Posts tagged with "pain"

Music like Braces and Bruises

Whenever Trolley and I hang out togeth­er, whether it’s a car ride or a ses­sion of tow­er defense, we queue up albums that we both enjoy. Billy Talent, The Artist in the Ambulance, Sing the Sorrow, Give Up. However, there’s one song that he nev­er queues up, that he always skips with­out any­one else know­ing.

He knows that I can’t lis­ten to that one song off guard. As much as I want that song for myself, to mean noth­ing more than a frail voice and bounc­ing beats, I can’t give up the mem­o­ries that I asso­ciate with it, I can’t let go of what the song has come to mean.

And it’s only now that I real­ize that it’s bet­ter this way.

Reversal: Part 2 (The Floundering Mindset)

Out of the storm of life I have borne away only a few ideas — and not one feel­ing. For a long time now I have been liv­ing, not with my heart, but with my head. I weigh, ana­lyze my own pas­sions and actions with severe curios­i­ty, but with­out sym­pa­thy.

—Pechorin, A Hero of Our Time

When I was younger, I decid­ed that I want­ed to cast all my emo­tion aside, because at the time I knew noth­ing but pain. I set this as my goal, and start­ed to work towards a ster­ile, cere­bral mind­set. I want­ed to feel noth­ing, and this idea fol­lowed me through to uni­ver­si­ty.

At this time, I nev­er believed that I was com­plete­ly suc­cess­ful; I still felt too much. However, as my sit­u­a­tion changed, as I met new peo­ple with good hearts and minds, I expe­ri­enced what hap­pi­ness was like. I was nev­er sat­is­fied though, nev­er hap­py enough, and always want­ed more but could nev­er achieve it. Suddenly, it felt as if my cere­bral goal was too suc­cess­ful, and I was stuck, I was numb.

I’ve gone from one extreme to the oth­er, from want­i­ng noth­ing to want­i­ng every­thing. In both cas­es I was a fail­ure, but it’s only now that I real­ize that suc­cess would have assured­ly meant no turn­ing back. I believe that when a cer­tain extent is reached, one becomes igno­rant to any­thing that could pos­si­bly change one­self. Now I under­stand the bal­ance, the dichoto­my that absolute­ly must exist in order to have a healthy mind.

And things are much bet­ter this way.

Reversal: Part 1 (The Inexplicable Catalyst)

19. Have you ever been in love? Unfortunately.

—LBJ

Well, here we are again.

I used to think that love was only pain. That was when the only expe­ri­ences I had with love were bad, when every­thing I ever felt was unre­quit­ed. The fact that I felt this way was rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the fact that I had­n’t got­ten over those feel­ings at the time. How child­ish, inex­pe­ri­enced, con­fused, imma­ture I was. This feel­ing shaped much of my per­son­al­i­ty in the last few years, although I’ve recent­ly been able to come out of such an emo­tion­al block­ade.

Having a rela­tion­ship where most feel­ings, how­ev­er con­fused, how­ev­er tor­ren­tial, how­ev­er tem­po­rary, were shared, has allowed me to come to terms with the past. Such an inci­dent has ben­e­fit­ed me great­ly, has let me know that I’m not so numb any­more, that it’s pos­si­ble for such a rela­tion­ship to exist even if I may nev­er expe­ri­ence it again. Perhaps I was so scared that I would nev­er fall in love again that any such expe­ri­ence would have shocked me into get­ting over what had hap­pened in the past.

Now I embrace the feel­ing of love, embrace the fact that the sim­ple act of lis­ten­ing to a song can fill me such poignan­cy, com­plete­ly regard­less of whether it’s good or bad. Not only do I enjoy being able to care for some­one, I enjoy miss­ing them as well, as dif­fi­cult as it can be. I like the fact that some­thing can turn me ter­ri­bly, illog­i­cal­ly weak. Every emo­tion involved, whether it’s plea­sur­able or painful, fills me with the urge to write, to cre­ate, to express. This is what I look for. This is what I need.

Now only good can come of love.

Charge

How odd that the themes of my writ­ings have most­ly shift­ed in one direc­tion. I always won­der what peo­ple think of what I say. I would imag­ine that peo­ple think I’m being melo­dra­mat­ic, that I’m look­ing for some sort of pro­tag­o­nis­tic pathos, or that I’m being some pre­ten­tious fuck.

It’s as if a sin­gle inci­dent has shift­ed my mind­set, that I just can’t seem to com­plete­ly get over what has passed. The hurt­ing has stopped, to be sure, but the think­ing isn’t done. I still get inspired by mem­o­ries, ideas, emo­tions, almost any­thing I’ve expe­ri­enced through this.

I was once scared that I would nev­er fall in love again, and I used to be emo­tion­al­ly numb. Perhaps all of this was sim­ply a result of a life of stag­nan­cy, of bore­dom. Now I can write again, I have things to think about, I have emo­tions to expe­ri­ence, I seem to have things to look for­ward to.

Can heart­break be so ben­e­fi­cial? I know that I can feel. I don’t need to force my artis­tic writ­ing. My mind seems to be filled with new end­less thoughts. I can even appre­ci­ate cer­tain music on anoth­er lev­el now. This com­plex­i­ty, this mys­te­ri­ous­ness is so inter­est­ing.

My only wor­ry is that this new vital­i­ty will lev­el off into noth­ing­ness.

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.