. Now, quickly before this tale turns into a fucking ABC After School Special, I’m gonna go roll up a doob of some kindness and watch the Simpsons, and I don’t give a shit how cliché that sounds---things become “cliché” for a reason people.
