Friday, June 15, 2007

Music Through Your Phases


"I think I heard you singing, 'Oh poor sky, don't cry on me. Did somebody break your heart again?'"

I am a music person. If I can help it, I try to fill in every moment of my daily life with tunes, doesn't matter if I'm showering, gardening(yeah right), sleeping, writing about how it gets listened to when I do stuff, etc. Music doesn't just represent moods(by that I mean if you're sad or whatever, sad music isn't the only type of music that makes sense), it alters moods. Music is a therapist, wrapped in a super hero cloak, soaked in water from the spring of immortality. It has the power to expose us, and reveal what we typically hide from everybody and everything. Just like driving past the neighborhood you grew up in, a song can transport and beam you through space and time and within a moment place you back on the bike you were riding around the speed bumps with. Decades can pass, everything about you as a person can change, but as soon as the melody hits, smells, states of minds, even weather conditions come flooding back. Music for me now a days is more than just one form of Art, it's a combination of artistic achievements. It's melody, poetry, and since images are conjured up in my head through the two of those together it's even painting and photography. That might sound ridiculous to you, but since image is constructed inside our minds and not our eyes, it's absolutely true.

"I'm coming up only, to hold you under. And coming up only, to show you wrong"

"Hey Love, we will get away with it. We'll run like we're awesome, totally genius... Come, come be my waitress and serve me tonight, serve me the sky tonight."

Unfortunately for me, I have a tendency to exhaust a song I love to the point of pant so often that it stops representing a time and place, and instead crosses over again and again to other times, and other places. Never the less, there are still ship loads of tunes on my itunes who can beam me back. And I love that. Even though so often I hate the nostalgia; pain through the realization that moments were lived but not embraced so intensely that the time travel wouldn't spring up a sense of longing. Everything is always more real when you're in pain, or when you're in bliss, and barring death, there is no pain deeper than heart break, and nothing more blissful than gazing into the eyes of a fawn. Not coincidentally, there are more songs about it than any other topic. Not coincidentally, the rewind to moments when the heart was ok is the most real and painfully intense button songs can press on your stereo system life. We register things subconsciously so often that anticipating future nostalgia is almost impossible. My itunes spits out songs from playlists created for sharing moments of intimacy with no disclaimer about how those songs that defined the beauty, can so easily turn on me to reveal the awfulness of the disappearance of that beauty. Lyrics once understood and defined personally in moments of relevant closeness, morph into daggers immune to shields propelled at the very heart it once sung to caress. I have yet to experience anything else that achieves this feat so efficiently.

"And every time you're driving home, way outside your safety zone, wherever you will ever be, you're never getting rid of me... You own me, there's nothing you can do, you own me"

I guess I should be grateful to feel anything at all. Thankful that I know of poets and painters and photographers who color my world with their crazy brushes. Lucky to have been with someone who took the emotions portrayed by the artists, and showed me how to experience them to their fullest and most rewarding extent. After all, what is a landscape painting if you've never taken walks with someone dear, in the rain and sun, through fields and in between trees?

" You've got your reasons, and me I've got mine. But all the reasons I gave were just lies to buy myself some time"

I encourage you to check out the lyrics, and albums.

The National- All Dolled Up In Straps (Decatur, Frenchman, tiny burgers, I-10) Lyrics, Buy

Band Of Horses- Funeral (Silence, drives, open windows) Lyrics, Buy

The National- Geese Of Beverley Road (All the way, the great, an exclamation)
Lyrics(Scroll to), Buy

The National- Lucky You (The first hint of some end)
Lyrics(Bottom of page), Buy

Arcade Fire- Ocean Of Noise (Declaration of intimacy, of now, of maybe never again and why, fool myself) Lyrics, Buy

Vids

Band Of Horses- Funeral


The National- Lucky You



3 comments:

Unknown said...

Sometimes music offers some good advice too...

"Listen...
we dont call the shots here
we dont make the rules
we take what we get
get what we can

That's learning the hard way
here on the streets
you can't build a dream without a plan

(I shall speak)
let them hear you speak
(play for keeps)
they play to win
we play for keeps

(Chorus)
its not over til its over
its not over til we get it right

The odds are against us
they say we dont stand a chance
well theres no givin up
no givin in"

-starship

Nadirt said...

I'm actually not a big fan of morals in music, in Art in general. Not straight forward ones anyway. It's the expression of emotions that get me, the ability to portray a feeling, a state of mind, a belief so honestly that a listeners relation to it becomes inconsequential. Having said that, it is some good advice, even though it's a bit over simplified.

Anonymous said...

Good words.