"21" by The Starting Line, Saturday, October 23, 2021

This is our third entry from The Starting Line's Direction. I've talked about how this album was my summer of '09 album, and I learned a little about the album's producer. This morning, I awoke at "7 am" actually 7:30 rested, not wasted, to the blaring guitars of this song as my iPad alarm clock song. Lyrics like "21" and "Something Left to Give" make the 23 year old at the time singer/lyricist Kenny Vasoli sound much older. In "Something Left to Give," the young singer thinks about leaving a legacy for his children and grand children--something many in their late twenties today don't think about. In "21," Vasoli worries that the rock star lifestyle is making him "already hazy."

WHEN THE MEDICINE THAT KEEPS ME WELL IS SETTLING. The Starting Line were signed when Vasoli was only 17 years old, and the band's debut album was released a year later. The Pennsylvania band were a part of the Warped Tour scene from their first record. The second track on their album Direction, "21," has been called the sequel to the band's track "Bedroom Talk," which may have been the song that turned me off of the band at first. The lyrics of "Bedroom Talk" are pretty funny, in retrospect. According to the band's website at the time of the song's release, Vasoli wrote "Bedroom Talk" from the perspective of a teenage boy in love with a girl he wants to lose his virginity to. At the time he was 19, and he said he was still a virgin when he wrote that song. The lines weren't exactly poetry: "I'm gonna tear your ass up like we just got married." In fact, it kind of reminds me of the awkward, sloppy movie lines at the time. The ending of the movie Friends with Kids, a few years later, ends with the lines: "Fuck the shit out of me." Maybe I'm just a Puritan, but I like a movie's dirty talk to be buried within the plot of the movie, unless I'm watching Austin Powers. As for song lines, I think Vasoli could have articulated the raw emotion of wanting to connect with someone for the first time a little better. The lyrics of "21" deal with an older Vasoli trying to clean up his act, not even sounding like the same kid from the last album.

IT'S 7 AM AND I'M ALREADY WASTED. For some, cleaning up their act requires total abstinence. I respect that; however, I want to push back on it being the religious prescription. When I was growing up, I could never understand the Seventh-day Adventist position on alcohol. "The Bible is clear," the Adventist pastor said. But when I read the Bible, it didn't seem so clear. Adventists would point out the warnings and negative examples of wine and strong drink in the Bible. They'd point out that positive examples of wine were really just unfermented grape juice, and the negative examples were alcoholic. But one day, I stumbled upon a verse in Deuteronomy about a festival in which the Israelites were supposed to indulge before worshiping God. I read the context, and it seemed that the Israelites were commanded to drink "wine and other fermented drink" --all of the English translations seemed to support this. Later, I learned that historians and theologians debated about whether Jesus or his contemporaries would have drank alcohol. Today Jewish culture permits drinking alcohol, but prohibits drunkenness, which many Christian denominations have also adapted. Spiritual blogger Alyssa J. Howard examines both sides of this issue succinctly in her post "Wine of Grape Juice? What Does History Teach Us About Wine in the Bible?" though I should probably do more of my own research. Years ago, when I read the Bible cover to cover and I saw that there was a crack in the church's categorical no on alcohol, it laid a seed of doubt in the church. I started to realize that the church was more focused on controlling its congregants than about teaching them nuanced theology. "Yes, you have a good point," a friend I used to talk with about these tricky spiritual matters said, "but what benefit is alcohol? Why start drinking if you know it could ruin your life?" Not everyone should drink. It can be harmful. Every drinker should probably drink less. However, if a church can neatly gloss over a nuanced issue, how many other issues are they glossing over? I like what one of my religion professors used to say, "It's clear as mud, right?"

Read “21” by The Starting Line on Genius