So… do you believe in aliens? How about supernatural events? What evidence do you have to make your case? These are the kind of burning questions that keep me up at night for hours talking with friends. The Truth Is Out There is a complex song that explores these questions.
This song was originally inspired by Season 1 of The X-Files. During a cold week in February 2016, I was sick and stayed home from work for a few days. I turned on Netflix, because what else are you supposed to do when you’re sick, right? Maybe play Zelda? Anyways, I watched several episodes of The X-Files Season 1 for the very first time and it blew my mind for a number of reasons. What stuck out to me during that first viewing was the show’s commitment to finding hard scientific evidence to prove supernatural events. Sometimes it’s assumed that faith and science aren’t compatible, but here was a show that challenged that assumption. On a couple episodes, Mulder was ready to take a supernatural case to his superiors at the FBI but Scully would challenge him to find more proof. Can you really prove the existence of aliens or supernatural events?
The X-Files struck a chord with me personally because I had actually been on my own spiritual journey. Depending on your level of nerdism, you may or may not find this fascinating. I related Mulder’s search for proof of aliens and supernatural events to my own search for evidence of God. Personally, I don’t believe faith has to be blind, but instead faith and science can be compatible if both are true. Basically, I like to pretend I am a “detective” and investigate the data behind supernatural and spiritual theories. If there’s a reasonable amount of data behind a theory, I begin to trust it. I believe this “trust” that I have in the evidence is actually what some people call “faith.” This gives me an interesting perspective on both scientific and spiritual issues.
From my experience reading about real-life detective work, The X-Files Season 1 was attempting to apply real investigation procedures to supernatural events. I love that combination, but the series unfortunately doesn’t stick to the evidential approach in later seasons. Season 1 was compelling to me though, and it inspired me to write a song about the search for proof of God, aliens and supernatural events. The main theory behind the song is that there may be more answers out there than we realize. I’m sure you’ve heard it said that we can’t know the truth until we die. I would challenge that and say there are some things that we can be reasonably sure of, particularly if we’re willing to look at all of the evidence available. When we apply real-life detective procedures to investigating the supernatural, some theories become more reasonably trustworthy than others. However crazy a theory might seem, if the data supports it, maybe it’s not that crazy after-all. If all data available points to one consistent conclusion, then it can be considered reasonably trustworthy. Besides, that’s what faith is, isn’t it? It’s just trust in the information we have.
When I began my own spiritual search a few years ago, I didn’t know what was true. There were so many options to choose from. However, by using the approach above, I discovered that some theories were more supported by data than others. This actually gave me the confidence to develop faith and make decisions about what I thought was true rather than breaking down my faith. The song itself though is not meant to make a statement about what is or isn’t true; it’s simply describing the search for truth and encouraging people to begin that search together.
Musically, the intro and bridge riff were written on an electric guitar in my living room. I usually come up with a really stupid working song title because I’m a big kid with a broken sense of humor. That being said, based on the opening riff my working titles for the song were “Circus Music” and later, “Piggy-Man!” Yep, you read that correctly. I don’t even know where that one came from, but before the lyrics are written, I have to come up with a temporary name, so I just play the guitar parts to the song and write down what I “feel” based on the music. I guess that day I imagined a half-man half-pig monster running around scaring people. Seriously. What does that say about my mind? Don’t think too hard about that… The rest of the music was written on an acoustic guitar. I sat on the floor in my basement with a small, fluffy white dog that I was dog-sitting and wrote the verse and chorus guitar parts and lyrics. Honestly, I didn’t like the verse guitar part at first. I mean, I DID like it, but I am a child of the 90’s and I felt like that was coming through too much. It made me think that the song would sound outdated, but eventually I decided to use it anyways. Besides, I was having fun practicing the drum part. If it’s true to who I am, I’d rather be authentic than force myself to ride current musical trends… tried that before and didn’t like where it lead.
One thing I hope you take away from this article is The Truth Is Out There is not meant to tell people that what they believe is wrong. What you believe is for you alone to decide, not anyone else. The last thing I want to do is tell others what they should believe; I’ll never go that route if I can help it. I don’t think it’s necessary to share the same beliefs to relate to people well. It’s the conversation that I find interesting. Besides, the quickest way to shut down an interesting discussion would be for me to tell people they’re wrong, and that would only shut down the search for all of us. The search is everything; it changed me and I’m sure it will change you as well. Do you wonder if aliens exist? Do you want to know if a UFO really crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947? What about ghosts? Do you wonder if God exists? If so, what is God like? The truth is out there somewhere. Let’s go explore together.
The Truth Is Out There is the second song off of an album I’m currently recording called Metanoia. In keeping with the theme of The Truth Is Out There, the album Metanoia is named after a Greek word describing a “journey” or “heart-change.” Metanoia is expected to be released by Vandarth in late 2020.
Want more new rock from Vandarth? Click here to check out his new album Space Coffin!
Click to preview the new album Space Coffin!