This song was written over a stretch during the pandemic. Not long after the initial riff found its way under my fingers, a phrase came along “anything goes if you push it hard enough.” Now, I like double entendres as much as the next guy, but this one stuck out and it got me thinking: What if I wrote a song about what it’s like to be alive in a time when seemingly anything goes? In the following verses, I’m ruminating on that theme:
“It’s a time of black and white
When all the loud ones are hogging the mic
It’s a time where I’m right as rain
And every person is in some kind of pain
It’s a time when you do you
And live your truth are on infinite loop
It’s a time where you and me
Can only be friends if we agree”
All songs are sonic time capsules, and these words captured how I felt as a human being and a follower of Jesus in the last few years. Maybe you can relate. The chorus just takes it further:
“Anything goes if you push it hard enough
When you take ’em by the scruff
If you feel like it’s okay, then by golly who’s to say
Anything goes away
Besides your love”
I never thought I’d sing the words “by golly” in a song but God moves in mysterious ways…Anyways, on to the bridge, which contains my favorite part of the song.
“The machine that runs on greed and hate
And the endless scroll,
Says I’m the master of my fate
the captain of my soul”
Riffing off of William Henry’s famous poem, “Invictus,” I added my own slant inspired by Paul Kingsnorth, a recent convert to Christianity, who writes about what he calls “The Machine.” Kingsnorth says the Machine is shorthand for “the ultimate project of modernity…to replace nature with technology, and to rebuild the world in purely human shape, the better to fulfill the most ancient human dream: to become gods. What I call the Machine is the nexus of power, wealth, ideology, and technology that has emerged to make this happen.” That’s heavy stuff. But when my brother’s drum fill comes in on “captain of my soul” I still get goosebumps.
In the second half of the bridge, and before I head back to the chorus, I take it in a more hopeful direction. Enter another spin on yet another famous poet, this time by Dylan Thomas, reminding myself that the true Master of all things is very different than “the machine” because Jesus raged against the dying of the light to the point of his life being snuffed out to save us all. Here’s the end of the bridge:
“If the master gave his life away
Then the machine is not my home
If he raged against the dying of the light
Then I am not my own”
While it’s a time when seemingly “Anything goes away”, God’s love abides. “Besides your love” are the last words of the song because God’s love always has the last word, not the machine.
Thanks for giving your most precious resource to read this and hopefully to give “Anything Goes” a spin.
—Brother K