"Something in the Way" by Tyson Motsenbocker, Thursday, April 14, 2022
In 2016, Tyson Motsenbocker signed to Tooth & Nail Records and released his debut LP, Letters to Lost Loves. Motsenbocker had been deeply affected by the loss of his mother and decided to go on a walk between San Diego and San Francisco to process his grief. Some of those reflections could be heard on Letters. Although Motsenbocker didn't follow up Letters with a full length until 2020, Someday I'll Make It All Up to You, he released two EPs in 2017, Almira and A Kind Invitation.
I KISSED YOU AFTER MIDNIGHT. Almira is a beautiful EP with 5 songs, including "Rust" (see post) and "Coeur d'Alene," and A Kind Invitation includes "Talk All Night for Nothing," (see post) which Motsenbocker would go on to perform with Switchfoot's Jon Foreman and release as a single, the eponymous storytelling, spoken word track; and today's song "Something in the Way," which deals revisits relationship material as "Talk All Night" does, rather than the existential material of the other songs. "Something in the Way" is built on a '90s keyboard riff, which wins the softest spot of in my heart. Though certainly not the most lyrically profound of Motsenbocker's work, the song is relatable in that sometimes in romance, friends have a keener eye when it comes to red flags. Coupled with the second track on the EP, "Talk All Night" and "Something in the Way" sound similar to what John Mayer would release in 2021, his Sob Rock album. Sad-core Tyson Motsenbocker is not quite a Sufjan Stevens to Tooth & Nail Records, though Stevens himself has ties to the label via other artists. But sometimes you need a song about lamenting the red flags you overlooked.
I SWORE I READ YOUR MIND. It's partly the weather that has me down the past couple of days. It was sunny and unseasonably hot two days ago, but yesterday it got cloudy, threatened rain, and got chilly. But it's really a full understanding that last year is dead and buried, and the stability that I once counted on in my working life is disrupted. I remember reading a definition of grief in some ESL lesson years ago that highlighted that grief didn't have only be sorry about a death, but it can also be sorrow for any loss, including finding out a truth that is uncomfortable. It can be a change for the worse. It can be an expectation not coming to fruition. We can grieve the ending of a friendship or the ending of a job. And we shouldn't be expected to shrug it off and move on. We need time. But what about the grief of having to make a decision? How do you deal with your mourning and make decisions? What if it's cancer? Is it terminal? "Should we beat this or celebrate it?" To be clear, I'm not worried about my physical health at this time anymore than a hypochondriac does. It's just that I'm grieving missing the red flags in my career path, just as Motsenbocker is grieving missing the red flags in this particular releationship.
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