Everything In Titles

I love naming things. In college I was fascinated with etymology. My favorite Bible myth is the one about the tower of Babel, an allegorical story about the creation of different languages that occurred when man tried to build a structure to god. I found numerology fascinating and was transfixed by the idea that Adam, the first human, spoke a perfect language that transcends the sign/signifier relationship of modern language. And now my obsession lies in naming songs and albums.

With the help of the rest of the band, I've been trying to name the Summer Darling record for the better part of a year. I usually like to allow for a long period of time to name things. This gives me the optimum amount of chances to either stumble across something that sounds cool and relates to the jams (like our 2008 EP Health of Others which I saw on a sanitation sign in my work bathroom), ask the right person what they would name the record (my friend Jim Poulos named Summer Darling's first full length I Know You, I Never Knew You), or pull a critical line from the songs themselves like we did for Good Feeling.

But this record has been impossible to name. When I first wrote many of the songs for the album, the idea for the title, or theme, if you will, was "Bear Your Brother's Burden." This soon morphed into "Share Your Brother's Burden" as the previous title felt clunky. But this title likewise became clumsy and archaic, so I shortened it to "Brother's Burden." After a bit of time "Brother's Burden" seemed completely unrelated to the jams. I couldn't for the life of me remember what specific burden had anything to do with the themes of the songs. From this point on it's been a downward spiral of wild ideas ranging from simple one word titles like "Apprentice" and "Zealotry" to long esoteric excursions like "Let's Build It Back Up So We Can Tear It All Down Again" and "Beautiful With Broken Teeth." There was "Dead Letters" that turned into "Dead Letters to Lost Lovers" after the first one felt too metal. Other quickly scrapped ideas included "Throw Off What Hinders You," "Unconversion," "Drunk On Living Water," and "Nothing To Go Back Home To." I've tried copping song titles, but that always ends up feeling lazy. And then there's the temptation of the grandest, simplest option of all: the self titled record.

I've come out the other side of these examples at a complete loss. The record is done and I have no idea what the fuck we're going to call it. Anything I come up with now feels forced. My favorite thing has turned into a total mind screw.