“Gravity Affects Me” is an interesting song in that it’s clearly the oldest song on the EP. It’s older than all but one of the songs on The Promise of Summer, too. Somehow, the song always seemed too heavy for anything I was involved in. Even Collapsis had a hard time pulling off the intensity the song needed. The song came out of a request of my management and record label to write a song like Fuel’s “Hemorrhage.” “O.K.,” I thought. I wrote the song on my tour manager’s couch at his mom’s house in about five minutes. I demoed it the next weekend and gave it to my label. Naturally, they hated it, in spite of the fact of it’s being exactly what they asked me to do. Ever hear about major label frustrations? This is one of those stories. Years later, the song has found its proper performance and recording. I’m really proud of the intensity we captured with this one. It might be too heavy, but who cares?

The imagery in “Gravity” came from the oddest of places. I read all four (there were four at the time) Harry Potter books while touring with Collapsis. One story, The Prisoner of Azkaban featured a chapter in which Harry, a wizard in training, fell off of his broom into a pack of Dementors, evil, life-sucking demons from beyond. There’s a decent movie out these days of this novel, but it doesn’t capture this scene very well. I hate movies based on books. With the exception of Lord of the Rings, they usually suck. Anyway, I viewed the scene as an allegory for what was happening to me at the time. My band was collapsing…it was a self-fulfilling prophecy at that. Anyway, I wrote the song about what was going on with me and the people I had so faithfully trusted. It was a long decent, but we eventually hit bottom in February of 2001.