Posts tagged with "music"

Gradient

Ever since I got my iPod, I’ve been a playlist lis­ten­er, as opposed to an album lis­ten­er like Nick. I had 10 main playlists, and each one would be for a dif­fer­ent genre or mood, although I lis­tened to my mood ones much more often, such as my bit­ter­sweet mix or angry mix. Now I’m find my mod­er­ate num­ber of playlists to be insuf­fi­cient. Often, when I step out into the intem­per­ate sky which has been so dom­i­nant late­ly, I won’t be able to find an appro­pri­ate playlist. Nothing match­es my moods now.

I think that my moods and emo­tions have become more sub­tle and diverse in the last year. It’s been hard­er to put my fin­ger on how I’m feel­ing, because noth­ing is as base as a sim­ple “sad” or “angry” any­more. I find that the flavours of my feel­ings have become more intri­cate and con­nect­ed, not only because of simul­ta­ne­ous highs and lows, but also because of a greater appli­ca­tion of dual-sid­ed­ness.

Sometimes it feels as if my emo­tions have evened out, that there is less range to the ups and downs. I’ve learned a great deal from the inter­est­ing set of sit­u­a­tions I’ve been placed in over the last two years. This, com­bined with my zeal­ous­ness for self-improve­ment, has allowed me to become a lit­tle stronger and a lit­tle wis­er. Perhaps, in time, every­thing will even out. I’m just not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

Because I’d prob­a­bly cease to learn.

Ass Kickin' Fat Kid

I’ve been a fre­quent read­er of the Tool FAQ for a while now, even though it has­n’t been updat­ed in more than two years. I remem­ber read­ing a long time ago about Maynard’s side projects and find­ing out about his fake band Titannica for the movie Run Ronnie Run. I had no idea what this was at the time, but have since been intro­duced to Mr. Show by Jackee and seen Run Ronnie Run. The fake band fea­tures Anthrax gui­tarist Scott Ian and Hole sub-drum­mer Samantha Maloney as well, and only has one song out called Ass Kickin’ Fat Kid. The song comes on dur­ing one of the best scenes in the movie, an over­ly pro­duced fight scene involv­ing a rather cor­pu­lent video game play­ing teenag­er.

BT On Campus

I was walk­ing back through the cam­pus today, a crush of stu­dents milling around me, while lis­ten­ing to the new Billy Talent. Ben Kowalewicz’s shrill vocals matched every­thing I saw, from the arro­gant walk of that perky girl to the indif­fer­ent look on the face of that Chinese guy.

I’m sink­ing, I’m twist­ed
I’m broke and you can’t fix it
Don’t make me, cause I’ll do it
Red blood and then we’ll all go

I wished, if only for a moment, that I could pump this music through the crowds, to make every­one lis­ten and move with me.

The Nature Of It All

I have to get this down before I lose it.

The new Starsailor album is out this month, and I’m not sure if I’ll buy it. There’s some­thing about the gen­er­al sound of Starsailor songs that evoke an almost inef­fa­ble emo­tion in me. I nev­er even knew they exist­ed until last month, but for some rea­son, their 2001 Love Is Here album cov­er is odd­ly famil­iar. Every time I see the sun-washed tracks falling into the hori­zon, I get an odd sense of déjá vu.

As one who rarely has such an ephemer­al, mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ence, this strikes me as a extreme­ly poignant thing. I feel as if I know this album, that I’ve seen it before, even had emo­tions asso­ci­at­ed with it. It’s some­thing I can’t explain, and whether the emo­tions are good are bad, I can’t recall.

Their music moves me nonethe­less. The chord pro­gres­sions are unpre­dictable yet dul­cet, bit­ter yet sweet. I can’t decide if it’s sun­set or sun­rise music, and the album cov­er serves to empha­size this equiv­o­cal­i­ty. I can’t even tell if the music makes me hap­py or sad.

And so remains my prob­lem. Do I want to lis­ten to this music or not? I always find it odd that some­one would not want to think about or expe­ri­ence some­thing sim­ply because it makes them sad. Doing so seems to be so cow­ard­ly, as if one is run­ning from one’s self.

Yet the prob­lem remains, with oth­er music as well, and as clear as this log­ic is for me I find it dif­fi­cult to queue up cer­tain songs. Listening to The Postal Service brings back so many amaz­ing, unfor­get­table mem­o­ries, but so many painful thoughts as well.

I choose not to ignore either, and end up being emo­tion­al­ly torn, unclear in my heart and in my mind.