Low - Artificial Light, 2008

For a while, from about Summer 2004 until recently, I considered myself vaguely religious. This was, I'll admit, entirely the fault of a pretty girl. It goes to show just how much teenage boys will think with the brain in their pants. "Pretty girl is a Christian. Maybe she would sleep with me if I was a Christian too."

There's no use questioning that statement on my behalf, as I can now see at least three extremely poor examples of logic in the sentiment alone. The thing was, I didn't just say I was religious, I managed to internalise it somehow. She was so pretty that I actually began to believe the bullshit I was spouting, and that is an unusually meta-spiritual problem to face at such an impressionable age.

And I really did believe it. God, Jesus, angels, devils, etc. Furthermore, in the tradition of the Fresh Convert, I went a bit nuts at the beginning. Praying, evangelising, that sort of thing.

But my faith slowly died after a few years. I can't pinpoint exactly when I stopped 'believing in God'. It was during this last six months, at the very least. But as I type 'when I stopped believing in God', I realise that's not really right. I didn't so much 'stop believing' as 'lost interest'. My belief progressed very quickly, from frantic to stable to relaxed to entirely comatose.

It was like a hobby you have when you're young - stamp collecting, for example. You spend lord knows how much money and time on collecting stamps, and you're certain that is what you're going to do with your life, and you smile benignly and look forward to the time when your name will be synonymous with the noble and respected art of stamp collecting, until one day you snap out of it and realise you live in a house made of stamps, and people call you Crazy Stamp Man. You spend the next few hours wondering if its best to sell them on eBay or keep them and never have to pay for postage again.

I can't argue that God didn't affect my writing. I never really wrote a song of praise, but he was constantly there, in the background of the songs I wrote after Summer 2004. A Long List Of Excuses, in particular, was full of him.

Low is, I think, the last song I wrote about God (or Jesus, rather). It ended up being a goodbye to that part of my life, with the verses representing my distance from the big man upstairs, and the choruses (perhaps fittingly) representing his voice saying, essentially, 'sod off, I never like you anyway'. It makes me quite sad to think about it, actually. See, I still believe in God, I suppose, in a background noise sort of way. But I don't think I'll ever go back to him now.

The song, specifically the choruses, also represented the depression I was going through as the album was being written and recorded. I had this fantasy of letting go of everything and drifting aimlessly through the dark, and I think that was the last idea of God I really clung onto, the idea that he was a creature made purely of Love and Light as physical substances. 'Oh, to be floating through the emptiness with you.'

Live, to date (January 2008), this has only been played once. It didn't really work, to be honest. A little too personal I think. The lack of band doesn't help either - you lose the beat, and the lovely keyboard melody. Thinking about it now, it's one of the few songs I've written which may never be played live.