Story #12 "God Loves Us"-- Guided By Voices
We are living proof that God loves us
I hadn't planned on doing more than one song title by a band when I started writing "A-Sides and B-Sides." Actually, that's not quite accurate. I thought about doing a whole book of short stories based on nothing but Guided By Voices songs. But when the concept rolled around in my head for a while I thought it might be too limiting.
As much as I love Pollard & Co., it felt like it would be easier to imagine different kinds of stories if the music wasn't all by the same person. The reason why "God Loves Us," was ultimately the second GbV song is because Tobin Sprout sang it so it did had a different feeling.
Tobin is with few exceptions the only other voices in the ever-evolving Robert Pollard landscape. James Greer and Nick Mitchell from Pollard's umpteenth side band Ricked Wicky are a couple of others. But I believe Sprout's sung the most tunes of all the other singers, especially in GbV. Sprout's voice is angelic, singing in a slightly higher range than Pollard.
"God Loves Us," is one of those ultra-short low-fidelity punk songs that doesn't even make it to the one and a half minute mark before it's over. Sprout sings one line over and over again. "We are living proof that God loves us." He follows it with a hypnotic mantra of "We are, we are, we are, we are..." before repeating the line in its entirety one last time. And all the while the guitars chug along.
There is something about that lyric that seems so sincere and esoteric at the same time. How are we living proof that God loves us when there is so much evil in the world? Or is it to be taken in a more positive sense? As in, when we are at our most beautiful or benevolent is when we are living proof God loves us? Perhaps it isn't meant to be taken at face value. Or maybe the "we" in question the band itself? God loves GbV which is why God made them so prolific. I was joking when I wrote that last one, but I kind of like that idea.
I was reminiscing one day about arcades when I came up with the idea of the story "God Loves Us," in "A-Sides and B-Sides." First it was me wanting to tap into that feeling of being a kid in back in the 90's, walking into an arcade with a pocketful of quarters like you owned the world. There's a certain inimitable quality arcades had then. Despite not having visited an arcade like that in forever, it's still part of my genetic make up because that's how many freaking games I played. As an aside, I don't count barcades. They might have some of the same games, but barcades just don't produce the same feeling, however fun they are.
Speaking of fun, I enjoyed writing in the voice of a sixteen year-old because I'm usually not a fan of run on sentences so it was nice to break that rule and write like a teenager. As for the God bit? All I can say is, if a spiritual being can manifest itself as an angel in a burning bush or as handwriting on a wall or in the urim and thummin which people aren't even really sure what those were anyway, there's no reason God can't be in a video game. I would say that it's even more likely than a burning bush considering how much time we spend with computers, but that's just me.
A-Sides and B-Sides is available on iBook as well as Amazon and also Kobo and Nook. You can preview a nice chunk of it, too. Hope you'll consider buying if you like what you see. Here's what the cover looks like.
Deceptively simple, this song.