i recently realized i have an addiction. okay, maybe this revelation wasn't all the recent, but it has been slowly edging it's way up into my consciousness. i'm addicted to sound, to noise, to anything that can fill my head and drown out my thoughts. tv on at night, music streaming into my mind, coloring my vision and perception. feet in step with the beat dictating my thoughts and emotions. i can use music to harness my frame of mind. tired? electronic, dance, albums that are older friends than most people. bitter? let's hear about someone else's angst. depressed? power pop. happy? keep the ephemeral elation floating high with orchestration to match. contemplative? let's focus my thoughts on some problem other than my own. i can't have the answer for everything, so why push myself further down into melancholy by putting the weight of the world back behind my eyes.
anything to not face my own thoughts, to not let my mind run in it's usual circles that never quite meet where they should. noise numbs the perpetual desire of my brain to keep working overtime. right now, my heart is still racing thinking about what i've created, what is to come, and i should be napping but it is the last thing that i can consider. all i can consider is what i want, and making it a reality. i want this to work. i'm upset about some of the events of this weekend, but at the end of the day, as my roommate astutely realized, i was much more upset when i thought i had lost you, not him. maybe you are an idea to me, just like i am to you, but it is an idea that i don't want to drown out. i want to say it over and over, through other's words...try to drown out your thoughts with my ability to harness my emotions. maybe that's too personal. maybe i am over estimating the value that my music, the words of others have for me (and hopefully for you) but i want a way to quantify how i feel. something tangible in the meantime. i just want something real.
a guide
1. It started out as a feeling which then grew into a hope
2. I've been extra careful with the words that I say
3. One more time could be time enough to think about it.
4. Now, I'm wanting this for sure and I'll beg for nothing more.
5. Will I know when it can be us?
6. But my life is such a mess, and we've already been through this.
7. And not a soul sleeps, another heart skips a beat
8. They can't love me, they can't love what I don't show
9. So if you want to be with me with these things, there's not telling we just have to wait and see
10. Got you laying up nights just waiting for the music to start
11. There’s only room for you and me and what we’ve left to try
12. Goes right through you, but knotted up in my mind
13. Oh baby don’t you know I suffer…you set my soul alight
14. Do you believe you're missing out, that everything good is happening somewhere else?
15. I am taking you with me where we can contemplate our chemistry
16. Look at the time, we’re always waiting
17. They'll find a way to pull stars down
18. Every now and again sometimes I get lost on the wind of a dream
19. Im trying to find truth in words, in rhymes, in notes, in all the things i wish id wrote
20. Mixin’ up adjectives, like jealous and sweet
21. If you like to think out loud it might really help me out
22. It looks like the worst is over, blue eyes when the wind was here
23. I want to go where everyone goes, I want to know what everyone knows, I want to go where everyone feels the same
24. I don't get it, I'm not asking for much, but everybody wants to just have something
25. The next time I’m in town...
sense and memory
rain. there are some things you can never forget. now let's take it back to january, a timid heart and open ended scene. five years. why is that so hard to grasp? small, fading flashes of light, water pouring down the windows, hands frozen at 10 and 2. terrified, persistent ringing, tires gliding. why does my heart stop every time it rains? walking back from dinner, smile on my face, phone in my hand. laughs and breaths mimicking the persistent fall, little beginnings and endings punctuating the space and air around me. the space between drops gets smaller and smaller, more condensed, and then the memory floods back, water passing under my feet. phone in hand, nervous. also waiting for a few words from a boy. this time i'm not in control, i'm not behind the wheel...i'm being shuttled ahead without any say and the buzzing of incoming news grows louder, more desperate with each minute that it doesn't come. then it does. the world keeps moving, but my mind does not. it is always the rain. the rain levels the field, eliminates the control, steals things that aren't meant to be taken. a life, one smile, another page in the story. i keep smiling for you. courtney. the way the rain permeates my skin, the same way it has sunk into us all. another laugh, another glance. increasing downpour, seeming to never diminish. courtney. at least the ghosts of the past linger here in the shadows, the sensations, all a part of the harmonious cycle of things that were, are, and will be.
on analogous experiences
music is like literature. my first reason? i can't get enough of either. second reason? people enjoy it in the same way they enjoy literature. they want to talk about it, but at the same time the experience can be intensely private. either way, it evokes an emotional response that is hard to pinpoint or to recreate.
i have a reason for bringing this up, i promise. i just put up blonde redhead lyrics in my status, and felt a little pretentious doing so. give me a break, i just walked out of a faulkner class. i was going for something a little bit abstract. so sue me.
then, i started going through my tweetdeck, seeing all the updates i missed during class, and of course clicked on about a dozen links leading to new videos, music, and blogs. so, i've spent the last half hour listening to the new kid cudi/ratatat/mgmt collaboration, watching part of the new air video, more cool kids videos than i care to admit (thanks funfunfunfest) and reading a few opinions pieces about obama's speech today.
oh, and let's not forget the live video of passion pit that they posted on pitchfork. it took me back to a moment in time. back to south by southwest. if i were benjy, sleepyhead is my equivalent of "she smelled like trees," or if i were quentin, my honeysuckle, my past, my memory.
but here's the problem - sleepyhead doesn't provoke thought like equus does. however, i was equally moved. so, all of you music snobs out there, how pretentious are your literary tastes? do you enjoy vonnegut or palahniuk less just because more people read him and because he is more accessible? or do you enjoy faulkner or joyce better just because it isn't attainable and comprehensible for anyone who picks it up? there is beauty and merit in both. if only everyone empirically and rationally considered that.
long live anything that engages me, elicits a train of thought, or just makes me swoon.
i have a reason for bringing this up, i promise. i just put up blonde redhead lyrics in my status, and felt a little pretentious doing so. give me a break, i just walked out of a faulkner class. i was going for something a little bit abstract. so sue me.
"allow me to show you the way which I adore you...equus by nature, timid creature, ready to run away"
(video for equus by blonde redhead, off of misery is a butterfly)
then, i started going through my tweetdeck, seeing all the updates i missed during class, and of course clicked on about a dozen links leading to new videos, music, and blogs. so, i've spent the last half hour listening to the new kid cudi/ratatat/mgmt collaboration, watching part of the new air video, more cool kids videos than i care to admit (thanks funfunfunfest) and reading a few opinions pieces about obama's speech today.
oh, and let's not forget the live video of passion pit that they posted on pitchfork. it took me back to a moment in time. back to south by southwest. if i were benjy, sleepyhead is my equivalent of "she smelled like trees," or if i were quentin, my honeysuckle, my past, my memory.
long live anything that engages me, elicits a train of thought, or just makes me swoon.
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