Posts tagged with "emotion"

Musical Context

For years, I lis­tened to music based on my mood. Playlists were well suit­ed for this. I had one full of sad songs for my sad days, days that would last months at a time. I had one with only quick-paced, aggres­sive gui­tar riffs and lung-spit­ting screams, for the pock­ets of rage I’d encounter every now and then. One that was most­ly elec­tron­ic inspi­ra­tion — songs that would move me when I need­ed to move. One for the par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult days, con­sist­ing of sto­ic melodies that could fill me with grit deter­mi­na­tion. There was even one for the bit­ter­sweet moments, per­fect for a post-show buzz. Every song served a par­tic­u­lar pur­pose.

This mot­ley group­ing of sin­gle tracks may have been the result of the way I dis­cov­ered new music. Tenaciously, with ears always open, I would record as much as I could that caught my fan­cy, jot­ting down any dis­cernible lyrics I could use as a basis for a search, and nev­er stop­ping until I could find the song. Hysteria, by Muse, is just one exam­ple, which I hap­pened to dis­cov­er while watch­ing an awards show. For a long time, it remained a song I’ve enjoyed on my for it’s sub­tle build-up, and ener­getic, near­ly chaot­ic, synth-inspired bass lines.

Things changed when I lived with Trolley. He exposed me to bands of dif­fer­ent gen­res, and being a musi­cal col­lec­tor, this expo­sure took the form of com­plete albums. One of them hap­pened to be Absolution.

Now that I have the entire album, Hysteria is known to me as track 7, com­ing after the pen­sive Interlude, but before the gen­tle, ethe­re­al, Blackout. In this con­text, pre­ced­ed and suc­ceed­ed by two equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant tracks, the song does­n’t sound the same.

Eventually, none of my playlists were appro­pri­ate for what I was feel­ing. At first, I thought that this was the result of increas­ing­ly sub­tle or com­plex emo­tions, but I’ve come to real­ize that it’s sim­ply because I’ve matured, and as a result, my emo­tions have evened out. With the wis­dom and seren­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with grow­ing old­er, came the loss of emo­tion­al highs and lows that would inspire me.

Now it’s become dif­fi­cult to lis­ten to a song in a playlist. Every album has an order. Every track has its place. Listening to a song out of its musi­cal con­text may be hard, but lis­ten­ing to music with­out the rush of inspi­ra­tion is hard­er.

And this has become my musi­cal con­text.

A Jumble Of Emotions

I’ve been a jum­ble of emo­tions late­ly. A mix of excite­ment and wor­ry, fun and stress, unset­tling uncer­tain­ty and crossed-sig­nals. On top of it all I keep get­ting all sorts of BULLSHIT from peo­ple, when it’s the last thing I need.

I gen­er­al­ly don’t like this feel­ing. To grow, and this is espe­cial­ly true for me, one needs a foun­da­tion of sta­bil­i­ty. Once the basic things are con­stant, there can be changes and adjust­ments made to improve. Now I find myself strug­gling to keep the sim­plest things under con­trol.

It’s cer­tain­ly been an inter­est­ing year so far.

Just One Thing

It’s been a long week, although it was tech­ni­cal­ly made short­er from the long week­end. Three can­cel­la­tions in three nights. Nothing’s work­ing out. I left work ear­ly yes­ter­day because my eyes stopped func­tion­ing. The pre­vi­ous day I’d worked a full 14 hours.

I used to get angry or frus­trat­ed at things like this, but now I find myself cold and emo­tion­less, accept­ing things as the way they are. The advan­tage is that I’m a much more sta­ble per­son. It isn’t even any attempt to be sto­ic, but I’m sick of all the bull­shit.

All I want is a break, just one thing to go my way.

Please?

Post-Breakup Phase

Anyway, what I was try­ing to say is that I’ve been real­ly moody late­ly. Extremely moody. Almost on an emo­tion­al lev­el.

Another post-breakup phase. I go through this for a few months after break­ing up with some­one, but it only start­ed to hit me recent­ly. Funny how I’ve only now had enough rela­tion­ships to actu­al­ly real­ize this. I look at my month­ly archives from the begin­ning of the blog and most of them begin with some emo­tion­al, con­fused line. In fact, this entire blog start­ed as a way to vent these post break-up thoughts and feel­ings, until it became some­thing more than that. Now I’m falling back into that trap. I’m start­ing to do stu­pid shit again, things I wish I did­n’t do, after­wards.

Every day, in my head, I plan out my entries for the next week. Yet, every time I sit down to type, I’m nev­er in the mood to write. It’s just the same shit, over and over again.

The dif­fer­ence is that this time I know what to do. I’ve been look­ing for too much mean­ing in too lit­tle.

I want to get out. For the first time in my life, I’m sick of this win­ter. I want to sit in the sun. I want to be amongst oth­ers.

I want to lay on the track, feel hot steel scream­ing at me
Expose the bones on my back, let me show you what I mean.

The Healing Button

Ugh. I feel taint­ed. Moody. It feels like no one likes me. For the first time in a very long time, I feel alone.

I just start­ed three dif­fer­ent entries, but did­n’t fin­ish any of them. I’m not even in the mood to write this. I’m just sit­ting here with the lights out, two Candellas perched on top of my desk, and the first vol­ume of Buddha Bar resound­ing in the room. My head is numb, my throat dry, my cat unin­ter­est­ed.

This has become so bland. The same things over and over again. Where did my humour go? When did things stop chang­ing? Maybe I need a break from this.

Tomorrow, I’ll fin­ish this tomor­row. This is just a mood. I’ll explain when I’m not as tired. I’ll go to bed with this music on, dream­ing of quaint European archi­tec­ture and par­ties I could host to this sound.

Maybe I’ll feel bet­ter when I hit, “Publish”.