Where The Arrow Points

Lately I’ve been getting numerous emails about the blog’s origin. Who Invented Roses began during a quarter-life crisis I experienced a few years back. While I’m no longer quarter-life, the crisis is still in occurring. Apparently, that’s just Life.

The blog was named for after a lyric from Dar Williams‘  What Do You Hear In These Sounds. This song has seen me through life’s highs, lows and every moment in between. It’s been on the playlist for every breakup, road trip and law school study session. Over the years, I’ve come to realize the What Do You Hear In These Sounds is the anthem of my life. The line “who invented roses” reminds me to forge my own path, to follow my own compass rose. The song, and by extension this blog, is about self discovery and not being afraid to live life to the fullest, but most importantly, about putting yourself out there, flaws and all.

The lyrics:

I don’t go to therapy to find out if I’m a freak
I go and I find the one and only answer every week
And it’s just me and all the memories to follow
Down any course that fits within a fifty minute hour
And we fathom all the mysteries, explicit and inherent
When I hit a rut, she says to try the other parent
And she’s so kind, I think she wants to tell me something,
But she knows that it’s much better if I get it for myself…
And she says

Oooooooh, aaaaaaah, what do you hear in these sounds?
And… oooooooh, aaaaaaah
What do you hear in these sounds?

I say I hear a doubt, with the voice of true believing
And the promises to stay, and the footsteps that are leaving
And she says “oh”, I say “what? “…she says “exactly”,
I say “what, you think I’m angry
Does that mean you think I’m angry?”
She says “look, you come here every week
With jigsaw pieces of your past
Its all on little soundbytes and voices out of photographs
And that’s all yours, that’s the guide, that’s the map
So tell me, where does the arrow point to?
Who invented roses?”
And…….

Oooooooh, aaaaaaah
What do you hear in these sounds?
And…oooooooh, aaaaaaah
What do you hear in these sounds?

And when I talk about therapy, I know what people think
That it only makes you selfish and in love with your shrink
But oh how I loved everybody else
When I finally got to talk so much about myself…

And I wake up and I ask myself what state I’m in
And I say well I’m lucky, cause I am like East Berlin
I had this wall and what I knew of the free world
Was that I could see their fireworks
And I could hear their radio
And I thought that if we met, I would only start confessing
And they’d know that I was scared
They’d would know that I was guessing
But the wall came down and there they stood before me
With their stumbling and their mumbling
And their calling out just like me…and…

Oooooooh, aaaaaaah, the stories that nobody hears…and…

Oooooooh, aaaaaaah, and I collect these sounds in my ears…and

Oooooooh, aaaaaaah, that’s what I hear in these sounds…and…

Oooooooh, aaaaaaah, that’s what I hear in these……
That’s what I hear in these souuouuunnnnds!