The path that we all take always seems to be more winding that it needs to be. It seems to take us to places that we never thought we'd get to. Some of these places we always wanted to see, but then we found out that they weren't at all what they were cracked up to be. Well, the places were just fine, but it was the companionship that we were providing ourselves that we thought needed improvement. It was us, not it that needed fixing. We were the problem and that's always the way it is with these kinds of stories. We were unhappy about something. We were lonely and we were missing parts. We saw everything there was to see, we did our best to absorb it all and then we shrugged, got back into the car and accelerated away, off to somewhere else, somewhere that might make us feel better. We were looking for some sort of completion, something that would make all of this, all of that, feel right and appropriately good for us. We wanted to feel good. We thought that we were supposed to get to feel good. We could be wrong about that, but we're hoping that we're very right about it.
Eric Anderson, of Cataldo, makes this feeling his personal dilemma, or the thing that he's meant to solve. He throws himself into the laboratory, trying to get to that ticking heart of what we think we're missing when we're out there - or he's out there - sensing that something's not right, that he needs certain aspects to change to bring everything to a point where it sends out good feelings instead of hollow echoes. The songs that he writes are crammed with the decay that sets in when people are experiencing sweetness, or something that could be classified as the good stuff, and they're unable to feel any of it. They only able to feel that they should be somewhere else and they should be with someone else, seeing and feeling all of this with another person. There's a burning sensation in Cataldo music that suggests that the characters need to drop what they're doing, just stop, just fucking stop, and turn around. They should finally be where they desire to be. They should be with the person or the people who are there, whom they cannot stop thinking about, whom they love like no other. They miss these people, Anderson misses those people and you feel that he's being held prisoner by what he's chosen to do. He can't get back to these places and these people and it's like having his heart battered and mocked. It's like he's being constantly whispered to, the universe's silent, but nagging and sensed GPS system telling him that it's recalculating. It's as if he's being told that he's veered from his route, from his intended direction, even though he's been following a map the entire time. He asks a question in a song here, wondering how someone can still be "young in the bones" after certain things happen, after you've behaved in certain ways and it's perhaps best answered with the thought that we're rarely right again after we put ourselves through anything that brings us significant sadness or longing. We just keep wandering and aging and it sits like a weight on our chest. It makes us, our bones, hurt.