The days and their lengthiness are always stronger than the wills and spines of men. Sometimes the one thing that we're counting on working its good on us - the passage of time or the long scroll of it that just feels impossibly coiled on its roll - just defies us instead of ever lending its hand. We wait for its smoothing, for its taming, for it to step in and calm down the ruckus. We've been told that it will cool pains and aches, given enough of it. Mending and healing is available and impending to those who have the patience to wait for them. It's supposed, but it's not proven and therefore, it's not always right. It's a trite comment to tell someone to just give it time. The good thing for all of us - the better thing to count on - is that our memories are just so shit that they'll do all the hard work for us. It's time, sort of, but it's really just that we're lacking the capacity to remember all of the horrible things that happen to us and that is what gets us back to our gray equilibrium. Thank God for the blackouts and our own personal, vanishing scroll. Eric Bachmann of Crooked Fingers writes within that purgatory of something having happened and that long wait between the passage of time and seeing what kinds of remnants are going to be left over at the end of the stick. Everyone's just waiting to see how it's all going to feel when it's been processed for a little while, though it's quite unanimous that there's a strong mixture of depression and full-body numbness swirling around for the time being. It all hurts right now. The loneliness going around is debilitating and more than that, the feeling that there's no way to fix any of it - everything's too far gone - is what's killing his folks the most. You've never seen so many broken men and women until you start roaming the Crooked Fingers streets. They aren't going crazy, they're just completely unsure where they can go. Bachmann suggests that there "ain't no easy way home," and he proves his point again and again. We're sure that he's right. He sounds very knowledgeable on the subject so we follow this dampened spirits as they drift. The streets are filled with the people you've had passing relationships with, those glancing and gracing embraces and holds - the old loves and those people that oddly are only associated with for a few days before they're lost to the ether. Bachmann feels the hovering, knowing they can pop up whenever, even if time has done its greatest trick and made them fade. He sings, "Don't think for one second they've forgotten you." There's a whiplash factor involved, for anyone who gets complacent with their understanding of time and it's relationship to happiness. It's said that there "ain't no easy way to make you feel okay" - again, Bachmann - and it's the line that's pressed onto his currency. It's the battle that's waged from dusk to dawn and all parts between or outside. It just keeps going. The hardness of everything never softens and it's what makes a voice sound like Bachmann's and it's what makes a man write, "They say you learn, the more it burns, but what good does that do." The burn might just need some time.