This past weekend was long and wonderful. I ate the biggest pizza I've ever seen with Jaime and Lauren while watching Clean House Messiest House in America. I had seen that particular show already but it really doesn't matter. I could watch it a million times.
Jaime and I went to see MUSE with some friends of ours, well, some friends, and then some random people Jaime sold tickets to. I've never really been to a rock concert before. I mean, I went and saw D.C. Talk when I was younger but that's totally different. I saw Mutemath before they got big at Workplay as well as The White Oaks (which are apparently no longer a band). I had never been in an arena, sold out and packed to capacity, listening to a band play loud music to which you know all the words.

I've tried to explain to my mother why I like Muse so much. I still don't know if I got it across. My mother and I are both long winded and sometimes when talking to each other I think we get a little lost in our own words. But then again I think no matter if you are long winded or not, trying to describe to someone what you are passionate about can be difficult. I think that Muse came along to me at just the right moment. Jaime and Austin had heard of them years ago, and two years ago I heard the first song, Knights of Cydonia. I remember that I was offended by the line "I'll show you how god falls asleep on the job". I guess that's why I didn't pay much attention to them after that. Jaime came home one day with all their albums that a friend let him borrow and the rest is history.
I think that they came around at the right time because I'm more open now than I ever have been before to lots of things. Particularly politics but also simply life in general. Muse is very politically fueled and lots of their songs reflect that. Listening to their music makes me think a lot about the system we have in place for our lives. Things that we think are normal and common place. Isn't it funny how as humans we set all these little fences around ourselves and before we know it we are no longer free? We put up all these rules. Owning land, paying taxes, you name it. All of it is our own creation. I know it sounds rather communist but sometimes that sounds more natural. I was thinking about life this morning and how we work so hard to pay for things so that we can enjoy something. But we spend most of our time working. We have all these things to pay for and why do they cost money?

So I guess some of this is because I recently started a vegetable garden. The prospect of growing my own food is so exciting and liberating. You mean I can just eat my own bell peppers instead of buying them? And I can have my own bouquet of flowers without paying for them? Well.. technically the seeds cost a dollar. A friend that went to the concert with us is thinking about buying land and starting a farm to be self sufficient. Wouldn't that be amazing? You could come up with ways to create your own energy, have a well for water, there are lots of things you can do. You don't have to rely on what so many other people rely on. I like flushing toilets as much as the next person but you don't really HAVE to have it. What if you never had to pay a power bill? What if you had trees that bore fruit for you?

All of this somehow relates to how much I like Muse. It's not making much sense when I write it out but at least I'm trying :) Plus when I read up on Matthew Belamy's policital view on wikipedia he had this huge quote about how 9-11 was an inside job. And that in and of it's self makes me want to fist pump at their concert all over again. I guess what it boils down to is asking questions. Most importantly asking why. Sometimes I think that the world would be in a much different place if we just asked why. You could ask why we are at war with a country that didn't attack us... wasn't it Afghanistan that attacked us? "Attacked us". Why are we in Iraq? You could ask "Why do I believe in God?" at church. You could ask "Why am I paying too much for bananas?" at the grocery store. There is something to be said about people who are continually striving to find out "why". I have a friend who was asking "why" questions and one of her rather religious friends told her that a good Christian would never ask why because that shows lack of faith. On the contrary, I think it shows amazing amounts of faith. It shows someone who cares enough to find out exactly what's going on, someone who isn't going to believe simply because it's what they grew up believing. I would think that the person who didn't ask why would be more dangerous because they have no firm basis for their belief. "Because someone told me so" seems a lot more sandy than "Because it was proven to me".

Muse, I like to think, has the kind of music that provokes me to ask why. There is something very powerful about being in an arena with thousands of people all singing along "They will not force us, they will stop degrading us, they will not control us, we will be victorious". Something very powerful indeed.

I'm sure that I'll have more to talk about later but that's as much as I can force out without some lunch. Boy I'm hungry! I'll also need to post some pictures of the veggie garden soon :)