Repentance

Repentance. Forgiveness. Two terms infrequently heard in the day to day vernacular of life.Repentance meaning turning away from a habit or lifestyle.

Forgiveness has been defined as the scent emitted by the rose from beneath the foot that crushes it. We see examples in the occasional headline, of the relative of the boy shot, the girl raped, or some other modern atrocitiy, who forgives the perpetrator. One such headline was the story on my local paper's cover this past week. The story of a young girl who had been violently molested at the hands of rebels in South America. She forgave them and is moving on.

Mike Portnoy, drummer and composer extradinaire for the band Dream Theater, was at one time, consumed by alcohol and pot smoking. He's been clean and sober for about 13 years now. Somewhere in the haze that was his life back then, people got hurt, as is so often the case in such situations. Throughout the many Dream Theater albums, there is at least one song per album that focuses on one aspect or other of his recovery.

On Systematic Chaos, my favorite DT CD, the focus is on repentance and being forgiven. It is the last bastion of hope for many of us when we realize the things we've done that have really hurt others.

And we're all in that boat. It's a realization that was so strong for Portnoy, that he called on many musicians from other bands to talk about and even ask forgiveness, in sound bites that were edited into the song "Repentance," which I insert here. They include Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, Neal Morse formerly of Spocks Beard, Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth, Jon Anderson of Yes, David Ellefson of Megadeath, Steve Hogarth of Marillion, Joe Satriani, and Steve Vai.

A truly beautiful, briliant, and haunting song, with a message for us all.