If You Struggle with Anxiety or Depression and Like Jesus, These Songs Are for You.
Brave Saint Saturn speaks to the soul.
A couple days ago, I lamented that back in 2007, when my anxiety was at its darkest, and I searched for fellow-strugglers hardest, I found only deafening silence in the Church. I found no blogs, no books, no articles. I longed for a voice to give words to the turmoil in my soul — for someone to understand me when I didn’t understand myself — something God does all the time. William Nicholson’s words are true: “We read to know we are not alone.” I was longing to be not alone.
Enter Reese Roper and Brave Saint Saturn.
But I did have some words all along. They came from Reese Roper. He’s the lead singer and lyricist for Five Iron Frenzy and the late, great, Brave Saint Saturn. You don’t want me to try to express how underappreciated I think his art is. I aspire to write one day at his caliber — with humility, integrity, intelligence, vulnerability, and compassion.
If you knew me in high school, you might find this laughable. Because, well, Five Iron Frenzy. The 90’s ska-punk scene. The Goodwill costumes. The skanking. Y2KPasa. The utter beauty of it all! It doesn’t exactly scream “darkness.”
But it’s there, especially in Brave Saint Saturn, which was an outlet for Roper’s thematically darker songs. It’s kind of embarassing, because I’m an English teacher, and we’re supposed to know all about mythology and whatnot — but I didn’t know this until tonight: “Saturn as a planet and stuff is always used to represent loneliness and broken-hearted-ness” (per Reese in an interview back in 2001). In that same interview, he explains BSS’s first “album is about people not being alone. You know, like not only do I experience rejection and lonliness, but Jesus Christ experienced it, He experienced it a hundred fold what we go through, so I wanted to get that across.”
That is what I needed. I needed some Christians to be real and vulnerable, and not just say what Christians are *supposed* to say. Proabably because I was feeling what Christians weren’t *supposed* to feel. Thank you, Brave Saint Saturn, for putting art out into the world about things you weren’t “supposed” to be struggling with. Thank you for baring Truth at the grand Christian culture masqurade.
And without further aideu… I hope these songs make you feel less alone, too. ❤
