Description
About the Song
LIBRARIAN
CATEGORY
Primary Emotion
Hope
Also Fits
Education, Survival, Redemption, Purpose, Curiosity, Resilience, Personal Growth, Humanity
Not every prison has steel bars.
Some people spend their lives trapped by fear. Others are trapped by poverty, addiction, abuse, regret, or the belief that they will never become anything more than what life has handed them. There are also people who live in complete freedom, yet never discover the world because they never open a single book. Freedom is not always measured by where you are. Sometimes it is measured by what you know.
This song will connect with people who have ever searched for a way out of their circumstances. It belongs to the lifelong learner who asks questions simply because they want to understand the world a little better. It belongs to the student trying to build a future, the mechanic teaching himself a new trade, the father reading bedtime stories, the woman learning to rebuild her life after heartbreak, the prisoner searching for hope, and the dreamer who refuses to believe that today has to define tomorrow.
Knowledge has always been one of the greatest equalizers in history. Money can disappear. Strength fades with time. Positions of power come and go. What you learn becomes part of who you are, and nobody can take that away.
When most people hear the title Librarian, they picture shelves filled with books and someone quietly organizing them. That picture only scratches the surface.
This song is really about what happens when knowledge becomes survival.
It is about discovering that a single page can change the direction of a life.
It is about finding hope in places where hope is often difficult to find.
Most importantly, it is about remembering that every human being is capable of learning, changing, and becoming more than yesterday.
WHAT THIS SONG IS ABOUT
Librarian grew from a chapter of my life that most people never expected would become one of the greatest classrooms I have ever experienced.
When people hear that someone spent time incarcerated, they often imagine the violence, the fear, the mistakes, or the punishment. Those things exist, but they are only part of the picture. There are also quiet moments that rarely make the news. Moments where people sit alone trying to understand how they arrived there. Moments where they think about their families, their children, their parents, the roads they should have taken, and the ones they still hope they might walk one day.
During that time, I became the librarian.
That simple responsibility allowed me to see something I probably never would have understood otherwise.
Every day, men came looking for different things.
Some wanted history.
Some wanted religion.
Some wanted adventure.
Some wanted to learn a trade.
Some wanted sports.
Some wanted to laugh for a while.
Some simply wanted to forget where they were for an hour.
The books never judged anyone.
They never cared what a man had done before opening the cover.
Every reader started equal.
That lesson stayed with me long after I walked away.
This song isn’t asking people to love books for the sake of books.
It asks a much bigger question.
What happens when knowledge becomes the one thing standing between giving up and continuing forward?
Sometimes the answer is found inside a library.
Sometimes it is found inside a conversation.
Sometimes it is found inside a single sentence that arrives exactly when a person needs it most.
That is what Librarian is really about.
It is about opening doors that cannot be locked.
It is about discovering that learning is one of the few freedoms that can survive almost anywhere.
It is also about recognizing the quiet heroes who spend their lives putting knowledge into the hands of complete strangers without ever expecting anything in return.
Every civilization has protected stories because stories protect civilizations.
Every generation inherits ideas from the people who came before them.
Without books, journals, letters, and recorded knowledge, much of human history would disappear.
That thought fascinated me then, and it still fascinates me today.
The library became much more than shelves.
It became proof that even in difficult places, the human mind refuses to stop searching.
That may be the most powerful form of freedom we possess.
THE STORY BEHIND
LIBRARIAN
People sometimes ask me where songs come from.
Some begin with a memory. Some begin with a question. Others begin with a single sentence that refuses to leave your head until you finally write it down.
Librarian came from a real chapter of my life.
While I was incarcerated, I became the librarian. That wasn’t a title I ever expected to have, and it certainly wasn’t something I imagined years earlier when I was growing up. Life has a way of taking you down roads you never planned to travel. Looking back now, that experience taught me lessons I probably couldn’t have learned anywhere else.
Most people picture a prison library as nothing more than shelves filled with old books. They imagine a quiet room tucked away from everything else.
What I saw was something very different.
I saw men walking through that door carrying burdens that no one else could see.
Some had anger written across their faces.
Some carried shame.
Some carried regret.
Others carried hope so quietly that you almost missed it.
No matter what they brought with them, the moment they started looking through the shelves, something changed.
For a little while, they weren’t just inmates anymore.
They became students.
Historians.
Mechanics.
Fathers.
Poets.
Dreamers.
Travelers.
For an hour or two, they could step outside the walls without ever leaving the building.
That is the power of knowledge.
One of the things that stayed with me was how differently people chose their books.
One man wanted biographies because he wanted proof that people could rebuild their lives.
Another wanted books about business because he believed he could start over when he got out.
Someone else wanted history because understanding yesterday helped him understand today.
Others wanted novels because, for a little while, they could live somewhere completely different.
No two people walked away carrying the same story.
But every one of them walked away carrying something.
I also learned something about librarians that I had never really thought about before.
Most people hardly notice them.
They quietly organize information, answer questions, recommend books, and help people find what they’re looking for.
What many people don’t realize is that they are also helping people discover themselves.
A good librarian doesn’t simply hand you a book.
They often hand you a possibility.
That thought became part of this song.
When I wrote I’m Your Librarian, I wasn’t talking about myself standing behind a desk.
I was talking about anyone who shares knowledge with another human being.
A teacher.
A parent.
A grandparent.
A friend.
A mentor.
Even a stranger who recommends the right book at exactly the right time.
Every one of them becomes a librarian in some way.
The prison library also reminded me that education doesn’t stop because life becomes difficult.
In fact, many people begin learning the most important lessons during the hardest seasons of their lives.
Sometimes failure makes us listen more carefully.
Sometimes pain makes us curious.
Sometimes losing everything forces us to ask questions we never asked when life was comfortable.
Those questions matter.
They lead people toward growth.
They lead people toward wisdom.
Most importantly, they remind us that yesterday doesn’t have to write tomorrow.
One thing I loved watching was the excitement when a new shipment of books arrived.
You would have thought someone had opened the doors to another country.
People wanted to know what had come in.
They looked through every title.
They talked about what they had read.
They recommended books to each other.
That excitement wasn’t really about paper and ink.
It was about possibility.
Every new book represented another chance to learn something no one could ever take away.
That is why this song reaches far beyond prison.
The walls may have inspired it, but the message belongs everywhere.
Every school.
Every home.
Every community library.
Every child discovering their first favourite story.
Every adult deciding it is never too late to learn something new.
We live in a world overflowing with information, yet many people still feel lost.
Knowledge by itself isn’t enough.
What matters is what we do with it.
Reading without thinking changes very little.
Reading with an open mind can change everything.
That became one of the quiet lessons I carried with me after leaving that library.
It also became one of the foundations of MOITA.
I’ve always believed that songs can entertain people.
But I’ve also believed they can leave someone thinking long after the music ends.
That’s one of the reasons I call MOITA Educational Rock.
If a song can make someone feel something and also make them curious enough to learn something new, then it has accomplished far more than filling a few minutes with music.
Librarian is one of the clearest examples of that philosophy.
It celebrates books.
But even more than that, it celebrates the endless human desire to keep learning, to keep asking questions, and to keep searching for better answers, no matter where life finds us.
The greatest prison isn’t always built from concrete.
Sometimes it’s built from believing there is nothing left to learn.
A single book can tear down those walls.
And sometimes, that’s exactly where a new life begins.
WHY THIS SONG FITS MOITA
If someone asked me to choose one word that sits at the heart of MOITA, it wouldn’t be music.
It would be understanding.
Every song I’ve written starts with a question, an experience, an observation, or a moment that made me stop and think. Sometimes those moments came from my own life. Sometimes they came from watching other people. Sometimes they came from history, faith, science, relationships, or simply asking, “Why?”
That curiosity is what led me to write hundreds of songs.
Librarian fits naturally into the MOITA catalogue because it celebrates the very thing that made so many of those songs possible.
Knowledge.
Before you can write about people, you have to understand people.
Before you can write about history, you have to learn history.
Before you can write about pain, hope, love, faith, betrayal, war, forgiveness, or purpose, you have to spend time listening, reading, and thinking.
Books became one of the ways I learned to do that.
They introduced me to lives I never lived.
They showed me places I had never visited.
They challenged opinions I thought would never change.
Sometimes they confirmed what I already believed. Other times they forced me to admit I had been wrong.
Both are valuable.
One of the things I’ve tried to do with MOITA is write songs that encourage people to think for themselves.
Not to tell them what to believe.
Not to push an agenda.
But to invite them to ask another question.
To look a little deeper.
To consider another perspective.
That is exactly what a good book does.
It doesn’t always give you answers.
Sometimes it gives you better questions.
When I look across the MOITA catalogue, there is a common thread running through many of the songs.
I Need to Know asks questions about faith.
Control of Everything asks questions about the direction of society.
The Villain and the Hero asks how quickly people change their opinions when success arrives.
Ending Days explores how darkness can transform a human being.
Lonely No More asks whether we truly see the people walking past us every day.
Each song opens another door.
Librarian is the song that reminds us where many of those doors begin.
Inside curiosity.
Inside learning.
Inside the willingness to keep growing.
There is another reason this song belongs in the MOITA story.
It reflects something I learned long before artificial intelligence, search engines, and smartphones placed information into everyone’s pocket.
Having access to information doesn’t automatically create wisdom.
Wisdom comes from asking honest questions.
From comparing ideas.
From admitting when we don’t know something.
From continuing to learn, even after we think we’ve learned enough.
That lesson matters today more than ever.
We live in a time when information travels around the world in seconds. Yet misinformation can travel just as quickly. Learning how to think critically has become just as important as learning facts.
That is why reading still matters.
That is why libraries still matter.
That is why conversations still matter.
Knowledge isn’t something we collect like trophies.
Knowledge is something we use to become better human beings.
I also wanted this song to quietly recognize people whose work often goes unnoticed.
Teachers.
Authors.
Researchers.
Historians.
Archivists.
Volunteers.
Librarians.
These are people who spend much of their lives preserving knowledge for others.
Most will never become famous.
Most will never receive standing ovations.
Yet generations continue learning because someone cared enough to preserve information instead of letting it disappear.
That’s a remarkable gift.
MOITA has never been about pretending to have all the answers.
If anything, it’s been about refusing to stop asking questions.
Every song is another conversation.
Every conversation is another opportunity to understand each other a little better.
That is why Librarian feels so important to me.
It reminds us that every answer someone discovers today was once a question someone was brave enough to ask.
It reminds us that learning never really ends.
And it reminds us that hope often begins with something as simple as opening the first page of a book.
READ THIS FIRST
Before you read these lyrics, I want you to forget the title for a moment.
Don’t picture shelves.
Don’t picture libraries.
Don’t even picture prison.
Picture a person searching for a way forward.
Think about a time in your own life when you needed an answer and didn’t know where to find one.
Maybe it was a broken relationship.
Maybe it was learning a new skill.
Maybe it was trying to understand God, history, your family, or even yourself.
Every one of us reaches those moments.
The lyrics you’re about to read were inspired by a prison library, but they belong to anyone who has ever searched for hope through knowledge.
Sometimes a book teaches you something practical.
Sometimes it changes your opinion.
Sometimes it gives you the courage to keep going for one more day.
That is the journey behind these words.
FULL LYRICS
LIBRARIAN
Let me tell you a story you might wanna know
There’s a million hidden worlds where the pages glow
Adventures waiting quietly behind every line
Taking broken thoughts and opening the mind
You might wonder about the stars and who we really are
How to fly a plane or drive a brand new car
A poem for the woman that you wanna serenade
Or a dream to escape the hell you never made
Directions to a place or somewhere far away
Recipes and secrets people use every day
The jokes that make crowds laugh
The rhymes behind a song
Mysteries from ancient times and what went wrong
The rise and fall of empires
The bloodshed and the pain
The walls they built between us
And the reasons they remain
To the moon I wanna go there
First I gotta know there’s air
Every answer hides somewhere
Inside the pages laying there
`
Some books heal the wounded
Some books feed the fire
Some books teach survival
Some awaken desire
When the world becomes a prison
And your spirit starts to fall
Sometimes one single story
Can save your life from it all
I’M YOUR LIBRARIAN
OPEN UP YOUR MIND
EVERY PAGE A NEW ESCAPE
FOR THE LOST WE LEFT BEHIND
I’M YOUR LIBRARIAN
COME AND TAKE A LOOK
CAUSE SOMETIMES THE ONLY WAY TO LIVE
IS INSIDE A BOOK
I’M YOUR LIBRARIAN
KNOWLEDGE RUNS DEEP
WHEN THE WORLD WON’T GIVE YOU ANSWERS
THE WORDS STILL SPEAK
I seen men behind walls
Trying hard to survive
Holding onto stories
Just to feel alive
Some searched for redemption
Some searched for revenge
Some were barely hanging on
Right at the edge
I carried all the best books
Like treasures in my hand
Watching tired souls disappear
Into another land
History and ancestry
The evil and the sin
God’s words and wisdom
And the wars we’re living in
A guide to love and heartbreak
A guide to building dreams
A guide to fixing engines
Or understanding what life means
Sports and superstars
Fast cars and guitars
Every page another doorway
To a place beyond the bars
A book can build a kingdom
A book can start a war
A book can heal a broken man
Who can’t take life no more
Some people die forgotten
Some people leave a spark
But words can live forever
Long after it gets dark
I’M YOUR LIBRARIAN
I GOT EVERYTHING YOU NEED
FOR EVERY BROKEN HEART AND MIND
THAT’S TRYING TO SUCCEED
I’M YOUR LIBRARIAN
THE STORIES NEVER END
CAUSE SOMETIMES A SIMPLE BOOK
BECOMES YOUR ONLY FRIEND
I’M YOUR LIBRARIAN
COME AND STEP INSIDE
WHERE KNOWLEDGE, HOPE, AND HUMAN SOULS
DON’T HAVE TO RUN AND HIDE
When the silence filled the prison
And the nights became too long
The pages kept us breathing
The stories kept us strong
LYRIC BREAKDOWN
WHAT I LIVED, WHAT I FELT, AND WHY THESE WORDS EXIST
This is probably the most personal part of this page because this is where the song stops being about books and starts being about people.
When I was the librarian, I wasn’t handing out paper.
I was handing out opportunities.
I didn’t fully understand that at the time.
Looking back now, I do.
Every person who walked through that library door was looking for something. Sometimes they knew exactly what they wanted. Other times they just wandered the shelves until something caught their eye.
That reminded me a lot of life.
Sometimes we know exactly what we’re searching for.
Sometimes we’re simply hoping we’ll recognize it when we find it.
“There’s a million hidden worlds where the pages glow. Adventures waiting quietly behind every line.”
When I wrote those words, I wasn’t trying to make books sound magical.
I was describing what they actually became.
Inside prison, your world becomes very small.
The same walls.
The same routines.
The same faces.
The same sounds.
Day after day.
A book completely changes that.
You can walk through ancient Rome in the morning.
Stand on the deck of a Portuguese ship crossing the Atlantic after lunch.
Study astronomy before supper.
Read about building engines before lights out.
Your body never moves.
Your mind travels everywhere.
That is one of the greatest gifts books have ever given humanity.
They allow one person to borrow another person’s lifetime of knowledge.
A scientist spends forty years making a discovery.
You can begin learning about it in an afternoon.
A historian dedicates a lifetime to preserving the past.
You inherit that work simply by opening the cover.
That still amazes me.
Human knowledge has always been one generation teaching the next.
Books became one of the greatest ways we ever learned to speak to people we would never meet.
That is something worth protecting.
If you’re interested in how libraries have preserved civilization for thousands of years, the history of the ancient Library of Alexandria is one of the most fascinating examples. It reminds us how easily knowledge can be lost, and why preserving it matters. Library of Alexandria
“You might wonder about the stars and who we really are.”
I’ve always believed curiosity is one of the greatest qualities a human being can have.
Children ask questions constantly.
Somewhere along the road, many adults stop asking.
That has always puzzled me.
The world becomes more interesting every time we admit we don’t know something.
Why do stars shine?
How did civilizations rise?
What happens inside the human brain?
Why do people love?
Why do people hate?
What makes someone forgive?
Those questions built science.
Those questions built philosophy.
Those questions built faith.
The greatest discoveries in history all started with someone asking a question that everyone else ignored.
I never want MOITA to become a catalogue of answers.
I’d rather it remain a catalogue of questions.
Questions make people think.
Thinking changes people.
“I seen men behind walls trying hard to survive. Holding onto stories just to feel alive.”
Those are probably the most autobiographical lines in the song.
People outside prison often imagine survival as something physical.
Food.
Safety.
Shelter.
Inside, survival is just as often emotional.
Loneliness becomes heavy.
Regret becomes heavy.
Silence becomes heavy.
A good story can interrupt all of that.
For a while, a man stops thinking about where he is.
He becomes the explorer.
The detective.
The inventor.
The father.
The soldier.
The traveller.
The hero.
Books gave people permission to imagine a different future.
Sometimes that’s enough to keep someone moving forward.
Research has consistently shown that education and literacy programs in correctional institutions improve opportunities after release and are associated with lower rates of reoffending. Learning doesn’t erase the past, but it can help build a different future.
That is one of the reasons I believe education should never be treated as a privilege reserved for a few.
Knowledge benefits everyone.
“History and ancestry. The evil and the sin. God’s words and wisdom. And the wars we’re living in.”
Look at those lines carefully.
They’re intentionally wide open.
Because that’s what a library is.
It doesn’t exist to tell you what to think.
It exists to help you discover what you think.
One shelf may hold religious texts.
Another shelf may hold books questioning religion.
One section may explain war.
Another explains peace.
One teaches engineering.
Another teaches music.
One helps repair an engine.
Another helps repair a broken heart.
That variety matters.
Real learning happens when we explore ideas honestly instead of hiding from them.
I don’t believe people grow by living inside an echo chamber.
We grow by reading.
Listening.
Questioning.
Comparing.
Thinking.
Sometimes changing our minds.
That isn’t weakness.
That’s maturity.
One lesson I carried with me after leaving prison was this:
A closed mind builds invisible walls long after the visible ones disappear.
Books have a remarkable way of tearing those invisible walls down, one page at a time.
LYRIC BREAKDOWN
WHAT I LIVED, WHAT I FELT, AND WHY THESE WORDS EXIST (Continued)
“A guide to love and heartbreak. A guide to building dreams. A guide to fixing engines. Or understanding what life means.”
I smiled when I wrote these lines because they describe exactly what I watched every day.
One person wanted to learn how to repair a small engine.
Another wanted to understand the stock market.
Someone else wanted to read about World War II.
Another wanted poetry.
Another wanted the Bible.
Another wanted jokes.
Some wanted books about famous athletes because sports reminded them of home.
Some wanted books about guitars because music still lived inside them, even if they couldn’t hear it played the way they remembered.
That is the beauty of a library.
Nobody decides what your next interest should be.
You decide.
Learning becomes personal.
Every person walks away carrying something different, yet every one of them leaves a little richer than when they walked in.
I’ve always believed that education shouldn’t stop when school ends.
Some of the smartest people I’ve met never finished university.
Some of the wisest people I’ve met never had the opportunity to attend one.
What made them remarkable wasn’t a diploma.
It was curiosity.
They kept asking questions.
They kept learning.
That is something every one of us can choose, no matter our age or where life has taken us.
“Sports and superstars. Fast cars and guitars. Every page another doorway to a place beyond the bars.”
People often underestimate how important hobbies become during difficult seasons of life.
When someone reads about hockey, they’re not always reading statistics.
They’re remembering watching games with their father.
Someone reading about classic cars may be remembering weekends in the garage with family.
Someone reading about guitars might be remembering a dream that still refuses to disappear.
Books don’t simply teach facts.
They reconnect people with pieces of themselves they thought were gone.
That is something I witnessed over and over again.
Sometimes I could tell exactly why someone had chosen a particular book without asking a single question.
The smile said everything.
For a little while, they weren’t looking at concrete walls.
They were somewhere else.
“A book can build a kingdom. A book can start a war.”
History proves both statements.
Ideas have always shaped civilization.
The world’s greatest constitutions began as words.
Scientific discoveries began as written observations.
Religious beliefs have been preserved through sacred texts.
At the same time, propaganda, hatred, and dangerous ideologies have also spread through writing.
Words are powerful.
Books are powerful.
Knowledge itself is neutral.
The responsibility belongs to us.
We decide whether information becomes wisdom or whether it becomes another weapon.
That thought became one of the foundations of MOITA.
I never wanted songs to tell people what to think.
I wanted songs to encourage people to think.
There is an important difference.
When people stop asking questions, someone else usually starts providing all the answers.
History has shown us many times where that can lead.
“A book can heal a broken man who can’t take life no more.”
This line may be one of the quietest in the entire song.
It isn’t dramatic.
It isn’t loud.
It’s simply honest.
There are moments in life when people reach a place where they don’t know what comes next.
I’ve seen people carry pain they never talked about.
Loss.
Failure.
Loneliness.
Regret.
Shame.
Grief.
Sometimes another person’s story reminds us we are not alone.
Sometimes reading about someone else’s struggle gives us enough strength to face our own.
A book doesn’t solve every problem.
Neither does a song.
But both can remind us that someone else has walked through darkness and found another sunrise.
Sometimes that’s enough to keep taking one more step.
That’s why I believe stories matter.
Not because they escape reality.
Because they help us return to reality with a little more hope.
“Some people die forgotten. Some people leave a spark. But words can live forever.”
Every time I think about those lines, I think about the people whose names most of us will never know.
The teachers who inspired generations.
The writers who quietly changed lives.
The librarians who spent decades putting the right book into the right hands.
The parents who read bedtime stories every night after working long days.
Most of them will never appear in history books.
Yet their influence keeps spreading.
Knowledge moves from one generation to another like a torch.
One person lights another.
That person lights someone else.
The chain continues.
Long after we are gone, our words, our kindness, our ideas, and the things we teach can continue helping people we will never meet.
There is something deeply comforting about that.
WHY THIS SONG BECAME PART OF EDUCATIONAL ROCK
People sometimes ask me why I describe MOITA as Educational Rock.
This song answers that question better than almost any other.
I’ve never wanted music to stop when the last note fades away.
I want it to leave people curious.
Maybe someone hears this song and decides to visit their local library for the first time in years.
Maybe someone picks up a history book.
Maybe someone starts researching their family ancestry.
Maybe someone finally reads that book they’ve been meaning to open.
Maybe someone discovers a skill that changes the direction of their life.
If a song can inspire even one person to keep learning, then it has accomplished something far greater than entertainment.
That has always been my hope.
Knowledge builds confidence.
Confidence builds opportunity.
Opportunity changes lives.
That isn’t just true inside prison.
It’s true everywhere.
When I look back on that chapter of my life, I don’t remember the shelves first.
I remember the people.
The conversations.
The excitement when someone found exactly the book they had been hoping for.
The quiet moments when a person walked away carrying more than paper and ink.
They were carrying possibility.
That’s what this song has always been about.
Not books.
Not libraries.
Not prison.
Possibility.
The belief that no matter where life finds you today, tomorrow can begin with a single page.
WHY THIS MATTERS
Every one of us is writing our own story.
Some chapters are filled with success.
Some are filled with mistakes.
Some are painful enough that we’d rather skip them altogether.
What matters is remembering that the story isn’t finished.
As long as we’re willing to learn, to grow, and to remain curious, another chapter is always waiting to be written.
That is the lesson I carried out of the prison library.
And it is the lesson I hope readers carry away from this song.
CLOSING COMMENTS
When people see the title Librarian, they may expect a song about books.
I hope they leave realizing it’s really a song about people.
It’s about the quiet strength found in learning.
It’s about giving someone another chance without ever saying a word.
It’s about the freedom that begins inside the human mind.
Looking back, becoming the librarian was one of the most unexpected responsibilities I ever had.
It also became one of the most meaningful.
It reminded me that knowledge has no walls, hope has no expiration date, and a single story can change the direction of a life.
If this song encourages even one person to ask another question, open another book, or believe they can still write a better chapter for themselves, then it has already done exactly what I hoped it would do.
MOITA
WHERE EVERY SONG TELLS A STORY.
EVERY STORY TEACHES SOMETHING.
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