Posts tagged with "music"

Has It Come?

Tonight I ordered the escar­got, while Tinsley Ellis, a man who seemed to have a cer­tain uncom­plex wis­dom beyond his years, sang his ver­sion of the south Florida blues. I admit that I was skep­ti­cal at first, but was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by the time his first num­ber had end­ed, an instru­men­tal piece that one could tell was writ­ten as more than a sim­ple intro­duc­to­ry song.

And while he sang his words with a com­bi­na­tion of gruff sin­cer­i­ty and sto­ic con­fi­dence, I sat there. Wondering why sad music can’t make me sad right now. Feeling some­thing I had nev­er felt before.

Lost in a moment of clar­i­ty.

Assorted Daily Life

So yeah.

Got my hair bleached blonde. I’ve always want­ed very pale blonde hair, but mid­tone is about as far as it goes.

Trolley, Aaron, and wheaties got me Half-Life 2 for my birth­day. I did­n’t have a chance to real­ly play it until this week­end, but I decid­ed to play through Half-Life: Source first, because it was four years five years since I last fin­ished it, and going through the game again would help me appre­ci­ate all the lit­tle details being put into the sequel. The odd thing is that I remem­ber tak­ing weeks to play it through, where­as I start­ed play­ing HL:S Friday, played a bit last night, and am almost done now. It’s nice to be able to sit and play through a game, tak­ing my time, not hav­ing to wor­ry about class­es, or assign­ments, or tests, etc. This makes me real­ize that I haven’t real­ly got­ten into a game like this since I fin­ished uni­ver­si­ty.

Finally get to go for some pho with Loo today. We haven’t been almost two weeks.

Aaron bought me a quadruple/quadruple from Timmies yes­ter­day, and it was good. I’ve been try­ing to cut down on sug­ar and creme for years now, so four of each being so sati­at­ing (almost can­dy-like) is very scary.

I took my first puff from a cig­a­rette yes­ter­day. It was a Matinee Extra Mild, and it was­n’t pleas­ant. I was stoned, and the weed tast­ed way bet­ter.

The Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex tracks that Number18 sent me are amaz­ing. She rules.

Been busy as fuck.

That’s all. I’m going back to sleep.

Music Saves The Day

I was rid­ing the bus the oth­er day, and a woman got on and sat in a per­pen­dic­u­lar seat in front of me. She wore plain mary-janes, thick wool stock­ings, a con­ser­v­a­tive plaid skirt, and had her hair in a slight­ly orna­ment­ed pony-tail. I assume that she was in her late twen­ties, but her demeanour was almost child-like. She sat for a while, star­ing at noth­ing, car­ry­ing a per­pet­u­al­ly inno­cent, apolo­getic expres­sion on her face, as if she had a tir­ing day and was pen­i­tent to those around her for being in such an exhaust­ed state.

Sticking out of her bag was a sim­ple, white, let­ter-sized book­let with the head­ing “DEMOCRACY IN ACTION PROGRAM”, and I thought it was odd that a par­lia­men­tary event being held in the cap­i­tal of Canada would use the American spelling of the word “pro­gramme”.

Soon, she pulled out a set of plas­tic, bulky Sony head­phones (the ones with the over­sized foam that actu­al­ly come with a music device), and searched her bag for the tape play­er attached at the end of the cord. Now, I admit that I’m already gen­er­al­ly attract­ed to old­er, home­ly look­ing women, but it was the fact that she had such a pure look of sim­ple bliss on her face when she put on the head­phones, as if she was wait­ing all day to lis­ten to her music, that I found most attrac­tive.

Self-Restraint: Tensility

Some peo­ple turn to pills and things
To help them through the day
To take them up or down or just
To ease the blues away
But me I real­ly want to feel
The ups and downs of life so real
Happy or sad emo­tions reign
My tears flow just the same

—Lamb, I Cry

I had been try­ing to write this for near­ly a month, but could­n’t get it down until I real­ly lis­tened to the lyrics of I Cry on the walk home past the pow­er lines. I decid­ed to split this up into two sep­a­rate entries, after real­iz­ing that I have two sim­i­lar ideas in my head, but two very dis­tinct issues. Perhaps it just took a few extra rough days of work to force me to think about this. All the things falling apart that I have to fix, respon­si­bil­i­ties, dead­lines, and tons of oth­er mis­cel­la­neous things are def­i­nite­ly mak­ing me think of ways to get the ten­sion out of my arms and shoul­ders.

Sometimes, when I come home, all I want to do is get piss drunk or mind­less­ly stoned. Maybe go reck­less­ly buy a bunch of things I don’t need, to make myself feel bet­ter for that lit­tle amount of time. Sometimes I just feel like doing some­thing irra­tional, even though I have no idea what or why, sim­ply because I believe it would get my mind of things. And yet I don’t do any of this, espe­cial­ly when I’m hav­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly bad day, because I don’t want to be depen­dent on any­thing.

I don’t want to rely on nar­cotics, or mate­r­i­al goods, or self-muti­la­tion, or any­thing at all to make myself feel bet­ter. I want to be sure that I can han­dle things, no mat­ter what, on my own. I force myself to feel every stress­ful, mis­er­able, for­lorn emo­tion, so that I know that I can get through them.

Sometimes, every day can be a test. Music and writ­ing are the only things that I allow myself.

And some­times I have to tell myself that it’s enough.