I had been toying around with the music for this song over the course of the past decade, since about the time I released my last two albums under the name Justin Wiles. The lyrics never seemed right, until eventually I stumbled upon the "ordinary" motif that would become the first verse. At this point, the song seemed to be taking the shape of a sort of hymn to humdrum. No alarms, no surprises, and the planets sort of revolve around the sun, etc...

That first verse sat on the shelf for awhile. And then I found myself unexpectedly and unwillingly ushered into the Trump era with the rest of the huddled masses in 2016. For as long as I can remember, I've been an uncomfortable American. The degree of pride and patriotism that I grew up witnessing always seemed incommensurate to the degree of shame and atonement I felt more logically drawn toward as a white man.

It wasn't until 2016 that I realized how much the rest of white America shared my sense of shame, and how deeply so many resented it. All at once, I saw our nation's pride as something less than patriotism and more like what I'd always sensed lurked under the surface: an enormous sense of intolerance in perpetual defense of itself. A firework display to drown out our collective conscience. "No one makes me bleed my own blood," said White Goodman.

And so the "ordinary" crumbled, and what lay underneath was a reckoning of sorts. The guise of appearances gave way to many ugly truths, and we began to learn to face those truths, to hold one another accountable, to take responsibility. It was a bizarre and tumultuous experience, but many of us are the better for it. Some of us are not. Some of us have learned nothing; some of us will only appear to.

When I wrote the rest of the lyrics to this song toward the end of 2018, I was observing all of this and reacting to it. I didn't know what lay ahead, but I knew that the sense of fear for the future was palpable. I also had a newborn son, my first, and my fear was compounded by a concern for his future. In retrospect, things seem to have calmed down. Or does it only appear that way because we are entering a new chapter? New leadership, a virus in retreat, etc. As the "ordinary" begins to creep back in, I still feel compelled to peer beneath the surface.