"Phoenix" - Track 3 off The Tank by The War I Survived

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Rise from the ashes
After we burn
Same old reactions
We never learn
Bridges we set on fire with words that we say
Rivers we drown in when we get in over our heads

I can't say this is what I planned
Or make this easy to understand

I reach for the stars with my hand
I fell short again

The tongue can be our own worst enemy. We forge fires with slander, and heap bundles of kindling on the burning mess with rumors, and fan the flames further with lies and deceit. We can try to learn from our mistakes, but it would seem that most of us are doomed to repeat them. All of this starts, as we try to get ahead in life, but take the wrong path to get there.

When I was eighteen, I moved to Phoenix. This was the start of a new journey for me. I had dropped out of school, partied hard, watched my parents split, had seen death, and all its fearsome glory. When I came back to Iowa a year later, I rose from the ashes of my old life, and started down the new road that would lead me here.

When this song first sparked in my head, I was stuck watching a great friend of mine dig a hole in his life that I knew he would never fully be able to get out of. In fact, this was another musician, and our final show at the pinnacle of our mutual music career, was in Phoenix. It was in our hotel that weekend that I began to jot down the first lines of this song, and fiddle with the riffs, that would become the song "Phoenix".

The song is simple, yet complex. It's the process of constantly striving for more, but ending up with less, the doomed fate of the ones who never learn from their mistakes, and end up starting from scratch, over and over. The ones who say too much, when they should say little. They never intend to lose control, but for whatever their intentions are, their lives spiral down, until they are drowning in a whirlpool of mistakes, and broken promises.

You can keep reaching for the same things that drove you to this point, trying to fulfill unreal expectations, or you can start again. Get your life back, and start on your new path. Rise from the ashes.

I hope you will read this and think about where you are, and where you could be. And I'm not talking about physical locations here; I'm talking about your life. I'm talking about the death, and rebirth of your spirit. The renewal of things that once were, or could have been. Rise from ashes, after we burn the relationships in our life that got us to where we are. It might not be what you wanted, or easy, but everything happens for a reason.



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