This post is part of the ongoing blog breakdown series where I dive into the official lyrics, stories and thoughts that inspired the lyrics for the recently released Throughfare EP. If you haven’t yet, give the record a spin on bandcamp and jump back to the first blog on this record by clicking this handy link.

Today we’re talking about track 4 on the record: Simple.

Listen to the album in full on bandcamp!

Stream “Simple” and then read on for the official lyrics and my blog breakdown.

Simple (Official Lyrics)

Waking up like a flat bed truck
Overloaded with a weight that’s more than enough
To keep you down at the base of the run
And they’re catching up
Feeling each little piece that makes up the ton
Chip into me as my eyes battle the sun
Exerting all that I’ve got
And it’s not enough

To say it was so simple
To take all you could shoulder
To brave this rushed foreclosure
Hurry now before it’s over
To say that it’s so simple
To believe all they told you
To break instead of folding
For doors that are never closing

A fist clasped tight with each bit that they gave
To lose a single piece would be a disgrace
Each one vital to the broken machine
Pushing the air out that we breathe
Weak from the speed of the time that it’d take
To make it from here to where we should be
Without a rest on this crowded highway
Losing grip of the wheel would be easy

To say it was so simple
To take all you could shoulder
To brave this rushed foreclosure
Hurry now before it’s over
To say that it’s so simple
To believe all they told you
To break instead of folding
For doors that are never closing

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The message behind Simple is… well, simple.

I’m speaking pretty literally in the first verse having had my share of rough mornings that make it feel near impossible to even get out of bed let alone do much of anything else.

I always feel particularly terrible when I get in these moods because I feel like every moment spent not doing something is a wasted one. I’ve always had trouble with the concept of just being knowing that our potential while we’re alive is so great.

When I was younger I’d often hear that if you stayed in bed to or past 10AM, you’ve already wasted half the day, and it’s stuck with me pretty firmly throughout my entire life. As a result even sleeping in til 8AM these days hits me with a bit of a jolt. I should already be well on my way to accomplishing something by then, not brushing my teeth.

The problem with this type of thinking is that it doesn’t offer you much time or space to just recover from whatever other heavy burdens you might be dealing with, and life throws these at us all the time, often without warning.

This can send you into an awful cycle of feeling like you’re not just wasting your life, but feeling like you’re somehow doing something wrong just because you feel a little tired or down for some reason. How dare you not be perfectly chipper every waking hour? How dare you say the wrong thing in a heated argument?

I think just about everyone knows what this feels like and it’s because we put entirely too much pressure on ourselves as a whole, and unfortunately we start doing it to ourselves at younger and younger ages, especially girls. I’ve said before that I can recall myself feeling depressed as young as 8 year old but photos might suggest that this really began to me as young as 6. I read a stat a couple years ago that some girls feel this way as young as 4 or 5. And then this stays with you well into adulthood because how can a 5 year old know how to handle such intense feelings?

The chorus is a bit snippy, speaking out directly in the face of the people that train us to behave and feel this way (parents, teachers, etc). It’s like when people say to someone who’s depressed, “just walk it off,” as though it is such a simple fix. It almost never is.

So one of the few things I’ve learned in my life is that it’s important to question to people who react to problems this way or offer this type of advice to you and take a moment to consider their own motives when they do so. In my experience most people have a very narrow-view of how to solve problems based on their own upbringing, or, they’ve in some way benefitted from this type of advice themselves and assume it to be a bit of a blanket that would work for others.

It’s always important to take enough time and care into your own thoughts and feelings and decide for yourself how to handle them.

In verse 2 I’m referencing holding on to the lessons we’ve been taught and our own family histories and experiences. As frustrating or difficult it can be to accept our pasts, it’s important that we remember them and acknowledge how they’ve affected us. The broken machine in this verse is us in our own bodies and the air we breath the things that keep us moving along each day. And again I remind myself here that if we don’t take time to rest and recoup, we could be the reason for our own early demise.

If you’ve read my other blog breakdowns of other song releases you might have noticed by now that I tend to reference time a lot in my songwriting; I’m an anxious-personality type that is entirely too aware that our time on Earth is not promised and at any point our circumstances can change drastically.

This sometimes leads me to rush into things without thinking them through when really what I’ve had to learn is to be more patient and less concerned with what could happen to future-me.

Of course I say that now, but it never is that simple.

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Next time I’ll wrap up this series with track 5, Drift.