All I Want

By Nathan Payne | pablosmoglives | 17 Jun 2025

"Great lyrics and melodies about, but 'All I Want' makes
the whole thing worth having. A song to play at your
funeral, or perhaps while you plan your funeral."
Yavaran

Oswald Chambers said, "where sin and sorrow stop, the song of the saint starts."

He's half right.

The song of the saint doesn't start where sorrow stops. It starts when you run out of things to sing about. Usually, at the point where sorrow begins. Sorrow is a crossroads.

You can't get to Heaven without it.

The crossroads of sorrow resembles a dead end, but it's actually a crossroads. It presents every human being with a choice. The world of consequence behind the choices is infinite, but the selection of choices themselves is...

Shall we say...

Limited.

"The only 2 choices are life or death, which is to say there
are no life & death choices, except of course the
choice of life or death (there is nothing
else that matters)."
Invisible Manifesto For A Rising Outlaw Nation (Take 1)

What's important about the "invisible manifesto for a rising outlaw nation" is not the legal status of the nation, or whether it's rising or falling. What matters about the "manifesto" is that it's invisible. If you can read the manifesto, it isn't real. If you're still declaring your capacity to "rise up" against the dehumanizing process of civilization and reclaim your individual power (or whatever), you're still chained to the grave. You've wept at the crossroads of sorrow, and because your graves are still alive, you have chosen death.

"Let no one take your crown
Burn your graves to the ground"
Our God is a Consuming Fire

It isn't necessary to name your band after your own funeral and glue your hair to a zombie face to convert your sorrow into death. There is a myriad of ways you can wallow in your own subjective rising outlaw status to your dying heart's content. Some of them even look like life. But they're not life. They're the mannequin cutout of life, sitting in the storefront window of death, tempting you to come inside.

Don't do it.

There comes a point when the joke of death wears thin, and you realize it doesn't matter anymore. There are exit ramps on the paths of death and life alike, but you never know how long the road will last. The path of death looks like a path of victory over sorrow, which is why so many people take it. My past self obviously included. But life is hiding behind the weeping veil. Oswald Chambers was wrong, even if he was making another point about another topic. Which he probably was. He probably meant that the song of true joy begins after sorrow has been accepted, and can no longer be denied. Joy as it appears on the path of death looks like "happiness," but it is glib. True joy lies beyond the point when "it doesn't matter anymore." "It" meaning your ego, your will, and even your life.

Happiness is dependent on circumstance. Joy exists in spite of circumstance.

They are opposites. Not merely different. Like life and death, joy and happiness are

Opposites.

Happiness can eat, go shopping, get paid. Joy is only possible when you're no longer trying to climb (or reason your way around) the brick wall rising above the "end" of the crossroads of sorrow, and have surrendered completely to God, weeping on your knees. At which point, a door opens in the wall, and the path of life appears. Then, and only then, will any of us ever get out of here. But... what if... you don't want to go? Maybe you're in love with your life, or your reflection, or the happy melodies you leave in your wake, and are content to float downstream, laughing like a broken twig on the river of destruction. You have my condolences. Personally, I can't wait to get out of here. There's nothing morbid about it. In spite of the moribund album cover, "All I Want" is in fact a pre-emptive declaration of joy, couched in trauma, sorrow, and tears. Cuz, I don't know if you've noticed, but the world is a demilitarized zone. I feel bad for you if this is as close as you want to get to Heaven. I can't wait to get out of here.

It's the only thing I've ever wanted.

Thanks for listening.

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