I Knew You Before You Even Existed

I love music. There are many different genres and I can honestly say that I like something in every one of them. There are some I don't like as much as others, such there are still some rap songs that I do enjoy. Of all the many artists out there, I feel you can group them all into 4 different categories: Those that make music for the sake of music, those that make music for the sake of poetry, those that make music for the sake of money and those that make music for the sake of emotion. The first two are both great reasons. If you do it for music you pay attention to the sound and the movement of the sound. If you do it for poetry, the words are more important and you look to the music later. The third is not a good one at all and you only care about producing something that will be huge, so you lip sync or over modulate your voice and pay others to write your songs. The final is the rarest and most powerful of the 4. The 4th mixes the best of the first two. You look for the best sound you can to create a feeling that will make some one tear up. Then you look to the words and give it all the attention to complement the sound you created.

I have mentioned in a few of my posts on here about a group called M83 that has blown me away recently. This group creates emotion like it comes natural to them. Most of the time my listening to them has caused tears. The trailer for the movie "Cloud Atlas," which made me cry featured one of their songs. The movie "Oblivion" used them to score the entire film, which made me cry. In my post on my blog about the 18th Annual At-Home Dads Convention, I mention how the album caused me to tear up while thinking about my kids. That was with no visual influence. Just the words and music created an emotional connection to me that cause me to break down.

Now on to my real reason for bringing them up again. I have been listening to their most recent album a lot and their first track simply titled, "Intro", has a line that I have misinterpreted. I thought it said, "We KNEW you before you even existed", but it actually says, "We WERE you before you even existed". Before I even knew what the real words were I thought a lot about that phrase, "We knew you before we even existed". As a father of four kids I immediately thought about my kids. Actually, as a father I think about my kids with just about anything, but this time it made sense to me.

I never met my daughter until she was 18 months and didn't know she was mine until she was 2. One could imagine that it would be hard for an 18 year old to understand that this kid is a part of him, but for me it was right. When I looked into my Gabi's eyes I just knew I knew her before. I felt like I had always known her. It was as if I knew here before. Before she even existed. Since then there have been doubts about whether or not I am actually her father and I myself even question it. I never had a test done but something tells me that no test will give me an answer because I still knew her before. She has always been mine and I have always know we were destined to be together as a father and daughter. In 2007, my oldest son was born. When I saw him I knew I had known him forever. Before he existed. I knew who he was. It all clicked to me. The emotions I fear to show before he was born all came out. I saw us in him. I saw my wife, I saw myself and I knew that he was us. We were him. We came together to create him. His emotions, his love, his anger, his fear, his looks, his touch, his every being was us. We were him. Even now that he is 6 I still see us.

When a parent first sees their child they look at that little bundle of poop, pee & need and feel emotions because they actually feel like they always have known them. For a new dad, they see someone that makes sense. Someone that has always been there and will always be there. For a mother, it is more profound, that child has spend the past 9 months inside them so, in a way, they do know them. They know their sleeping schedule, their temperament and their emotion, all based on how they were acting in the womb. As parents, we are naturally bred to love our children. We knew them before they even existed.

"We didn't need a story, we didn't need a real world

We just had to keep walking

And we became the stories, we became the places

We were the lights, the deserts, the faraway worlds

We were you before you even existed"

Now that's poetry any parent can understand.