Exclusive Video Release: "Bulletproof," a song contemplating self-made soul

A Rebecca Day and The Crazy Daysies video debut featuring a live, acoustic recording, a journey into the soul, and what some of philosophy’s biggest names had to say about the essence of man

“Like the rain falls from the sky, I will soothe this thirsty mind. When my world is filled with belief, this emptiness will change into life.” - lyrics from “Bulletproof”

As venues began opening back up a couple of years ago after the height of the pandemic, we wanted to take a moment to “get back into the swing of things” before taking our show back on the road. We invited a few of our closest friends over for an evening of live music and filmed the experience. The live performance couldn’t have happened without the expertise of our good friend and director Jared Rush, and the talented filmmaker Durden Godfrey.

Debuting today from the “Living Room Sessions” show is an acoustic, live video of one of my earliest songs, “Bulletproof.” It was the first original I felt comfortable enough to record back in 2012, and it was even before my The Crazy Daysies days so Jen’s viola isn’t on the original recording.

We viewed our intimate Living Room Sessions set as the perfect opportunity to debut an updated version of the track that offered a Rebecca Day and The Crazy Daysies take on a supporter-favorite.

Self-made Soul

The heart of this original actually focuses on the soul, more specifically, my belief that the soul is self-made. The soul is a part of you that is recalibrated, reshaped, and chiseled for the better throughout your life if you put the work in to expand your consciousness for the rest of your days.

I wrote this tune a year or so before before I recorded it. When I penned some of the first lyrics, I wasn’t even old enough to legally purchase an alcoholic beverage in public, so much of the soul-oriented lyrics play out like a coming of age story.

I viewed the tune as a lyrical vow to philosophical virtues of courage, wisdom, and temperance as I began navigating a very upside down, irrational music industry.

And while listeners can draw their own interpretations from the soulful track, it’s important to ask oneself in the first place, what is the soul? And why is it so important?

To answer these questions, which help fuel my songwriting of both today and yesterday, I turn to some of history’s most visionary artists and philosophers.

Different Views on the Nature of the Soul

Artists are often in the business of helping others with the reshaping of their souls. Listeners are on all types of journeys, from personal improvement to self-reflection, and music and words are highly valuable in offering a concrete example of a moral ideal one may wish to embody. Music and other forms of art can act as a philosophical roadmap leading to answers for life’s most daunting and private questions.

At least, as a subscriber to the Romantic school, this is what I believe on a philosophical level when I’m creating.

From Ancient Greek philosophers to America’s founding fathers, the greatest thinkers of history have long debated the hot topic of “the soul.”

Frederick Douglass, one of the world’s most inspiring figures who was once enslaved and became an American bastion for justice, freedom, and the power of the mind, is rightfully championed as a “self-made man.”

If man is self-made, that begs the question, is soul self-made too?

I certainly think so, but let’s look at what other, far more brilliant thinkers than myself had to say about it.

Plato

Much of Plato’s work in regards to the study of the soul was inspired by his time spent with his mentor, Socrates.

For Plato, the soul was capable of reaching a higher dimension than the body, his Realm of Forms, therefore the ultimate goal of the soul of man was to escape its fleshy owner and eventually make its way to “true reality.”

Plato believed the soul was made up of different parts, reason, spirit, and appetite.

And while much of Plato’s work on the soul differs from Aristotle’s, they both believed the soul made up man’s “essence.”

For Plato, this soul or essence is eternal. After one body dies, the soul ascends and comes back again to be reborn and reshaped in a different body.

Aristotle

A student of Plato who went on to carve out his own path (much of which actually went against what Plato taught him), Aristotle dedicated an entire book to this topic called On The Soul.  In the treatise, he discusses exactly what the soul is in regards to different living things and the specific function of their nature.

For the Greek philosopher, the soul is man’s essence, the thing that makes him alive. And it expands or remains stagnant to the degree at which one works to nourish it. For Aristotle, the body and soul are linked in a way that cannot be severed, and the virtuous work one does in regards to his soul will shape his body.

Leonard Peikoff

For a more contemporary view on the soul, esteemed writer Leonard Peikoff drew from the work of his mentor, Ayn Rand, when he quoted her during a lecture series and said, “Man is a being of self-made soul.”

Victor Hugo

Romantic author Victor Hugo dedicated a good portion of his prose to matters of the soul. One of my favorite quotes is from his book Toilers of the Sea in regards to the fisherman character Gilliatt:

“His was a soul that never thought of surrender.”

He spends time building on the concept of the soul beautifully in the book, and explains, “The soul is the reality of our existence… The true man is that which exists under what is called man… The vulgar error is to mistake the outward husk for the living spirit.”

An Early, Original Philosophical Work

“Bulletproof” is one of the most ethically-dominant songs I’ve written. It is a bit funny that I wrote it prior to becoming a passionate consumer of philosophical texts.

It’s a tune of gentle resistance to that which threatens the valiant nature of one’s soul. It’s a nod to the hero in us all, who does become afraid at times, but saddles up anyway for the good, even though it’s oftentimes much harder to do than sacrificing one’s convictions to fit in to the trends of the times (this is true in an artistic sense as well as a literal one).

It’s also one of my tunes that, due to its poignantly poetic nature, Nashville insiders didn’t really know what to do with when I played it for them. I pride myself on that.

Let me know what the tune means to you in the comments below, and thank you for taking the time to listen to this humble creation.