"Uncharted" - Sara Bareilles

"Uncharted"
Sara Bareilles
Lyrics
Major Influences: Norah Jones, Ben Folds, Bjork, Counting Crows

It's pretty standard to feel like you're sticking to your routine, coasting through life like you always have.  Maybe you are resistant to change.  You want to be you.  You want to stay you.  Why would you become someone else?  Those times you've tried haven't even benefitted you that much.  Maybe you, as a vegetarian, tried to eat meat for a day and then snapped back the next.  Maybe you went on a hardcore diet for a week, thinking you could make it last, but eventually caved into the appeal of binging on chocolate pie.  You realized how ephemeral changes are, and what kind of unnatural spark need be inserted to make such a radical change become a reality.

Sara Bareilles is a fascinating character.  Hearing her recorded music is enough to get a sense of her eclectic nature.  But seeing her perform live is a totally different story.  You see her face cringe in pain as she sings the beautiful, searing, climactic note of "Gravity."  You hear her husky voice sway across the stage as she talks, saying some crazy line that you won't even remember.  But you remember how she said it.  Maybe it's along the lines of the starting sentence of her website's bio, "Hi.  It's me, Sara.  As I've said before, I don't do those fancy bios.  So sue me."  


She was born in Eureka, CA and refers to her childhood self as being "borderline normal."  She studied communications at UCLA and eventually met her manager Jordan Feldstein who led her onto bigger, brighter things.  Her first album, "Little Voice", was released on July 3, 2007.  Her second album, "Kaleidoscope Heart", to which this song "Uncharted" belongs, was released on September 7, 2010.  Several die-hard fans, one of them being myself, were eagerly awaiting Sara's second run.  Before the release, Sara described her outlook on the album: "I took risks, and pushed myself both as a player and vocally, and I followed my gut wholeheartedly for the very first time. And I can’t wait to share it."  


So how far do you think, are you able to change yourself permanently?  How deep do you have to reach into "uncharted" territory to make a lasting mark?  How much gut does it take to say that you "won't just hang around", even though part of you must know that you're "getting nowhere, when you just sit and stare"?  


You can't spend your whole life sitting and watching others ride on their paths to success while you self-indulge in the multi-tasking lifestyle that once brought you glory.  Those days are over.  And you know it.  You "can't stay in the middle of it all."  Because if you do, you're veering from track to track and you'll never reach the end of one.  You can't waste time, even subconsciously, "comparing where you are to where you want to be."  You just have to dive in and do what you need to, what you know you've done before.  There is an element of you that is already changed as you want to be.  If there weren't, you wouldn't be "already out."  


We all desire for security, for consistency.  It's part of our nature.  But isn't it also part of our nature to long for excitement?  To go on adventures?  There are many adventures we can't handle.  So maybe it's worth considering that we might just find them where we'd least expect them - in tasks that we thought to be cold, mundane, boring.  Maybe that's where the excitement lies - hidden under our preconceived notions.  We might as well assume that to be the case, because we've searched everywhere else.  And now that this inkling of a "foolproof idea" is coming to life, we might as well waste no time to "get started.  It's all Uncharted."