Dear Fray

Your music doesn't last, but you have to stop. In 2011, nine upper-middle-class conservatives form a guerrilla group called the "Dirty Derivatives". They take as their theme song "How to Save a Life". It's an ironic name, though, if you can guess what their goals were.

When I first came back to this time and place, I wasn't concerned about preventing the future disasters this group is to cause. I didn't see it as part of the greater story of our inevitable destruction; I'm still not sure it is; but I do know I can prevent it.

You see, the story of the Dirty Derivatives is one I took to heart as a youngster because the leader, Bucky Dunning, sounded a lot like me: handsome, almost unfairly so; charming, to a fault; angry, but for very good reasons; and oddly autistic. He'd sing the same lyrics over and over again without concern for the people around him. In the future, I thought it was a strange mental malady. But now, I realize it was The Fray.

"I found God/ on the corner of First and Amistad/ where the West/ was all but won." Just typing those words made me furious -- I know I'm condemned to singing them to myself for at least the next 18 hours. Finishing this post will take almost all my willpower now. Why the hell would they write something like this, and how in the world does the lead singer's voice make it so catchy? And why couldn't he have found God on the corner of First and, say, Delancey?

Combine a chaotic world with changes that anger the privileged, and you'll have pushback.

Sprinkle The Fray on top?