In preparation for tackling Wazup, I started learning a little bit about Python (I know many people have said this already, but Dive Into Python is a really good book!) and I decided to try out a much smaller (and hopefully easier) app to begin with.
So I began coding a little toy that does some stuff with my twitter friends list.

I’m using python-twitter and the app is coming along nicely, except…

Well, like I said earlier, I’m something of an old-hand at programming and my first instinct when learning a new language or tackling a new kind of problem is to first get it working on the command-line and then get the code to work on the web (or whatever happens to be my intended platform). Yes, and my IDE is vim OK?

So what’s the big deal, you may ask?

When I ported my app, which was running perfectly on the command-line, into the App Engine development platform it started bombing, complaining about not being able to get the current user.

Say what?? Well, one thing I’m more than used to is to debug stuff, even in languages I don’t master. And this was very easy to do actually, so I got to the point really fast: python-twitter assumes you’re running on a real machine and implements a caching mechanism that assumes you have such things as a tmp dir where you can store your temporary files.
The code was trying to determine who I was in order to find out where it should store it’s temporary cache files.

Of course in a sandboxed environment such as the App Engine, there is no such thing as disk-based storage (or even system users for that matter), so it was failing miserably.

Turns out that someone else had already been there and the way to work around this is to modify python-twitter and make it use App Engine’s own datastore for the caching. That is if I do think it needs caching at all, I’m still not too sure about that.

Oh well, my first project to “ease” myself \into the language and already I’m making changes to other people’s code…

It’s been fun, though, I must admit to that!

Já me tinha ocorrido escrever sobre este tema, mas por alguma razão esta foi uma daquelas coisas que ficou sempre para trás, sempre esquecida. Por vezes as coisas que nos são mais familiares, ainda que as apreciemos bastante, acabam por perder protagonismo face à novidade…

Vou então deixar aqui umas notas sobre a rádio.

Mas não é da rádio da manhã, com os locutores frenéticos a tentar manter os condutores acordados enquanto conduzem para o emprego, tentando enfiar um máximo de piadas pelo meio da miríade de spots publicitários, indicações de trânsito, previsões do tempo, resumos das não-notícias dos jornais da manhã e músicas das playlists gastas que nos fazem ficar enjoados de tanto as ouvir.

Nem tão pouco da rádio da tarde, com menos interrupções de trânsito e de previsões do tempo, mas mais cheias ainda das playlists, a esta hora ainda menos ousadas, mais gastas e mais chatas.

A rádio de que eu quero falar brevemente é a rádio da boa!
Aquela que nos faz ter vontade de ouvir rádio. Que nos faz ter vontade de reservar um pouco do nosso tempo para simplesmente prestarmos atenção ao que estamos a ouvir. Aquela que nos obriga a fazer o esforço para estar disponível àquela hora para ouvir aquele programa. Ou então a arranjar alternativas… Mas já lá vamos. ;-)

Quem ler este artigo e tiver idade para tal, talvez se recorde de um conceito antigo —e já (quase) esquecido— da rádio chamado “programas de autor” (musicais, claro). Pois é, aqueles programas que passavam músicas escolhidas a dedo pelo seu autor. Músicas que de alguma forma encaixavam umas com as outras, de acordo com uma sensibilidade muito própria de quem fazia a selecção. Podiam ser novas ou muito antigas, podiam ser êxitos de vendas ou lados B de cassetes (lembram-se?) promocionais, mas de alguma forma, se o dito autor fosse bom no que fazia, o conjunto de todas essas músicas valia muitíssimo mais do que as músicas todas, individualmente.
Tempos houve em que este tipo de programa era bastante apreciado e eram produzidos vários deles em várias rádios nacionais.

Assim de repente vem-me à memória a “Hora do Lobo”, do António Sérgio (que foi retirado do ar, pela Comercial, há coisa de meses), as “Noites Longas do Fm Estéreo”, do António Santos (cujo livro de pequenos textos o meu pai comprou e me lembro perfeitamente de andar lá por casa), o mais popular “Oceano Pacífico”, do João Chaves (que nunca apreciei tanto como os outros que mencionei e que penso que talvez ainda seja emitido)…
Penso que hoje ainda temos alguns programas de autor, sobretudo na Antena1 e Antena2, mas estes são de cariz muito específico, com géneros definidos. Os grandes programas de autor de música pop/rock/folk, esses, na prática, acabaram…

Ou pelo menos eu pensei que sim durante bastante tempo.

Talvez fruto de ter sempre vivido (e estudado) na zona de Lisboa, nunca entrei em contacto com essa mina de pequenas jóias que dá pelo nome de RUC (a Rádio Universitária de Coimbra).
Já se percebe pelo discurso que entretanto esse mal foi sanado e, há uns meses (coisa de dois anos, talvez), deparei com um programa que dá pelo nome de “Íntima Fracção”, que era distribuído, na altura em formato podcast, pela própria RUC.

Quando ouvi pela primeira vez a Íntima nem queria acreditar!
Não queria acreditar que ainda havia programas destes e, sobretudo, não queria acreditar que eu me tinha esquecido que, em tempos, uma grande parte das minhas noites era passada a ouvir, precisamente, coisas assim. (Aqui convém explicar que, felizmente nunca fui muito de me colar à televisão, hábito que hoje se tornou ainda mais vincado).

Bom, fui acompanhando a Íntima Fracção como podia, inicialmente via podcast da RUC, depois via podcast GavezDois, até que a Íntima “saiu do ar”.
Foi triste, mas o Francisco Amaral sempre disse que a coisa não se ficava por aí.

E as boas notícias estouraram há umas (poucas) semanas —as tais de que quero, enfim, falar: a Íntima está agora a ser distribuída pelo Expresso On-Line e o último programa, de seu nome “Sonhos e realidade” é, na minha opinião, dos melhores que foram produzidos desde há bastante tempo.
Já tinha saudades da Íntima. Já tinha muitas saudades. Ainda bem que ela voltou!

Entretanto e para não dar a ideia de que este é o início e o final da coisa, existem mais alguns programas de rádio que consumo —geralmente em formato podcast— e que posso recomendar vivamente.

Temos, por exemplo, o “lado B” do Pedro Esteves, que passa em algumas rádios que muito poucos têm a sorte de conseguir recepcionar (Miróbriga fica longe para quem mora em Cascais e já terminei o meu curso no IST há mais anos do que quero admitir) :-)

E não posso deixar de referir o fabuloso “Vidro Azul”, do Ricardo Mariano, que recentemente ganhou honras de emissão na Rádio Radar, de noite, bem de noite, como cabe a um programa deste género.

É bom ter rádio assim. Mesmo que não a oiça via éter, como o fazia há muitos anos, mesmo assim costumo guardar estes programas para a noite, quando eles sabem melhor, quando eles foram feitos para ser apreciados.

Para mim é totalmente verdade que o vídeo não matou as estrelas da rádio.

Yesterday Bobby McFerrin gave a concert in Lisboa, at the Coliseu.

It was a “solo” concert, which consisted mainly of the man and his microphone. And it was enough to blow me away (along with the rest of the audience). If you’ve ever seen the videos of other concerts by Bobby (most notably his Bach pieces) you have an idea of what it was like.

We had mostly jazz tunes, but also the occasional classical piece, all sung by the man himself.

Except when it wasn’t just him (I did put the word solo in quotes up there,) and he got the whole audience to sing with him, or the time when he got some 30 people on stage with him and he conducted them into an impromptu choir. Or when he asked someone to come up to the stage and dance to his singing. Oh and I mustn’t forget about his foray into the crowd, fetching volunteers to sing some simple pattern to act as a basis for his improvisations.
He also had a guest guitar player which, when compared with all the rest of the evening, pales a lot (even though his performance was extremely good).

It was an incredible evening, that’s for sure and the feeling I got was that everyone felt a real connection with the show and felt themselves as making part of it at some stage or another, which is something I think is quite rare. Even when he went down into the crowd to look for (quite a few) volunteers to do the small skits with, people (mostly) participated with sheer joy, instead of shying away.

As for his vocal qualities, well, there’s not much I can say here that hasn’t been stated time and again by people who know his music. The sheer vocal range he has, the impeccable sense of timing and rhythm, the joy of his singing… People don’t call him a musical genius for nothing (and I’m not even alluding to all of his many accomplishments in so many fields of music!)
And the man has a sense of humor. He sure does!

Truly a unique experience.

If you have the chance to catch Bobby playing —or rather, singing— live I heartily recommend you grab it without hesitation. I know I will, if ever the chance comes again.

I have multiple ways of using my iPod in my car, while driving to work: sometimes I listen to podcasts; other times I select an album or artist to listen to; others, still, I listen to my “mixed tape” (or other, thematic) playlists.
All of the above stem from a conscious decision to listen to that particular show/artist/album/compilation.
But then, some other times, I just put it on shuffle and let it rip, usually inside a restricted context —shuffle all of the songs which are rated 3-stars and above, which have been played least recently — (yes, I do actually have automagic playlists such as these, I am, after all, a geek).

And then there are those days when I feel like listening to a good shuffle, but I want to feel somehow productive while doing it. And on those days, instead of stuffing the iPod inside the glove compartment (where the “aux” connector is) and controlling it with the remote, I just lay it on the passenger’s seat and make it shuffle through the “Unrated” playlist. I then listen to the songs, one by one, without the benefit of the whole album they belong to, and after I’ve caught the gist of them I rate them on their own merit. On a bad traffic day I sometimes rate 20-30 songs. It sure helps to pass the time!

So what does this have to do with perception?

Well, I found that when I’m doing this kind of (supposedly) objective listening, I can have my perception thwarted in a huge way if I’m not careful about it. And I find this to be most amusing.

This is what happens: some days I’m mostly stuck in traffic and I’m stalled most of the time. On those days I tend to look at the iPod whenever a song begins and upon seing the artist and album it belongs to, I immediately get a sense of how I’ll rate the song. After a few seconds I just rate it and then (if I’m not in the mood for that particular song) I just skip it and get to the next one; Other days, though, traffic is a bit lighter (or I’m just distracted with something else), and I don’t bother to look for the details of the song, I just listen to it, usually for a much longer time than when I know who’s playing and what it is and then I rate it.
And it is at these times, when I rate it before I know what it is that I truly appreciate each song on it’s own. And the funny thing is that I sometimes get some huge (and great) surprises.

Case in point: today I was doing just that kind of rating, while driving to work and I started listening to a song which fell a bit out of my usual league (and definitely out of the groove of the previous ones, which were mostly hard rock). This was a song which had a slight country feel to it, but was still enough of a rock song for me to enjoy. It was not an absolute marvel, but it had a good vibe, which I really quite liked (it sort of fit the mood of the day, which also helped). Now some songs you just know what band they’re from, just by listening to a few chords, but this one was kind of baffling me. I couldn’t quite place it (I had a few educated guesses, which turned out to be quite close, but I wasn’t sure about it).
So what was it? “Try And Love Again” by the Eagles.
This is a song from the Hotel California album which I (obviously) don’t know all that well. I’ve listened to it, sure, but I’ve never really listened to it and the proof is that I haven’t rated most of it. If I just decided to put the album on, listen to it cover-to-cover and rate the songs as I went along I would probably get a bit tired of it (like I said, this is not exactly my favourite genre) and would rate most songs rather poorly.
Had I looked at the iPod before listening to the song and saw that it was an Eagles song, chances are I’d have given it a medium-type rating and skipped it after a few seconds.
As it happened, though, I really listened to the song, enjoyed it for it’s own sake, and then gave it a good rating. Because it is a really nice song and it made me feel good. And that’s (at least partially) what music is about.

Our perceptions are so easily biased that it kind of scares me to think about it.
What happened here was nothing that surprises or shocks me, I know that we are all prone to this type of thing and I understand the basic mechanisms behind it. In fact, this is why people invented things like blind wine tasting and other such activities, but it is always kind of funny —and scary— when you get such a sobering example of just how prone you are to falling for something like this.

• Twittering from the mobile phone is something that I do a lot. I can honestly say that for me the killer feature of Twitter is the SMS interface. When I am on-line I already have a number of virtual worlds (text-based) that I’m usually connected to and I also still hang around a couple-three IRC channels, not to mention having accounts in almost every single IM(-like) system I can remember, so on-line my instant communication needs are pretty much met, thankyouverymuch! But Twitter (or Jaiku, which is better than Twitter in principle, but is still just not all there yet) bridges the gap from on-line and IRL in a very nice way (especially if you remember that off is your friend!);

• Of course not everything is perfect with twittering on-the-go. The predictive technology mobile phones use is a God-sent to be sure, but sometimes you get some truly amusing mistakes. Just this week I sent out something along the lines of “it takes all lines”, when I meant “it takes all kinds”. It obviously gave rise to a crack about peace, love and fat joints. Oh the humanity! ;-)

• Another aspect of Twitter-by-SMS is that it only works if you keep a judiciously chosen list of people from whom you wish to receive updates on your “devices”. This list, I find, is in constant flux, with a given person entering, leaving and re-entering it as I feel more inclined to chat about this or that type of topics. In fact I find I have a few small groups of contacts which are usually “on” together. I wish there was an easy way to materialize these groups and change the mobile “subscription” based on those. Hum… now that I think about it, there may be an opportunity for a nice web-app here…

• And while I’m on the mobile phone subject, I think it is Melo who says that he constantly has his best ideas on the shower. Well, it regularly happens to me too so I’ve taken to dictating said ideas to my mobile phone (much as I do when I’m driving or otherwise occupied) and hopping I’ll later remember to write them down and maybe even act on them. It turns out I usually remember them pretty good after having dictated them, but the interesting fact is that I now find myself having almost 50 voice notes hanging around, waiting to be listened to, processed and deleted. Ouch!

• On a totally unrelated note, if you’re into music, do be sure to check out the latest episode of the Contrast Podcast to which I contributed with a rather nice (IMHO) song!

In the office I work at there’s a procedure (as in most places, I assume) that whenever the cleaning crew finishes with a WC they sign off on a control sheet plastered somewhere inside.

As is also usual, people started complaining that the cleaning crews weren’t coming over often enough and they started reporting that the supposed three visits per day weren’t happening at all.

So the cleaning crew stepped up to the plate and gave people what they wanted. We now have 2 or 3 visits per day per WC. On the gent’s WC in my floor, for example we can now read on the control sheet that they come over at around 06h30 (that’s AM) and then at around 09h30 (again AM). Sometimes we get an extra visit at around 08h00 (also AM).

Isn’t it nice to have one’s wish granted?

Note: This is just an idea at this stage, I don’t know if/when I’ll ever get around to implementing it. Knowing me, it will probably never happen, so don’t hold your breath if you find this to be interesting.

What is it?

Wazup is an idea of mine for a service that boils down to a site which lets me know, at a glance, what is happening now, near me. For a given definition of now. And of near.

Introduction and motivation

This project was born for a number of reasons, of which I highlight a few to help me keep on track if I ever get to developing it:

1. I wanted to learn Python and there is no better way to learn a new language than to have a real, useful project to build using it;
2. I wanted to try out the Google App Engine;
3. I wanted to build a new application and code it from the ground up (feeling nostalgic from the days when I did good old honest-to-God coding);
4. I also wanted it to be a web application, since I’ve never really written one of these;
5. I actually find myself sometimes in the late afternoon or early evening feeling like going out to do something and having to trawl through a number of sites and feeds that I keep with “interesting stuff” that is happening.

From the above list it should be apparent that even if I do know that there are probably a dozen such sites out there, I really want to indulge in thinking about (and maybe even prototyping) one.
As such, comments along the lines of “Yeah, but site X.com does it this way” or “Well, site Y.org does it better” are totally irrelevant so don’t bother.
On the other hand, comments which point me to nifty feature ideas or implementation details or something along these lines are most welcome (even if they may well end up not being considered for the exercise).

Intended features

First of all a warning: this is not a road-map for the app’s development. I’m not actually sure I’ll even ever get to build the thing. This is just a list of stuff I’d like to eventually have working, if I do go ahead and do it.

The numbers in front of each item are a crude idea of the importance of each idea. A ‘1’ means that it is important to have ASAP, a ‘3’ means that it can wait (and possibly will never get done at all).

And now, for the list:

• Handle multiple users and their respective data feeds and preferences (3);
• Handle multiple data sources, with fetchers and parsers built specifically for each one of them (1);
• Have an easy plug-in system to build such fetchers and parsers (1);
• Be able to fetch the data in real-time (unless I can figure out if the Google App Engine environment allows me to call a function regularly with some kind of scheduled job or something);
• Allow me to define what time-frame I’m interested in seeing (2);
• Allow me to pick and choose events to look at more closely (3);
• Allow me to choose how I want the results to be ordered (by location, by time, …) (2);
• Be aware of where I am (or allow me to tell it) and automatically adjust to show me the relevant events only (over-rideable, and using some of the many geo-location services available out there —so web2.0!) (3).

Lots and lots of little trivial things happening. Here are but a few…

• I’ve been playing around with an idea for a simple web-app that will allow me to test out the Google App Engine. It also forces me to learn a little bit about Python. All I need now is an account on the App Engine. But then I haven’t finished the app yet, so no rush;

• This past three-day weekend I went off the grid and took to the hills for a very different (and special) kind of hike. My feet have blisters on their soles, but I did walk ~90Km and did a lot of philosophizing and soul-searching and it felt really good. Walking like Donald Duck for the next few days, well, that I could do without;

• There are two “new” albums out there that could have been great. They are the Bauhaus’ “Go Away White” and The Breeders’ “Mountain Battles”. Both of them could have been great, but then both of them are “meh…”, at best. A shame really, I don’t know what artists of this caliber can be thinking of releasing this stuff. Might as well release another “Best Of”;

• Finally caught the “Blade Runner” on the big screen last night. There’s a reason that film is still a cult film after all these years. Watching it on a big screen with very decent quality and great sound was a great experience. Fun times!

Just uploaded a couple of old videos (formerly shown as videoblog entries here) to Flickr.

First impressions about Flickr’s new video capabilities:

• The 90 second limit is something I can understand for now, but which prevented me from posting some of my old videos (including my favourite one). If I do end up using Flickr to host my videos, though, I think I could make the 90 second limit work for me;

• Not being able to choose the thumbnail for the video (something which is coming soon, I think) is really annoying, especially if you make a small white-text-on-black-background intro as I usually do. I do hope this changes soon;

• From the two issues above I gather that Flickr isn’t really trying too hard to get into the full-fledged video hosting scene (as opposed to say YouTube), but rather they may be experimenting with making it easy for people to jot their mobile-phone videos down on the web. The thing is that here are already a couple (more?) good products out there that already do that, so let’s see how that pans out for them;

• The privacy and permission settings and controls already in place for photos also work on videos and that is a most welcome feature indeed!

Adding a new search engine plugin for CPAN to Firefox is actually pretty easy, so I’ll write it down here in order not to forget it.

You just have to edit a file by the name of CPAN.xml (or something similar that strikes your fancy) and stick it in firefoxe’s searchplugins directory. You might find it somewhere around /usr/lib/firefox-XX/searchplugins or, better yet, in you own homedir at .mozilla/firefox/XXXXXX.default/searchplugins).

Enter the following content into the file:

<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns:moz="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>CPAN</ShortName>
<Description>Comprehensive Perl Archive Network</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image width="16" height="16">data:image/x-icon,%00%00%01%00%01%00%10%10%00%00%00%00%00%00(%01%00%00%16%00%00%00(%00%00%00%10%00%00%00%20%00%00%00%01%00%04%00%00%00%00%00%C0%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%00%FF%FF%FF%00%7B%00%00%00%00%7B%00%00%7B%7B%00%00%00%00%7B%00%7B%00%7B%00%00%7B%7B%00%BD%BD%BD%00%7B%7B%7B%00%FF%00%00%00%00%FF%00%00%FF%FF%00%00%00%00%FF%00%FF%00%FF%00%00%FF%FF%00%00%00%00%00%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%F0%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF%FF3l%FC%BF%EF%18%E6%D7%EB%F0%F6%DB%00%00%FA%E9%00%02%F8%C3al%FC%03te%F8%02Co%F0%02r%20%E0%01%5C%D0%E0%03%11%00%E6%0F%BF%E6'%1F%00%02%07%FF%00%06%87%FF2%80%E3%FF1%E0</Image>
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://search.cpan.org/search?mode=all&amp;query={searchTerms}"/>
<moz:SearchForm>searchFormURL</moz:SearchForm>
</OpenSearchDescription>

The long line there is the funny little camel picture, and it must not be broken up.

It is actually trivial to create plugins to almost any search engine you can think of, this is just a good example that is handy for me.
If you need to add any extra parameters or so to the search, you can find the documentation for the search plugins at the mozilla developer center.

Note: Credit where it is due, I found the original example here and pretty much copied it over to this post with the minor fix of substituting the & Url element for the encoded version (&).

Amazingly enough, in this day and age there are still some people creating moo/mud-like virtual worlds.

This year’s (2008) April’s fools day Guncho was introduced (announcement here).

It is located at guncho.game-host.org 4108 and you can create your own character at http://cp.guncho.com/.

The wiki with all the info about the “game” is at http://wiki.guncho.com/.

The concept is interesting enough: any player can create realms for others to play in and the goal is essentially to implement a virtual reality base for people to create their interactive fiction with others.
Yes, it’s been done a long time ago on many a MU[D|OO|SH]. Still, the fact that nowadays someone actually created something like this with only a text interface intrigues me deeply.

I plan to take a closer look at this virtual world and if it turns out to be as interesting as it sounds, I’ll be taking some notes here.

Um ano. Já passou um ano. Caramba!

It was yesterday, the second date of the 2008 tour of Portishead and I was there.

I had never seen them perform live, so I guess I can say I’ve been waiting… more than 10 years for this!

And despite all the anticipation I had built up regarding this concert it still blew my socks off!

The new album is very different from anything they’d done in the past and somewhat “weird”, but it does work very well when played live; but the best part, by far, was that they chose to play lots and lots of the old stuff intertwined with the new songs. And everybody there knew those songs and was having an extremely good time!

While I can’t say for sure yet (it is still March, after all), I do believe this will be a strong contender for “concert of the year” (on my book, at least). It will undoubtedly make it into the top-5 at the very least.

So I have some (god-awful) pictures I took with my cell phone and they’re up at the usual place.

Also, if you read Portuguese, there was this guy there with us who also wrote about it on his blog.

I’ve seen this happening to many other people and now I come to the conclusion that I’ve fallen for it too.

Microblogging (in it’s many forms) is definitely taking most of the blogging out of me.

Twitter (makes more sense viewed in context with my friends), Jaiku and even Flickr (which won’t be all that interesting to you unless you have an account and are my friend, because only then do you get to see most of my pictures) are getting filled with a steady stream of my thoughts and presence, but the good old blog is dwindling a bit.

The fact that I can jot things down on these services via Instant Messenger, from my phone via SMS and MMS of via their respectives web interfaces makes it just so easy to spill my guts in there that I’ve come to find the act of actually blogging cumbersome and, many times, as too much trouble to be worth the effort.

Then again, the things I microblog about aren’t really that deep or important. Or even interesting sometimes. As an old curmudgeon friend of mine (who is himself on Twitter, but only updates to friends) is fond of saying: “IRC never died, it just became Twitter” and sometimes the level of the conversations there tend to prove just that.

Still, it is fun!

Today was yet another one of those days. There was this one song that felt strangely compelling and which I just couldn’t stop listening to.

This time around the choice… well no, not a choice really, you don’t choose these things, but I digress… The song in question, then, is Amen Omen by Ben Harper.

I really don’t think the song needs any explanation, the lyrics —which I transcribe below— are pretty obvious.
Today, for some reason, it just felt right that I listened to it over and again.

what started as a whisper
slowly turned into a scream
searching for an answer
where the question is unseen
i don’t know where you came from
and i don’t know where you’ve gone
old friends become old strangers
between the darkness and the dawn

amen omen
will i see your face again
amen omen
can i find the place within
to live my life without you

i still hear you saying
all of life is a chance
and is sweetest
when at a glance
but i live a hundred
lifetimes in a day
but i die a little
in every breath that i take

amen omen
will i see your face again
amen omen
can i find the place within
to live my life without you

i listen to a whisper
slowly drift away
silence is the loudest
parting word you never say
i put your world
into my veins
now a voiceless sympathy
is all that remains

amen omen
will i see your face again
amen omen
can i find the place within
to live my life without you

Once upon a time (roughly one year ago) this was the soundtrack to my life. But regardless of ever having experienced anything like this, I think anyone can surely appreciate the beauty of these words.