Need all my non enstarry mutuals to understand that the lore and story of enstars is like this. And its all interconnected none of it is really for shock value it just is like this.

Hey Lavi, I never got around to reading Dante, but I studied Renaissance Florence and I saw someone in that long post mention that Dante seemed to have it in for Florence? Why is that, or was that a misreading? All I can recall of Florence’s flaws for the time were it’s reputation for gay guys and prostitutes (IIRC the German word for homosexual is derived from Florence :P)

ba… er, it’s not that he had it on florence, but like, people in that post (the not italian ones) have 100% Missed The Point, so I’ll go at it from the beginning. so, quote in question (I suppose):

he and his idol/mancrush, the famous poet Virgil, journey through Hell on behalf of his dead girlfriend and everyone who he didn’t like was there and suffered punishment for all eternity and then he blames three whole popes and the entire fucking city of Florence, Italy for the shitty state of the Church and over seven hundred years later it’s played a major influence in Western culture

now, never mind that ‘it’s played’ is dumb af because ITALIAN LANGUAGE WOULDN’T EXIST WITHOUT DANTE so it’s not played for shit, but like I’ll try to not touch all the other subjects regardless of how much my eyes are bleeding just reading this sentence.

the point is that he was permanently exiled from florence because of his political stances in which the church took part and that happened before the reinassance, which is like… long and complicate so I’m gonna make it very short and simplified sorry everyone but it’s not a thing you can dissect on tumblr properly. so, list:

florence at the end of the 13th century was a republic in the context of the rivalrly between guelfs and ghibellines, pls refer to that link for specific info but basically most of the politics in italy at that point where ‘there’s a bunch of separate small republics/states fighting each other and people tend to either stand with the pope [guelfs] or the emperor of the sacred roman empire [ghibellines]’, and in florence there had been a war in between the two factions that ended with the ghibellines being sent away from the city around 1289 if I’m not getting the year wrong, dante was a guelf and a nobleman and was directly involved in the city’s politics from then onwards until the aforementioned exile;

after then there was a further split in between the guelf faction ie one wanted the pope to be less involved and the other was more with sticking with him, and dante was in the first one;

now this is the point where I should tell you that the pope was boniface viii ie someone who has since then (and during that time) been wildly recognized as one of the worst people who ever had that job ever and whose papacy can be summed up in ‘trying to have both spiritual and temporal power in each single possible way in italy and outside it’ - pls read the entire article and get to the part where he had an entire feud with philip the ivth of france and ended with him getting slapped in the face in anagni -, and who dante saw as someone who had corrupted the catholic church and was fully not doing what his job entailed ie shepherding souls and not being an emperor;

tldr the white vs black guelfs feud ended up with the black guelfs winning and exiling the whites among which dante who therefore ended up exiled from his hometown for the entirety of his life later;

now the thing that those people don’t get is that to dante/people in his situation being involved in their hometown’s politics especially when being a public figure and so on was most of their life and they had an attachment to their city that was similar to what you’d have for your country since back in the day italy was barely a cultural unit and not a political one, like fighting for your city it wasn’t the same as fighting for your *hometown*, it was the same as your COUNTRY, which means that in his context being exiled from there meant leaving the country he was born in/that he loved/felt like he 100% belonged to and never come back, not just leaving one town and going to another. like, if someone told me I couldn’t ever go back to rome in my entire life but I could stay in naples I’d still be in the same country and as I’m italian first and everything else later I’d suffer but who cares, if someone said you have to leave italy and you can never come back I’d suffer a thousand times more because italy is my damned country and the place I was born in and in whose culture I partake/that I feel at home in, that was what it meant leaving florence to him;

now, his problem wasn’t with florence, his problem was with the people who threw him out and the system which allowed it and the catholic church which instead of worrying about religion worried about politics and mingling with them, which by the way is *exactly what the catholic church does here in italy to this day no more no less*, from then on nothing has changed, and he didn’t blame FLORENCE for the shitty state of the church as OP says, HE BLAMED THE CHURCH FOR THE SHITTY STATE OF FLORENCE AND THE ENTIRE COUNTRY, and guess what it’s been seven hundred years and counting and exactly nothing has changed, which means OP’s point even more dumb because dante saying that then and nothing having changed now should witness to the fact that he was only speaking sense;

like: dante had it in with corrupt popes who turned the church into a temporal power rather than stick with the spiritual because he thought that the temporal power didn’t belong to it, which is like… the principle of separation between state and church on which each single post-american revolution constitution has been founded on sure as hell he didn’t have it in for florence when he missed it for his entire life and wanted to go back more than anything and he couldn’t because he was exiled;

now, another thing that OP doesn’t get because lmao what is context: to catholics, the pope is technically infallible. like, if you’re a catholic You Cannot Criticize The Pope, period, so the fact that dante alighieri, A Catholic In The Middle Ages, puts not just one pope in HELL but more than one in a book/poem that he wants to sell as a revolutionary work (which he wanted to do or he wouldn’t have had vergil walking him through hell) is like… a level of disruptive revolutionary literary BDE that these people can’t even conceive, because it implied saying that the head of the church was wrong and calling him out of it. which, again, for a catholic, is basically the highest BDE level in existence. and guess what, Dante Was A Catholic But Not A Bigoted One As Much As These People ThinK;

also, never mind that the people he put in hell were also people he LIKED and most of the sympathetic characters are there, but tumblr doesn’t know that he put in purgatory manfred, the not legitimate son of frederick the second, who was excommunicated by the church, which I should hope anyone can guess the meaning of - like, excommunication is The Worst Thing The Church Can Do When It Comes To Catholics -, and he still put him in a position where he could be redeemed because he repented on his deathbed (according to dante’s rendition anyway), which means that he said someone the church had expelled for good from its ranks could still be redeemed and eventually go to heaven, which was basically telling them fuck you. same BDE.

now, that is the entire point of THAT SPECIFIC THING RE FLORENCE, but I’d like to state that the way I put it is the 0,5% of the entire problem which I can’t possibly summarize because in that book he comments on the status of things in the entire goddamned nation even if it wasn’t a nation politically at that point while mixing it with his philosophy treatise and his own search to have his faith and political ideals coexist while also discussing courtly poetry and changing his language based on the needs while using the same poetric meter that he invented/came up with and no one else could manage to use again after because it was too complicated, and while he does that he gives you a summary of the entirety of greek mythology figures that he incorporated in his work, a summary of the status of things in discussions of medieval theology and philosophy and on top of that there’s some expressions which are now staples of the italian language like we use them commonly and 80% of the time ppl don’t even know he came up with them.

and that still is a badly put summary of 20% of the basic things you find in the divine comedy as a whole because there’s more than that and there’s a reason why here in high school you study it for three years one cantica per year and it’s not even enough to barely scratch the surface. and that’s why those posts give me a damn aneurysm, because if you say that ^^^^^ above is fanfic sorry but I see red.

also sorry for going off like this but you went and pointed out the one thing that irked me most about that OP but I also didn’t want to reply directly because this discussion has given me metaphorical ulcers in the past plus gave me three days of feeling really fucking down (I don’t wanna use trigger but it was the closest thing I came to that in my entire life) and I’m done engaging with people who wouldn’t want to listen but eh. XDDDDD anyway sorry for the rant I hope it was exhaustive. XD

complaint post continuation ie star vs handed me a turkey sub and then slapped it out of my hands and told me to eat it off the floor. 

SO the complaint at the forefront of my mind is marco. i hate hate hate most of how marco has both been characterized and treated since like? i think end of s2 thereabout? so like when they ruined the Let Girls And Guys Have Friendships that aren’t shitty romance....did not age well let me tell you. also i think part of that is also when the staff acknowledged trans marco and tried to do it positively but ended up sucking. you know That whole mess with the episode where princess marco was forced to “come out’ “”as a boy”” to the other princesses from that revolution she became the figurehead of even though it was something that rly shouldn’t have ever mattered and they had the weird thing with miss heinous (same note but dont quite like where the plot is going w heinous and eclipsa bc of that despite me and my heavy eclipsa bias) i mean! marco is good the anxious lawful counterpart to star’s chaotic adhd energy they’re good friends and it just gets totally thrown out the window when A- romance BS adds unnecessary drama that while not “ruins” but def fucks with their good vibes, B- the plot shifts more to focus on mewni and there was the whole “marco after the huge life change of having interdimensional adventures goes back to everyday Life On Earth, so marco has the > go to mewni idea” this WHOLEE part in quotes was done so bad and here’s why so like? the first part of this that ended up pissed me off and i havent stopped since was when marco came and the king/queen were like “oh...we didn’t think u actually would :/” and the cape he wore as like a token ended up being some throw away thing? like marco was ig being kind of on her high horse from helping to save another dimension but like....marco is baby. that’s just how teens are!! idk the whole thing was just kinda disrespectful and i don’t appreciate the othering treatment of marco by these white people as a latino character...might just be me but it’s icky. and like? i get the marco going to mewni thing was a way to incorporate her into the plot more bc the shift to mewni was important as the show’s main plot and conflict shifts into the mewni - monster politics territory. that’s all really important!! but they didn’t really even Need marco to be there other than the writer’s maybe though “oh star lived on earth for some now marco gets to too. deep!” if yr gonna do it this badly then no!! tbh i dont think marco has even been relevant in a lot of the episodes and plot things, and even then marco has the dimensional scissors marco could’ve still just popped in from time to time, even for extended stays! instead of dropping her whole life and schooling to just dick around. marco could still have the squire / learning martial abilities and more abt the magical world in order to assist thing too without this. hell she could’ve been given like a sideplot entirely separate from star abt learning more on the magical worlds on her own that could be another cool world building element! but no!! actually the fact that  theyve just Completely phased out earth as a plot point seems weird? like i get the focus on mewni and it makes sense but it’s still Weird that none of the other earth characters have rly been around or used at all idk...idk...... Like regarding how marco has been vaguely getting othered from what i remember, there was the ep where star tried to improve monster-mew relations w a dance and she’s Trying bc she’s Woke now and marco’s just kinda there for the ride?? like marco was the person who addressed this issue in the First Place and made star start questioning the system w the mewnian “battle” victory holiday episode i mentioned in the other post. Marco, high key lawful good, princess leader for a revolution of girls who don’t want to be forced to fit into the cookie cut molds and restrictions placed upon them at a young age. let them be feral ! we need more rowdy girls!! i dont remember the episode A Lot but i do know that marco being like...second fiddle to star on this issue, again w the white savior issues of star herself being the driving force of the issue, are all just really bleck and inconsistent writing is my two cents. and i’m Surprised i haven’t spoken abt it at length yet but the fucking Bad Romance Subplot....like it’s still unresolved technically?? like star likes marco but marco likes uhh janet or whatever, but then they break up and marco goes to mewni but now star is dating her ex bf who she explicitly broke up w bc they didn’t vibe and he has unresolved issues he’s still working through?? and they also genuinely don’t have any chemistry and now there’s a bad kinda-rivals for star even tho if this was better written they would have more respect for her as a person And each other tbh.....but if this was better written this wouldn’t be happening at all. and also that one bush head girl is there and Also might have a thing for marco??? what the fuck. i’m!! watching s3 ep17 now and it’s what sparked this whole thing but basically tom n star having a Moment and marco busts in w a Mission and tom is like..jealous or annoyed or whatever bc now marco and star are gonna do a Thing but tom is like hey yr a third wheel....even tho their adventuring is a Those Two Thing and tom literally has no interest in it!! like the mission is to find buff frog and marco is his friend and then marco leaves but when tom goes with star he doesn’t even care!! like they go to his house and can’t find him and he’s like “whelp we tried wanna get smoothies?” LIKE!! star is genuinely concerned abt her friend and he doesn’t even have enough respect to wanna try....put it on the back burner buddy!!  i genuinely liked tom b4 he started dating star again...like his whole character dev b4 this shit was Getting Over Her!! realizing he has personal issues he needs to work on, and maybe they’re just not compatible as people but they can still be friends! bc he’s lonely and needs a support system that can still deal w him when he relapses on his Issues and can call him out still. hell marco and her lawfulness helping him discover this and them Not being weird rivals for star and genuine not-friends-but-kinda-mutual-acquaintances-who-vent-on-each-other was good!  i’m gonna scream str8 people ruin literally everything. this whole post just ended being abt marco but tbh most of the show’s issues involve marco somehow....other issues i dont like is i think ludo gets too much screentime. he’s annoying and unnecessary so far!! it seems theyre trying to vaguely build up to something but they sure aren’t succeeding as far as i’m aware. also heckapoo’s design is shit...character concept cool actual character bad. 

ӍuʂȋȼѦ July ‘08 (14&15)

Part 14,15/15. Present

And now we've finally reached the last song. I think it sums up the album in a few different ways. You talked about how the songs “Opening” and “Ending” from THE LIVING DEAD were the basis for this song earlier in the interview, but can you talk about why you felt that those two original songs needed to be re-released in this form?

Fujiwara: It was about ten years ago that we did the recording for THE LIVING DEAD. The studio was about 30 minutes away, door to door, and we were shut up in there for a week, just going home to sleep. I was writing the instrumentals for each song – no lyrics or melody or anything, just the instrumentals – and getting it approved before meeting to go over it with the members. Then they would record what I had and I'd write the music for the next song, and then I'd be able to put some lyrics and a melody on the previous one. That whole time was a huge mess. But for better or worse that set the tone for the entire album. It was an information overload, in a good way and in a bad way.

The design of the lyrics booklet reflect that.

Fujiwara: The lyrics, the way the melody carries, the arrangement; they all reflect that.

Everything has a feel of impatience to it.

Fujiwara: And a lot of anger too. We just wanted to do music how we wanted to do it, just the four of us… At the time there was talk of signing on somewhere. We'd huddle up on the studio's veranda and complain about how we only wanted to make music (laughs). One day I looked up from recording guitar to find a completely empty studio, but I heard voices from outside an open window and when I looked, these guys, plus a friend of ours, were over on the grounds of the school across the way, playing tag. They apologized for ditching me while I worked, but I couldn't be mad. I would've done the same. I didn't want to be in the studio either.

Naoi: You make it sound way more noble than it actually was (laughs).

Fujiwara: But I'm fairly sure that's how we all felt?

Masu: We felt like running away, I think.

Fujiwara: Everyone, none of us were sleeping enough, and we were saying weird things and doing weird things. Even the staff were tense all the time and fighting a lot… It was a bad situation. The night before I recorded “Glorious Revolution” I hadn't gotten enough sleep, and my voice was off because of it. But I had to record it that way anyway. It was frustrating. We didn't have much time in the studio because we were still Indies… That's why we indulge in our time now. I can retake something as many times as I need to until I'm satisfied with it… I want to show my past self what it's like for us now. But anyway, we gradually began to see the album taking form, and at the end, when we were mixing one of the songs… We were really deep in at that point. We weren't putting our best foot forward, and we thought we weren't putting out our best music. We were just putting everything we wanted to do, everything we wanted to say, into it. We were all the same person, basically; we couldn't even tell whose hand was whose (laughs). Our schedule was intense – now we have different days set aside for each separate thing, so it's hard to imagine how it used to be, taking the instrumentals, then the vocals right after, and then sending it to be mixed right away. Other than “Opening” and “Ending” there was another song we did at the end, and the mixing took ages. When we had first started recording that week we would play games and things while we waited for the mixing to be done, but by the end we didn't have the energy to even talk, so we slept… We were done with all the planned songs for the album but I thought there was something missing. I thought, “This is a book, and it needs a front cover and a back cover.” I had to make something, so I wrote it really quickly, and that's how I got “Present.” It had the title and everything. I looked back on what I had written and I thought it was pretty long, and – I'm not changing a word of this – what I wanted was not one song but a front cover and a back cover, I thought, and in other words that's a prologue and an epilogue, and the prologue is here and the epilogue is here! And I picked them like that, and recorded them. That's why the vocals sound like I hadn't slept at all, because I hadn't (laughs)… You thought it went like that, right?

Yeah.

Fujiwara: Meaning that this song serves its role perfectly as two songs, “Opening” and “Ending.” But it's really one song, and I've always been bothered by the fact that the middle part has been left unreleased. I've been wanting to do it for a long time; it's like an itch. And that's how it came to be.

I see. You don't strike me as the type to gut a song into two like that and then consider it done.

Fujiwara: I think I could do it, even now. I wrote it knowing that I was going to split it up. Haven't I said that I killed and brought back “Lostman” many, many times before it became what it is? This was like a miniature version of that process. I'm really cruel; I'll completely tear things to shreds. But like this, when I have a song that I've wanted to do for a while – when I was writing “Lostman,” I meant to write the whole thing, but I would write one line and realize I could condense it. So I would, and then I could move onto the next line. I repeated that a lot. But “Present” was completely different. There was one time when we rehearsed it, intending to play it live, but it didn't work out. A song I've been wanting to do for a long time is only complete as one song. I don't forget about it.

Fuji was the one who approached the rest of you about doing this song, correct? What did you think?

Naoi: At first he only said he had an idea, and I didn't know that he was thinking of this song. When he gets an idea like that you can expect that he's thinking of something good. When he finally told us what he just said about wanting to do the part between “Opening” and “Ending,” I thought he meant just as an acoustic like before. But he said no, all of us, like we did before, remember? And then I remembered that we tried to play it but we couldn't do it. I was super excited to try it again.

Masukawa?

Masukawa: I was very surprised that the lyrics weren't changed at all. Not even a little bit. I expected them to be.

Naoi: The chord progression wasn't either.

Masukawa: But he was only about 20 when he wrote it. And that's really amazing because it reads like he wrote it just now. I know that some things don't change but even so. I was surprised.

And Masu?

Masu: When we tried to rehearse it before, all I was told was that we were going to stick “Opening” and “Ending” together to make a song. I didn't know that it was already one complete song. It had a refrain and a guitar solo and everything. So I felt that I was playing an entirely new song rather than a mash-up of the originals. I'm still very pleased that we were able to play it.

So when you decided that you wanted to do it, you were able to take it out of your pocket and play it just like that. Maybe you felt proud of that fact, or a little embarrassed but happy?

Fujiwara: Hahaha, not at all. There are two reasons why I decided to bring back this song when I did. The first is that when I thought of the title for the album, present from you – before I had asked anyone if it was ok to name it that – and I remembered that I had written a song titled “Present.” The puzzle pieces fell into place in my head and I knew that the time was now. Releasing it by itself would put too much emphasis on it; it wasn't big enough for that. But to release a song titled “Present” in an album titled present from you; that was perfect. It felt right. I explained that to the others and they were for it. That's the first reason. The second is something I thought of afterward… Without “Present,” a collection of b-sides would be only for our own satisfaction. By attaching “Present” at the end we were able to give the rest of those songs a present. “Present” is older than the other songs – well, “Kanojo to Hoshi no Isu” was around in some form since before that, and “Everlasting Lie” was made at the same time – but I wanted to give the other songs “Present” as a token of our gratitude. I don't know what kind of meaning listeners attach to it, but for us it's a mark of consistency.

A present is something you receive from yourself or someone else. This is what I'm most curious about: we know that during the recording of THE LIVING DEAD you were driven hard and could only see what was right in front of you, and in today's interview you've talked about how you had very high egos during that time. With that said, what do you think of the fact that you were able to write these melodies, these lyrics, consistently throughout the years?

Fujiwara: I think that this is all I'm ever going to be able to write (laughs). […] I can't look at it objectively so I don't know for sure. That's what I think, though; that I'm always writing the same stuff (laughs).

Do you think you did a good job?

Fujiwara: I do (laughs). I read the lyrics booklet… I remember the gist of each, but looking at them written down like that helps each one become clear in my mind, like I wrote them yesterday they're so fresh. They get stronger, not weaker, and I look back and see that some things have remained unchanged (laughs). Like, I wrote the arrangement for this one in 30 minutes when I badly needed to sleep. Everything in this song comes from my conception of it back then. The verses, the twin lead guitar, all of it.

It's amazing that you were able to write it all so quickly. Wasn't it the same with “Guild?” You took no time to write it and had many options as to what to do with it until the Puppet Guild. When listening to songs of yours that follow that pattern, […] and it makes you realize how much meaning comes from being born.

Fujiwara: What we messed up was after I had introduced the idea of doing “Present” during a meeting for present from you and we were all doing individual practice. Chama asked me what key it was in, and I said that we should be able to take it in one shot because in was in G. I really like G and I use it a lot. I thought there was no way it would be too quiet that way.

Masukawa: But it was too quiet.

Naoi: I thought that the old Fuji-kun was making fun of us! No way it could be G, but I wanted to prove him wrong. Turns out it was actually supposed to be tuned down one!

Fujiwara: I finally figured out that in my half-asleep state I had screwed up the tuning, and what I thought was G was actually not. It was just me being careless about it (laughs).

There are amazing things in this song. For example, the open-heartedness that comes through musically, and direct lyrics that represent your strong convictions as the singer, like the line,“At the very least, you have your allies.” I think you can really be proud that you've been writing songs like this for all these years. For all your listeners, even the ones who have newly discovered you, I believe that “Present” is going to remain as an important memorial to them.

Fujiwara: Thank you.

It's nice that so many things naturally fell into place with this album.

Fujiwara: Yeah. Like I said, I didn't think it would turn out like this. I'm sick of saying it (laughs), but it's almost frustrating how well all the songs collected into an album, and how “Present” decided it was time to come back. I've worn these words into the ground I've said it so many times, but each song presents differently when put in an album. In conclusion, I can say that when I pulled out the lyrics to “Present,” it struck me how I hadn't changed. Always feeling the same thing and doing the same thing. I think it'll always be that way.

But I don't think that's all. A lot of things had an impact, like how you didn't ever lie, and I think that means that this time, you weren't exactly the same.

Fujiwara: Yeah. In other words, for us, who were just doing whatever we wanted at the time, emotion like that was like a reward… It might seem like I'm saying the same thing in different words to everyone reading this. Yes, I'm sorry that I'm shallow (laughs). It's true, I'm simple, really.

That's good.

Naoi: Like he said, we're all shallow. I think that even our most devoted listeners know that we have no knowledge of business and don't have high expectations for us. Every time we release something like this there are various reactions and misunderstandings, and we bring it up ourselves as a way of dealing with it. We want to make sure everyone knows that we're the simplest of simple people and we just do what we feel like doing. Because at least then we can ask you to buy it and listen, because we truly believe it's worth buying and listening to. I want everyone to believe that.

Masukawa: It's great if a fan listens to new releases right away and sticks with their first impression of it, but I'd also be happy if they gave it some time and room to let other opinions and impressions grow.

Masu, you've changed quite a bit.

Masu: What?

You grew a lot as a drummer around the time of “Laugh Maker,” and just today I've heard about how much you grew as a person as well (laughs).

Masu: But during “Laugh Maker” I wasn't punching anybody (laughs).

All: Hahahahaha!

Fujiwara: I remember one thing. I remember that you were convinced you weren't able to give 100 percent and that you had to make yourself be ok with 70 percent.

Wow, Masu.

Fujiwara: But in some ways that was mature of you. You kept having to remind yourself not to aim for 100.

Masu: That was less about reminding myself and more about reminding everyone around me (laughs).

All: Hahaha!

Fujiwara: But now he's the one who takes the longest to record everything.

The same with re-arrangement for lives.

Naoi: You never were ok with “Laugh Maker” (laughs).

Fujiwara: He came up to me with the most serious look on his face. “I'm sorry I couldn't get it right today, please let me try again tomorrow.” I told him to take as long as he needed until he was satisfied. You wouldn't expect that from Hide-chan back then.

Naoi: Hide-chan was done (laughs).

Masu: Yeah I was (laughs).

Fujiwara: At any rate, aren't there a lot of song of ours that we've made acoustic versions out of, or had original versions of, or unreleased parts of? Maybe people will take it the wrong way. Sometimes I think that the four of us are only pleasing ourselves (laughs). But recently I realized that we're becoming a band for which that's the norm.

The fact that you're able to fling that kind of statement out into the world is evidence of the ten years of history you have behind you.

Fujiwara: I'd be happy if that was the case.

Now we can hear the old songs as if for the first time again.

Fujiwara: I really want to do “Everlasting Lie ~ acoustic version” live, with the skills we have now. But I don't want to play guitar. I want you three to play guitar for me.

Naoi: Me and Hiro will come through it fine, you know? (laughs)

Fujiwara: But Hide-chan?

Masu: I'll try my best (laughs).

Fujiwara: I'd play during the interlude, but not while I have to sing. I want to be able to say “Sir Destiny.”

Naoi: I'd do the rhythm and Hiro could be lead guitar. I think if we did that only fans who wanted to hear THE LIVING DEAD version band arrangement of the song would be there (laughs).

Not at all. Everyone is going through life with the same changes, the same progress; holding the same kinds of important thing close. Everyone is the same.

Naoi: Yeah, I think there are a lot of people who want to want to hear Fuji-kun's acoustic version.

Fujiwara: …Yeah, I guess so (laughs).

You should do it next time.

Naoi: And let me say this real quick. I'm not trying to sell it to you, it's just that “Present” is recorded in such beautiful sound. And we four know that. It has a lot of value to it. It's the newest song we have. I really want to convey to everyone that we truly think that we've got a good thing going here, and it would mean a lot if you listened to it.